By Vikram Muthanna While everyone was busy mourning Vajpayee’s death, tragedy struck Kodagu as rains and landslides swallowed everything — humans, livestock, coffee estates, vehicles and homes. On the evening of August 18, I got a call from Kushalnagar where my uncle informed me that he had taken in three families as floods made their…
A Time to Ponder over Nature’s Fury !
August 24, 2018By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD Even as the affected people in flood-ravaged Kodagu and Kerala are being rehabilitated with great difficulty, we are already beginning to hear faint rumblings of a sordid blame game that is likely to assume monstrous proportions and take the centre stage very soon. We are also seeing reports in…
Pavan Varma’s Parakaya Pravesha of Adi Shankaracharya! – 2
August 23, 2018[Continued from Aug. 17] It was clear that Pavan Varma settled down to write this book ‘Adi Shankaracharya’ in the format of hagiography after visiting places hallowed by the name of Adi Shankaracharya. Personally, I have been striving to know who or what God (Brahma) is and Aathma (Soul) is. In the cases of both,…
Rat race, is it worth it?
August 23, 2018By N.K.A. Ballal, Retd. Sr. Vice-President, ITDC Sometime back I had met a girl studying in 9th std. living nearby during summer holidays. She had mentioned to me that she was interested in taking coaching for badminton and swimming. But later on I came to know she was busy the whole summer attending coaching classes…
The Prime Minister as Gentleman
August 21, 2018By T.J.S. George My Lord, Never let me climb so high that I’m unable to embrace a stranger. The humanism in Atal Bihari Vajpayee made him taller than a Prime Minister. In the vastness of his mind the ephemerality of political glory counted for what it was. He once said: You might become an ex-Prime…
A Statesman and a Survivor
August 18, 2018Vajpayee is gone and everyone has good things to say about him, even the Opposition. He was the first Prime Minister with no connection to the Congress and coincidentally, it was Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister who, impressed with Vajpayee’s oratory skills, said in 1957: “This young man will one day become the country’s…
Pavan Varma’s Parakaya Pravesha of Adi Shankaracharya ! — 1
August 17, 2018This year’s Mysuru Literary Fest was held on Aug. 12 and the VIP speaker, who was the cynosure of all eyes, among others, was Pavan K. Varma, former diplomat, Press Secretary to the President of India and, of course, an eminent and prolific writer on subjects as varied as politics and religion. He was a…
Taming a largely man-made tragedy
August 17, 2018By Dr. Javeed Nayeem Over the past few days people living in some parts of our country have been going through a nightmarish flood situation due to the unusually heavy rainfall this year’s monsoon has brought. Vast tracts of land have been inundated and lakhs of displaced people are living with their young and old…
Listen to your heart and decide
August 16, 2018By N.K.A. Ballal, Retd. Sr. Vice-President, ITDC A simple story narrated by Gopal Das: A vegetable vendor put up a board near his cart, “Fresh vegetables sold here” to attract new customers to his cart. A man came up to him and said, we have seen you sell vegetables and most of the times it…
Why Karunanidhi was important
August 14, 2018By T.J.S. George With M. Karunanidhi’s death, a chapter turns in history. That is rare because most political leaders constitute mere footnotes in history, let alone a page. Karunanidhi was more a cultural reformer than a politician, a recognition that led people to confer on him the popular title of Kalaignar, man of the arts…
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