Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason. José Maria de Eça de Queiroz. Those of you who are familiar with my weekly ramblings, will know that I am not all that partial towards political commentary. My readership may be limited, to put it …
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The needy Mr. Maslow
What one can be, one must be. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970). The other day, I was watching some documentary film on Netflix, the name of which escapes me completely for the moment, but there was this professor of psychology from some famous university, never mind from where and his name, who was going on endlessly about …
Mani’s Ire
My friend, the redoubtable and irascible Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar, has never taken a backward step when calling a spade a shovel, irrespective of the consequences. In the present instance, the spade (or shovel) is represented by one Pawan Khera, one of the Congress Party’s many spokespersons, who recently hove into Aiyar’s cross-hairs. While speaking …
Snappy answers to stupid questions
Those of you who are just out of university, engineering college or one of the many management institutes that dot our country, you must be working hard to bone up on a variety of subjects in preparation for your forthcoming written tests and viva voce that you will be confronted with. Suited, booted corporate executives …
Cricket. Who gives a toss?
Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended. George Bernard Shaw. I don’t write much about cricket these days. This is a one-off. There are several sound reasons for my growing disaffection. For starters I have gone clean off the game. I don’t watch it like I used to. There is just …
TO STOP TRAIN PULL CHAIN
From my earliest childhood days, when my younger sibling and I were in boarding school in Bangalore, going home for summer and winter holidays meant catching the overnight Madras Mail from Bangalore Cantonment Station, arriving at the crack of dawn in Madras Central, spending the day with our uncle and aunt, and then taking the …
Remembering Lotika, Pamela, Melville and Chakrapani
Caveat: The contents of this article may go clean over the heads of those under the age of 65, but that is no excuse for your not wanting to read the piece. Shakespeare went over my head every time I tried to plough through one of those interminable soliloquies by Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Mark …
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Testing times at hospitals
A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running. Groucho Marx. Hospitals have become nicer places these days. An assertion that will be hotly disputed by many and, I daresay, with good reason. Everything is relative and it all depends on how you compare the hospitals of today with those of yesteryear. Much …
Deconstructing the Applause
I have just returned from Chennai, having partaken heartily of the food of love, namely music; in common parlance, the December music season. Not just any old music, but the unfiltered, unadulterated pure offering provided by the doughty purveyors of Carnatic music, one of south India’s many gifts to the world of arts and culture. …
Like, So and the Double Negative
I am not quite sure when people started opening their sentences with the words ‘like’ or ‘so.’ I rather suspect this unfortunate habit is of a recent vintage, and largely confined to the younger set, by which I probably mean those around the age of 40 or younger. Applying the irrefutable logic of numbers, you …