Plus Ultra

According to a report in The Hindu : Sachin Tendulkar made it clear on Sunday that he does not intend to retire anytime soon, and left op...

By the 1850s, Courts in India already had native lawyers and native judges at the lower level. The Appelate Court and the District Court wer...

When railway trains became popular in England and their potential to cut down travelling time was understood, more ideas were put forward to...

In an earlier post , I had linked to an essay that argued that ethics can evolve independent of religion. That is, it doesn’t need a religio...

I have read only one book - “The Unaccustomed Earth”- of Jhumpa Lahiri’s. Her narrative style is simple, yet striking. She rarely uses a big...

In a brilliant story titled “Ukridge and the accident syndicate” and written by P.G.Wodehouse, the plot goes like this ( extracted from Wik...

The Hindu has the following story today (link) When Tipu Sultan lost the Third Anglo-Mysore War to the allied forces in 1792, the old Mysor...

Me: Where do you want to go for lunch? Daughter: I am ok with any place. Me: How about a quick thali at Woodlands? Daughter: Ugh. ...

In the short-story “Strychnine in the soup” by P.G.Wodehouse, Cyril Mulliner is in love with a girl called Amelia and she loves him too. Unf...

The Monthly Miscellany brought out by the East India Company, in its edition of March 1816, carries a description “On the persons of the Hin...

The “Oriental’ style of letter writing characterized by flowery language, sycophantic tributes and ornate sentences, is illustrated in this ...

Right from school, we are taught to concentrate on what we are doing and not let our mind wander around. Single-minded focus - whether in st...

I had a Maths teacher in school who, apart from his prowess in Maths, had this amazing handwriting and a fetish for drawing near-perfect cir...

The Asiatic journal and monthly register for British India and its dependencies, Volume 27 published in March 1829, has this interesting, e...

“What a subject: her nose is too big, her mouth is too big, she has the composites of all the wrong things, but put them all together and po...

I can’t remember a single trip to Kerala when I did not come back with a packet or two of fresh banana chips. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, when I u...

In the famous movie, “Twelve Angry Men”, the jury trying a young man for murder charges is convinced that it is an open and shut case and th...

“It cannot have escaped your notice that I have long entertained toward you sentiments warmer and deeper than those of ordinary friendship. ...

In a fascinating piece , Bear McCreary explains the pattern and physics behind the theme music of some famous science fiction movies such as...

I came across this video of the climax scene of “Star Wars’ – but with a slight difference. It’s got a laughter track added. So, what was i...