Skip to main content

Intellectual




When the doorbell rang, Intellectual wondered who it could be.  These days no one took Intellectual seriously. 

“Oh! It’s you.  Come in.”  Intellectual opened the door.  The Party Spokesman walked in. 

“As I told you on phone,” said Party Spokesman, “we’re ready to pay you the price you demanded.  Whatever you write hereafter will be in support of the party explicitly or implicitly.”

Intellectual took the cheque offered by Party Spokesman.  “Advance payment.  The real payment will begin once we get to read your articles.”

Intellectual felt something die within him.  But he knew he could laugh all the way to the bank hereafter. 

Comments

  1. We are heading towards 1984
    Freedom is slavery

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The most terrible disservice they've done to us is the commodification of everything including truth.

      Delete
  2. They are the new breeds. They call themselves the influencers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Strange how people can sell themselves so easily!

      Delete
  3. The intellectual is no better.He is part of the crowd as well!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The intellectual used to be a notch above the crowd!

      Delete
  4. Ready to eat food might not be healthier for those who eat it, but it definitely makes the cook's life easier. Why strain your brain for intellectual writing, when someone is ready to supply you topics, and the content too? Besides, it pays.
    Sadly, real intellectuals are on the verge of becoming history.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Everything is a commercial commodity today, even patriotism. Intellectuals have been bought up as are the media. Padma Sri and such awards await loyal intellectuals!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...

The Blind Lady’s Descendants

Book Review Title: The Blind Lady’s Descendants Author: Anees Salim Publisher: Penguin India 2015 Pages: 301 Price: Rs 399 A metaphorical blindness is part of most people’s lives.  We fail to see many things and hence live partial lives.  We make our lives as well as those of others miserable with our blindness.  Anees Salim’s novel which won the Raymond & Crossword award for fiction in 2014 explores the role played by blindness in the lives of a few individuals most of whom belong to the family of Hamsa and Asma.  The couple are not on talking terms for “eighteen years,” according to the mother.  When Amar, the youngest son and narrator of the novel, points out that he is only sixteen, Asma reduces it to fifteen and then to ten years when Amar refers to the child that was born a few years after him though it did not survive.  Dark humour spills out of every page of the book.  For example: How reckless Akmal was! ...

The Venerable Zero

Ancient India was a powerhouse of new concepts in mathematics and astronomy, asserts William Dalrymple’s new book, The Golden Road . India stood out most dramatically in scientific rather than spiritual ideas. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, wrote in his classic Discovery of India : “It is remarkable that the Indians, though apparently detached from life, were yet intensely curious about it, and this curiosity led them to science.” Why does the present prime minister of the country choose to highlight the religious contributions? Well, you know the answer. While reading Dalrymple yesterday, I was reminded of a math prof I had for my graduation course. Baby was his first name and I can’t recall the surname. ‘Baby’ was a common name for men in Kerala of the mid-twentieth century. The present General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is a 71-year-old Baby from Kerala. Our Prof Baby was a middle-aged man who knew a lot more than mathematics. One day ...