A Christian once approached the Kanchi Paramacharya and expressed his wish to embrace Hinduism. The acharya advised him to stay put in his present path; in the revered seer’s world view, one does not have to switch faiths to attain God and can very well achieve the objective through one’s own religion.
Browsing: COLUMNS
Apparently, power shortages are not for the powerful. A drive on Mount Road, Teynampet, past the DMK HQ Anna Arivalayam, on Tuesday night, a full 24 hours after the late leader’s 100th B-anniversary, was very illuminating … quite literally. The Sun never seems to set on K’s Dravidian empire too what with the Rising Sun shining forth in splendour well past twilight
Why ‘Doctor’? Why not ‘Engineer’ or ‘Lawyer’? or at the worst, ‘Journalist’? If Engineer Sonia or Lawyer Manmohan does not evoke the same ring of eminence as, say, Doctor Karunanidhi does, blame it on a historic habit. In Latin, the usual suspect that has fathered most English words, docere means ‘to teach’, an honourable pursuit, no doubt and ‘doctorate’ apparently evolved from it.
Counting the roadside idols on Pillayar Chathurthi (PC) day … night, rather, has always been a favourite pastime of mine. Driving around town and stopping by every few yards for a window darshan and a hurried salute is truly an exhilarating experience. And every year excels the earlier one not only in the number of idols
I am pretty firm in my resolve not to ever write about strikes by bank staff. No, there’s no counter-guarantee that there won’t be strikes nor any quid pro quo deal like I being secretly allowed to operate my account on those ‘auspicious’ days; it’s just that the fatigue, frustration and fury over the frequent scoots by bank employees have quietly given way to philosophical acceptance.
It’s no longer news. The rigmorale has become too routine to rouse the anger or raise the hackles of a fatigued nation. If indeed, strikes by some group of public employees or the other, as the ones we witnessed this past week, are going to survive public contempt, official warnings and even court rulings and come about, come what may, then is it not high time for a formal ‘Strike Policy’?
It would seem unprofessional, even unethical, to reprint one’s own past article. But when history repeats itself with alarming precision, what can self-styled ‘historians’ like us do other than follow suit? I reproduce below my article titled, ‘If MPs were horses …’ written in April 1999 during the then run up to the Trust vote against the NDA government.
Sixty years after 1947, celebrating freedom from the British looks surreal and contrived. Really, for the current generation and the future ones, a free India is a given; near and distant histories have merged on the horizon of time, with the Anglo rule seeming as ancient as Alexander, Allauddin Khilji and Aurangazeb, though all are separated by centuries.
It’s just two weeks since the trust vote and the N-deal is almost a done deal from the Indian point of view. The ball is now in the US court, but the godspeed with which it has landed there speaks volumes of the PM’s determination that has powered it, whatever his motives or predicaments.