When was the last time you attended the association meeting of your apartment complex? Did you alert the EB office about that live cable dangling precariously over the sidewalk? Did you call the local Corporation ward office to complain about your potholed street or the over-flowing drain? Have you ever called the police station to tip them off on an accident or crime or some suspicious activity in your vicinity?
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In the last few days, Minister Raja has made a momentous comeback into limelight and therefore merits mention in these columns. And by some inscrutable association of thought, the Maoists too keep rising to the mind whenever the minister does. Now what earthy connection do the trigger-happy Maoists have with the tele minister? Nothing! And that’s precisely the point and problem!
The canon of objectivity de- mands that journalism should not succumb to reverence. Of course, in practice this objectivity is either an alibi for an ivory-tower snootiness or is, well, highly subjective, for every scribe has his pet ideas and ‘isms’ and not only sees the world through those prisms but also paints his verbal pictures with those brushes.
‘Never test the tooth of a gift cow’, goes an old Tamil truism. The adage has an English parallel, similar almost to every syllable, save the subject of gift: ‘Do not look a gift horse in the mouth’. Such injunctions are inspired by considerations of courtesy and civility. The assumption is that a ‘gift’ being a voluntary ‘act or instance of giving’, does not involve a quid pro quo and therefore merits mute acceptance.
In a State where cinema is a genetic obsession and there fore pervades all aspects of life, you only need a figment of an excuse to deliver a discourse on it. Mine has come in the form of some reader responses to celluloid references in last week’s column. It is a happy provocation that I am gleefully pouncing on, thanks to the aforementioned gene, for I am no less a film buff than the CM and cm, Chief Minister and common man
My instant reaction was one of relief. Kalaingar K’s declaration in Kanchipuram last week that he would no longer resort to attacks on adversaries that can be construed as ‘indecent or personal or below-the-belt’ was surely good news. Indeed, for those of us tired of reading and responding to the rhetorical rantings of a rabid rationalist, some respite was surely needed
A typical dictionary definition of ritual runs thus: ‘…a series of actions that are always performed in the same way, especially as part of a religious ceremony’. or ‘… something that is done regularly and always in the same way’. In the context of sociology, ritual gains a bigger ambit as ‘…an often-repeated pattern of behaviour which is performed at appropriate times, and which may involve the use of symbols
Just as a bad advocate can spoil a good case, a sound cause gets silenced simply because it is taken up by hypocritical politicos. Indeed, the on-going economy drive runs the risk of fizzling out on that count soon enough. But the sudden surge of austerity sentiments amidst the ruling ‘elite’ actually exposes the real-time splurge till date.
To Tamil lovers, 9/11 (Sep 11) is a reminder of a different tragedy, though there is something ‘explosive’ about this too: it marks the death anniversary of Bharathi, the firebrand poet who ignited the flames of freedom in a bonded generation and continues to stoke indignation, besides kindling imagination, in those who read him, even decades after his demise.