New, improved YouTube spruces itself up

 I’m sure if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be doing classic guitar solos on YouTube. Peter Capaldi. Not all that long ago, watching YouTube was considered a harmless way of passing the time, if you had precious little else to do. Nothing of earth-shattering importance was ever seen on this free-to-air channel, but we could …

Scientists uncover new facets of the Vermeer girl

You’re just too good to be true / Can’t take my eyes off you. Frankie Valli. Whenever a conversation amongst people with an artistic bent of mind turns to the great painters over time, invariably the names of Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, da Vinci, Dali, Picasso and a few others would tend to …

One-song wonders

I was lunching at a much-frequented club in Bangalore last week with a few old school friends, old being the operative word. Just to be clear, we were class mates in school about 60-plus years ago and this was one of those nostalgic, beery get-togethers we periodically indulged in. The WhatsApp message from our Group …

Of Laddus, Heads of State and Chess Champs

During the past few weeks, all manner of happenings in and out of the country have been keeping the news channels buzzing and tongues wagging at every social gathering. So what else is new? Or news? At times we are amused and at other times we are horrified and once in a rare while, we …

   Looking in the rear-view mirror. Longingly.

The ‘good old times’ – all times when old are good. Lord Byron Nostalgia. Those who wallow in it are almost certainly, and let us not mince words, long in the tooth. They are defined by the length of their teeth. I freely admit that I belong to this category. As I write this piece, …

What price the Nobel Peace Prize?

 A man can’t soar too high, when he flies with his own wings. William Blake. Our Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose brand equity suffered an appreciable dent after the recent General Elections in the country, continues to hold the reins of power, albeit tenuously, at the Centre. If he were a fan of The Beatles, …

Exorcising a transformer’s demons

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir. Carl Sagan. In the year 1973, when I was barely out of college, the talk of the town was a movie called The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty’s magnum opus novel of the same name and directed …