Prologue. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been in the news in recent weeks. For all the wrong reasons. From a celebrated purveyor of the news worldwide, the BBC has become the news. Principally, for putting out a two-part documentary on India’s Prime Minister Modi, and not a very flattering one at that. Naturally, the …
Author Archives: sureshsubrahmanyan
A parrot is grilled
And when I awoke, I was alone, this bird had flown. The Beatles. Once every so often, we come across some weirdly amusing nuggets of information from our daily newspapers. Not all of them do I find arresting enough to expound upon, but here’s one that aroused my interest. Even if I wasn’t actually rolling …
Geriatric gossip
Old friends, old friends / Sat on their park bench like bookends. Simon & Garfunkel. There were these two elderly gentlemen, hang on, what the hell, let’s call a spade a shovel, there were these two old gentlemen taking their early morning constitutional at their nearby park. Early to mid-eighties, if I am any judge. …
The Noise without the News
I know there’s nothing to say….I’m just second hand news. Fleetwood Mac. We are talking about The Great Indian Debate on the idiot box. Every evening, from around 8 o’clock and going on till about the witching hour, our television news channels conduct something they call a debate. We only have their word …
There is a crack in everything
‘It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.’ Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat. Every once in a while, …
Open flies in open skies
At the very outset, let me make it plain as a pikestaff that being urinated upon by an inebriated idiot is no laughing matter, even at a light-headed 40,000 feet up in the air, on Air India’s business class service. The 71-year-old lady who was thus obscenely assailed was certainly not amused. Neither is …
India’s World Cup
The World Cup football jamboree is over. Thank heavens for that, say I. For the best part of the past four weeks, one could scarcely strike up a conversation on anything other than the frenetic happenings in Qatar. Even those who knew next to nothing about football had a point of view, and not afraid …
Sticks and stones may break my bones
The Defence Ministers of the two warring, neighbouring nations and their top military aides, decided to get together at a picturesque, snowy mountain top of indeterminate location, across a flaky, disputed border, to hold their 100th peace talk. The 99 previous peace talks had proved infructuous, with neither side willing to yield an inch of …
Harry & Meghan – I, Me, Mine
All through the day / I me mine, I me mine, I me mine – George Harrison Harry & Meghan, the new docu-series on the young renegade royal couple, Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle, was released by Netflix worldwide last Thursday. Three episodes have been put out at the first time of asking, …
The world gets a kick out of this
I keep telling myself that I am not really interested in football. Come to that, even my interest in cricket has been waning, perhaps to wax again at the next World Cup. Grand Slam tennis still keeps me riveted, despite Federer’s last, tearful hurrah. At least, Nadal and Djokovic are still there, mixing it up …
Suresh's Corner 