Those of us who are interested in the infinite variety that life has to offer, ‘a man (or woman) of many parts’ we are occasionally described as, are more to be pitied than envied. It is true that, sitting in front of my state-of-the-art television set (which cost me more than an arm and a …
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Cunk and the fine art of stupidity
If one were to ask 50 people at random in India if they knew who Diane Morgan is, one will almost certainly draw a blank. I myself had no clue about this anonymous Diane till I began to research her. And why was I researching this virtually unknown lady, who is clearly something of a …
The Music Season. What else is new?
The much-anticipated music season has just kicked off in Chennai. As the season of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ in the words of John Keats, ripens into a mélange of melody and soulfulness, the days will pass and it will all be over before you can warble in Sankarabharanam, Svara Raga Sudha Rasayuta Bhakti. Which, of …
Bottoms up!
I do not wish to seem fashionably blasé or anything and, crucially important as these issues are, abrogation of Article 370 with the Supreme Court putting its rubber seal of approval on it, and the Hitchcockian suspense surrounding the appointment of Chief Ministers to the three Hindi heartland states bagged by the BJP in the …
Splitting hairs over small beer
Absent friends, may they stay that way. Christopher Hitchens. I ran into an old friend the other day. Acquaintance might be a more accurate word as I had not met him for the best part of twenty-five years, so we had to pick up the pieces gingerly after the usual round of ‘Good God, surely …
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned
There is a tendency amongst many of us hack writers to attribute any slick proverb to Shakespeare. The Bard of Avon came up with so many smart lines befitting any occasion, that one can be excused for giving him the credit for aphorisms he did not even write. My proverb of choice for this essay …
Anyone for Vanuatu or the Grenadines?
I recently spent an enjoyable holiday in Sri Lanka with my extended family. The weather was hot and humid but we were put up at a comfortable hotel in a seaside resort in Kosgoda. Seafood aplenty, washed down with lots of beer and generally lying about like beached whales under umbrellas and getting our quota …
How much is that doggie in the window?
Cast: Mohawk Mata as herself / Hero-none-the-wiser as himself / Joy Dehradun as himself and introducing Henry the Rottweiler as his dog self. This is a short one-act, off-key musical play about a feisty parliamentarian, her ex-boyfriend Joy Dehradun, a Rottweiler named Henry and Hero-none-the-wiser, a wealthy, off-shore industrialist (at least, he seems to spend …
Wild goose chase in Kuala Lumpur
My younger brother and I were kiddies between the ages of 5 and 9 when we spent a few years in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur in Malaya, as it then was. The reason being that my father, who worked in a private commercial bank (later nationalised), was posted in that part of the world for …
Music is what music does. Online or offline.
Carnatic musician T.M. Krishna has recently held forth on the perils, as he sees it, of music lovers inexorably leaning towards consuming the art form through a plethora of streaming OTT channels and eschewing live performances. Sitting comfortably at home, one can order entertainment, à la carte, often through state-of-the-art sound systems. Not to mention …
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