Suddenly in the last six months there is a spurt of CMs, present and potential. The CM cup is now overflowing. The abundant choice is actually fun if not for the fact that 2016 seems fixed. By God, I meant. Unless He is overruled by the courts, that is.
Browsing: POINTBLANK
The irony is striking and sickening. Srirangam, for the devout, is Buloga Vaikundam, the Lord’s abode on earth. Periyar’s parivar in their prime, for their part, wanted to blast it with a cannon, making Srirangam the key target of their ideological, iconoclastic ire. But here’s also where believers and atheists alike now stand united on one ‘count’.
I did not go to the Capital nor could I follow the happenings fully owing to my Hindi handicap. Still I had kept track of the Delhi polls very studiously by all possible ways. Apart from the professional call, the interest was also propelled by an earnest eagerness to understand how our electoral democracy is evolving.
Since I plan to write about freedom of expression today, I am afraid I must be very careful. That in a nutshell is the comic contradiction that mocks speakers, writers, thinkers, artistes, nay, virtually anyone who feels the urge to correct, convince or simply convey something. It looks, free speech will have to slowly seek sanctuary in the suffocating space ‘between the lines’ or worse, get exiled to the oblivion of words unsaid.
It is understandable that re-conversions and Sanskrit science are raising a lot more outrage than Peshawar or Paris amidst the secular brigade here. After all, are not the quixotic tantrums of the Togadia tribe deemed more dangerous than the bloody massacres unleashed by madcaps worldover, all of whom happen to have one common denomination, er, denominator? Indeed, such irony can be dismissed as idiotic but for the insidious intent.
The idea of Time has always befuddled scientists and spiritualists alike. While for the former it is a linear process running towards an unknown, but a certain, end in some distant future, for the latter, particularly in Bharath from yore, time has been cyclical, a ceaseless alternation of creation and dissolution or rather, projection and withdrawal.
Not an uncommon experience this: An on-and-off joint ailment raising its ugly head without warning; a sudden shoulder surgery that puts even your arms at, er, arms length for weeks; and a long recuperation/therapy process that promises to be more painful than the pain that the painkillers killed. But then, on the flip side, which also becomes the positive side through a simple switch of attitude, trauma can also turn into a good teacher.
Lamps and light define Bharath’s households, not just its cultural traditions and religious festivals. Lighting a wicker, at least twice a day, is a daily routine, be it a humble hut or a huge palace. Deepavali, the festival of lights, is the highlight of this ageless, deeply ingrained practise whence a simple chore turns into a grand celebration.
The national TV media and even many here don’t know their TN. How can there be cutouts condemning the judge or warning Kannadigas, they ask in all incredulous ignorance. Many of us also share the indignation but swallow it thanks to experience, compulsion or habit. Still some light needs to be shed on what’s broadly called and covered under ‘TN political culture’.