Skip to main content

Posts

India’s Entertainment

On this Independence Day of my country, I’m glad to have Baba Ramdev’s entertainment as a prelude.   Most newspapers today, including my Malayalam one, carried photographs of the Baba sticking his neck out of a bus in which he was carried after his arrest.   I must say he has come a long way from the time he tried to escape arrest in the garb of a woman last year: he has the courage to accept arrest now, though he may lack the confidence to carry out his promised indefinite fast. I love India because of people like Ramdev.   They provide entertainment.   When my wife wants to watch some serial like Na Kaha Aap ne Kutch, Na Kahi Mein ne Kutch (or something like that) on the TV, I urge her to switch to some news channel which will provide better entertainment.   What better entertainment can there be than people like Ramdev and Hazare?   When our politicians turned big bores or at best became the President of India, we are blessed with Hazare and Ramdev.   Advani has joined the

Lessons from Dehradun

Dehradun Railway Station Age has not withered my willingness for learning new lessons in life. That was the real reason why I agreed to take two of my students for a debate competition to a school in Dehradun. It was my first trip to the place whose railway station reminds us of the colonial days. The British building does not seem to have undergone much change, except that a new wing was added later for reservation of tickets. When we landed there at 5.40 in the morning (very punctually by the timing printed on the ticket!), the railway station looked sleepy and deserted. I attributed it to the time – too early for a small town to wake up. I wondered, though, how the capital of a state in India could afford to be as sleepy as that when the sun had already started smiling gently. When we returned to the railway station at 3 in the afternoon, after our competition, the railway station did not look much busier. It was then I noticed the metre gauge train that was ticking on pla

Posters

Posters play a lot of role in Kerala's politics. The Keralites love to put up their opinions in the public view and they will put up posters anywhere and everywhere. This is a poster that appeared on the wall of the bus waiting shed which was donated by my father and which land now belongs to me. The poster an many others like this belong to a party which I don't like at all.  And yet can I do anything? That's how politics works, especially in Kerala.  They will kill you if you protest.  Quotation gangs, they call it. Goons on hire, in other words, who will kill you if you question them.

Bakra & Bakri

The last time I visited there was only the bakra Now there are both - bakra and bakri That's life [Bakra and bakri are part of my private life.  I'm just publicising it :)]

Ernakulam by day

I lived in Ernakulam (Kochi, Kerala) for about 6 years.  I was a student.  It's always nostalgic for me to go back to that city on whose roads I cycled kilometres and kilometres - especially from college to the Public Library and back to college during off  or boring periods. The city has changed much from those days (1980s).  The marine drive looks totally different.  The backwaters smell putrid.  They smell of business, in fact.  Here is a ship/boat that runs the business.

Ernakulam by night

I was at Ernakulam (Kochi, Kerala) last month and fortunate enough to be taken for a ride (a boat ride, I mean) in the night. The backwaters smelled so bad that my companions who were not used to the smell of backwaters grimaced. But the virtual reality is always nice. The virtual reality belongs to the affluent - those who know how to surmount the real reality!

Spatial Intelligence

Management of space requires intelligence.  Here is an example of how even a staircase landing can be managed intelligently.  Never mind how people are affected...