The caption of today’s column owes it to the renowned British novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817), best known for her social commentary in novels including Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. About her own work, in a veiled self-praise, the author has been quoted saying, “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not…

In his play Merchant of Venice, the Bard wrote about the heartless money-lender saying he was more sinned against than sinning, virtually masking the lender’s villainous image. Given the ongoing cacophony around plastic all over the country, including Mysuru, with its blackened image after virtually dominating life of people at large and ubiquitously present in…

During the colonial rule of India, the British authorities sent many activists taking part in the countrywide agitation demanding freedom to Andaman on a one-way trip to be housed in the dreaded cellular cells with no time limit of imprisonment. The measure amounted to deportation of the activists, dubbed by the then administration as anti-government…

The opening puzzle posed to three contestants five days a week in the Kannada quiz programme telecast in the evening by DD channel invariably features a Kannada idiom. The contestants, after the mostly inappropriate response to the puzzle, are enlightened by the quiz master saying the meaning of the whole phrase has no connect with…

The time-honoured fable of The Rabbit and The Tortoise, narrating the challenge posed by the fast-running rabbit to the slow-moving tortoise may have also witnessed a time-warp given its rare occasions on which children happen to be made aware of the message slow and steady wins the race. One cannot be faulted to infer that…

The scope of this column, inspired by the equation E=mc2 familiar to the knowledgeable sections of literati as the formula attributed to the famed Physicist Albert Einstein propounding his theory of special relativity is limited to the connect between mass (matter) and energy (heat) as a lay person understands. His theory that mass and energy…

In a recently introduced practice in industries and large business establishments employing a virtual army of employees in some countries of the western world as well as in India, particularly multinational companies known for their fat pay cheques, a considerable number of staff have been sent home, the measure ostensibly to cut operating costs and…

Issues related to under-garments have begun to be featured in column-space of many dailies obviously shedding the factors of privacy of wearers of the concealed attire and shyness on the part of society’s sections dubbed as prudes. Attractive designs of ladies-friendly lingerie which used to be flashed full-page as advertisements by the few manufacturers in…

Driven by the highly laudable goal of Universal Healthcare, aimed at covering 500 million people of the nation, Ayushman Bharath (also known as Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Swasthya Suraksha Abhiyan), approved by the Cabinet of the Union government with funding is described as the world’s largest health care infrastructure scheme. The target population of the scheme…

A comparatively new breed of business players namely Realtors have arrived on the national scene, their activity presently confined to urban spaces. The term refers to a person who acts as an agent for the sale and purchase of buildings (and land) obviously for a living by grabbing his cut in the deal, leaving the…