Plus Ultra

The Scrinium, in two volumes, by Rebecca Edridge,  published in the year 1822, has the following anecdote on Page 336 , about a Brahmin w...

According to this report in The Daily Mail, UK, a real-life Rapunzel girl cut her hair for the first time to earn $ 5000 to give her fami...

A favourite theme of e-mail forwards is that ‘money isn’t everything’ and ‘do what you love doing, answer your calling, money is secondary...

“ 12 Angry Men” , a film starring Henry Fonda is considered a classic. It tells the story of a jury made up of 12 men as they deliberate the...

As I had noted in an earlier post , different methods have been adopted in different countries in ancient times, to move large objects. The...

In the short story,“ The Amazing Hat Mystery”, P.G.Wodehouse describes a hat-maker called Bodin’s who made the most perfect hats possible. ...

Sitting on the sands of the Marina Beach in Chennai at night (sadly such occasions are getting to be less frequent ) I like to stare into th...

Have you ever wondered why they make you remove the laptops before you push your bag into the X-ray machine at Airport Security? As every se...

The thing about the IPL is that it promotes a new form of tribalism. Members drawn from different parts of India and different countries get...

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 ...