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Why you have to sit at a Temple for a minute after darshan?  An Ex CM Ramakrishna Hegde recalls Who was the CM after P V. recalled several times that one has to sit in a temple after darshan because one wants easy death. Hegde recalls that one wants easy death Hegde recalls that one recalls At the temple the, poem ananyasa maranam, dainya jeevanam  vena dainya jeevanam dèhante tava…

George Bernard Shaw said England and America are two great countries separated by the same language Many English words are pronounced differently  by Americans (in the USA T is often not silent) Similar is the case with Australia My service organization (non profit in the USA but NGO in UK). The club hadn’t organised of AOSTR (Australian Students Overseas Travel Scheme) I had put on student Jan…

Actress Sùsĥmìta Sèñ ànd añ ùñķñòwn wòmañ called Parvati ĥavè ‘protested’ against the PM dòiñg thè Pran Pratishta òf tĥè Ram ìdòĺ at tĥè Ram Janmabhoomì tèmple ìñ Ayòdhÿa (Faizabad for tĥem) Ìt maÿ either bè fakè ñèŵs òr the twò maÿ bè converts who ĺike Malayalam actress Ñaÿañtara dòññed Ĥìndù names ĵust maķe mòre money Òr tĥeÿ maÿ ɓè amòñĝ tĥè hoardes of ĺìɓeraĺ ‘sìckùlars’ wĥò preach tolerance…

Will ‘Anything for Votes’ Policy Pay ?

THE FESTIVAL of Naraka Chaturdashi comes a day before Deepawali or Diwali marking the day demon king Naraka was killed by Durga or Kaali, showing the place of women (Shakti) in Hindu culture. Diwali is known world over as a festival when light dispels darkness.   World leaders including Australian PM Scott Morrison and the US President-elect Joe Biden gave beautiful messages. The message of…

Will Donald (Trump) Duck?

Trump, DONALD

DONALD WON’T DUCK.  Calling people by their first name, without the fancy British honorifics, is a common practice in the United States of America, whether it is a POTUS (President of the United States) or your professor.   Rarely are Mr., Sir or Esq. used with names. This led to the joke: Will FBI security men shout ‘Donald, Duck’ when they see a gun aimed at the head of the…

ARNAB GOSWAMI TODAY. It may be you tomorrow. Only those who knew the horrors of the Emergency and its censorship can understand what this means. Both CM Uddhav Tackeeray of Maharashtra, and the Nationalist Congress supremo or ‘saheb’ (boss) Sharad G. Pawar who remote-controls it have not been in jail and so would not.

Politicians are too thick-skinned to have any shame even when their acts…

An ‘Ayyar Girl’ As American VP ?

Senator Kamala Harris official photo

The euphoria in India, or rather Tamil Nadu, on the candidature of Sen. Kamala Harris in the November 3 US Preidential elections is palpable. A PIO (Person of Indian Origin) in the White House, abode of the world’s most powerful Head of State? Seeing the hype about Kamala Harris contesting the elections, that is what one may have thought, though the…

SEVEN DECADES AGO journalists were among the poorest paid. No journalist wanted his children or siblings to join his profession. Things improved later. Journalists got not only better wages but more of other ‘benefits’ (like clout, freebies, patronage) or perks. And the trend reversed, at least partially.

When I started in journalism, my monthly salary was equal to, or even a little less, t…

POST-C0VID19 WORLD, I had written earlier, will not be the same, as no world event in history may have had so much impact on our thinking and way of life as did this pandemic.

The impact is not just on our lifestyle and habits. Our literature and thinking also change. Already stories with coronavirus and lockdown backdrop have surfaced in different languages.

In any language proverbs and sayings…

Saas-Bahu Stereotype Not Always True

courtesy: Google

TELUGU PROVERBS OUTNUMBER those in all world languages, etymologists say and one of them says that the best daughter-in-law is the one who does not have a mother-in-law. But there is an English saying that an exception proves the rule. It is true that in-laws who treat a new bride like their own daughter – as requested by all parents in the Indian arranged marriages  when…

‘Old Order Changeth, Yeilding Place to New’

The ‘discarded; parents at ‘The Birds’ Nest’

TODAY’S PHILOPOPHY is to go for the new, the latest, and discard the old. More so if it develops some malfunction. “Throw it away and buy another” is today’s thinking. What the older generation would have repaired and recycled yesterday, at least in rural areas, is the handyman technician’ livelihood. It is, in the big cities, the stock-in-trade of…

Great Singer’s Voice Silenced

INDIA’S MAJOR TRAJEDY is that a person of geat latent in i one part of the country is unheard of in another, unless he is a vidual artist. An actor, writer or singer in the South is as well-known as one in another language – say Gujarati or Odisha – is in the South.

So the death of Sripathi Parnditaradhyula (SP) Balasubramanyam (4 June 1946 – 25 September 2020) condoled by the…

Is Guru Google A Know-all

A FILM-MAKER KNOWN for producing near-porn sesnational films, in an interview on YouTube said recently that no degrees, colleges, universities or learning were needed as ‘digital revolution’ enabled everyone to go to Internet and find out. Perhaps he had not heard of second opinion and differfential diagnosis and talked of how two doctors had different versions on the same ailment . He said he…

India and Elders’ Abuse

Neglect, abuse or Love?

THE AGED ALL OVER the world, including India, have one wish – they should not be a burden on their children or others. This kay not be always possible in advanced stages of old age, when most faculties are reduced or even sometimes totally absent. The Indian family system makes it the sons’ duty to care for them.

The super-elders may be bedridden, unable to walk,…

INDIA’S FIRST PRIME MINISTER Jawaharlal Nehru had banned Sadhus (Hindu ascetics)  from entering Nagaland, a north-east state which was then a part of NEFA or North Eastern Frontier Agency, in a pact with Verrier Elwin, a British Christian missionary who had become Mahatma Gandhi’s follower but later left the nationalist movement. An anthropologist and ‘ethnologist’ (expert on ethnic traits) he…

Kasmir Pandit Martyrs Remembered

Kashmir (in green) before Buddhist Ladakh was separated, but Hindu Jammu remains.

TODAY 31 YEARS AGO the assassination of Tika Lal Taploo by JKLF Islamists in the Kashmir valley marked the start of the massacre, looting and rape of the valley’s minority community, the Kashmiri Pandits, the original HIndu residents of the state before the Islamic invasion. Even the ‘sickular’ liberals’ and…

Why Should Anyone Help Someone?

POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA and emailing to my contacts the preface of my planned book on all aspects of the life of the aged, I requested them to help with inputs, as I did for my two earlier books, on journalism. This book has nothing to do with journalism, the only subject I know a bit about. Some of the recipients were doctors, lawyers or economists or aged people themselves. I wanted to…