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In the controversy surrounding Shashi Tharoor’s twitter message, many opinions have been expressed and many have taken strong positions, on...

Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy have made me laugh the most. As a child, I watched a few of their movies in theatres, but it was with the adven...

“The writings of Mark Twain : Vol 6” that I had linked to in my previous post turned out to be a fascinating book and I have spent the last...

Mark Twain’s ‘ variegated vagabondising’ brought him to India in the year 1895. “The writings of Mark Twain- Vol 6” published a year later...

“If we knew that what we have now would soon be gone, perhaps we could better appreciate what we have today. We might be more concerned abou...

Tyler Cowen ’ quoting from a book by Anne Applebaum asks “Where did all the gorgeous Russian women now gracing the covers of Vogue and tenni...

Did Norman Borlaug, deserve the accolades he received for ushering in the so-called “Green Revolution”? Was his work really responsible for ...

The Oil Drum has an interesting explanation on ‘peasant’ behaviour and mindset. Some excerpts: “We often think that we have a problem of sc...

Via Jason Kottke , I came across this site which publishes copies of rare letters written by eminent personalities. There is one written i...

This is the sixth story in the Bata Thatha series . The Walkie-Talkies were on their morning walk at the Marina, discussing the details of t...

I can’t resist the temptation to complete a trilogy of my ‘missing luggage’ stories. The first two are here and here. I landed in Mumbai o...

After publishing the previous post on missing baggage, I remembered another episode concerning a ‘near miss’. My flight had taken off from ...

Every traveling salesman (for that matter, every regular air traveler) can narrate a story or two about how he/she landed in one continent, ...

“Last rites performed for Edward Kennedy” read the tickertape on Doordarshan yesterday in reference to his funeral. While the term ‘last rit...

The banana can be a rather pedestrian fruit. When I am hungry and need something quick, it is the banana that I reach out for, but other tim...

There are books that one genuinely wants to read and those that one feels one ought to read. Into the second genre fall classics, epics, s...

The Economist calls for an end to the gadget features race. “Why is it” the article asks “so many manufacturers cannot leave well alone? Th...

Today (Aug 22) is being celebrated as the anniversary of the founding of Madras City. As a ‘chennaikaran’ and an armchair, amateur historian...

The Missionary Register, published in 1828, contains a sketch of one of the earliest girl students in India. It carries this brief descripti...

As is the case with many people from this part of the country, I don’t have a surname. When asked to fill in a surname, I follow the practic...