Kerala: Of monkeys and nuts

Joseph Alapatt found that in Indonesia monkeys are trained to pluck coconuts. He requested the Minister concerned to send a squad of monkeys to Kerala on a trial basis...More...

Diamonds and curry

...he convinced another uncle to get him across to Holland and for the past few years he has been a Dutch man, lonely like Murugan the elephant. Even though there were plenty of rich Indians around there, in the hustle bustle of Diamond business in Amsterdam, he was quite a loner and floundering close to the lower rungs of the personnel development ladder...More...

Whispers in New Delhi's corridors of power

Keeps you posted on impending postings & transfers of IAS/IPS officials; it carries rumors on who’s under suspension, who are tipped to go on deputation to the Centre, from where; and whose name is up for reversion to the parent state...Whispers publishes political tidbits, corporate changes and other water-cooler gossip...More...

Blog of the day: Bhel Puri & Seekh Kabab

A blog that talks about everything other than kabab, by New York-based Bangalore guy, who holds a job that allows him three business trips to 'desh' in a year...More...

Singapore Snapshot-12: Mid-Autumn Festival

The China town section of Singapore is specially decked up with lanterns, huge and innovative ones. So is the Clarke Quay area next to the Singapore river...Moon cakes from all the big name hotels are found in stalls, in many malls across the Island...More...

18 ways to make a difference

7. Carry biscuits or other foodstuff (preferably packaged food or fruit/veggies) to give street kids at traffic signals.
6. Donate your computer’s idle time to Google Compute, to help carry out calculations for scientific research.
5. Have a ‘Donation Day’ every quarter year, in companies, housing associations, or schools.
2. Donate old computers to balwadis/municipal schools
1. Donate old mobile phones to the deaf (SMS messages and the vibrator mode make this a very effective method of communication esp for the working deaf)...More...

Accident victim care court ruling

My public-spirited friend ERR passed on a mail he got from a friend, with a note that if we spread the word widely and long enough, lives could be saved...More...

Shamim as they saw him

Those were days when most newspaper editors were treated like doormat by the then I&B minister V C Shukla. He had this penchant for summonning them to his office for a dressing-down.It was in such socio-political environment that Shamim was appointed a director of Samachar (a news agency founded by merging PTI and UNI)...More...

A time when slide-rules ruled

Today I looked at the relic slide rule with great fondness as it brought back many a college memory, of early teen age days gone by, new friendships, the ragging period, the first days of independent hostel living….remember the Tamil song in ‘Autograph’ Nyapakam varuthe nyapakm varuthe…...More...

Lakshmi on a 'ghost-watch'

My friend Shruthi and I made this ‘room-watching’ a compulsory and routine event, as we were sure something exciting was bound to happen, and we took out time off, introducing every child in the colony to the ‘spooky house.’...More...

The Dosa of San Francisco

Mr Prakash, reviewing the newspaper review on the web, says he was amused at the description of dosa as ‘a large thin crispy crepe - sour and not sweet’ filled with buttery potato, onions and cilantro, to be eaten with a dip of chutney’...More...

Adam's Bridge & Adam's Peak

While researching for Ram Sethu controversy ,yesterday’s post on my blog, I came to understand that the name is from the original Adam of Eden. According to Islamic texts, Adam, after being banished from Eden, walked to South India, crossed over to Ceylon by the causeway between Palk Straits and Gulf of Mannar and climbed the 2,243 meters mountain...More...

India wins some cricket

One guy had brought a bus horn with which he would make bus-honk noises every time India score runs or got wickets. One or two of the company, on realizing that their Men Friday had omitted to pack such an instrument amongst their personal effects, managed to produce similar sounds with their armpits...More...

Tribute to a film critic and friend

He was pampered by most Bollywood busybodies; and many held him in high regard. But no one who was anyone in Bollywood those days could afford to ignore Shamim...More...

On hockey and Chak De India

It can change people like my friend, who watched in 10 times along with her coach and the movie has renewed her interest in softball...After listening to classmates recounting the entire story a countless times—a scene to scene description in Algebra class, discussing Komal’s hockey movies more than any sane person should, I thought I should watch the movie, no matter what...More...

Blog of the day: Sheetal Makhan

Sheetal from South Africa, freelance journalist, teacher, blogs life (don't we all?);she makes the most of it, her life as well as blog. But the reason why I chose her blog is because we share the same astrological sign - Leo...Read...

Showcasing the South in ten acres

The most impressive aspect of Dakshina Chitra is the collection of South Indian houses. Not models, but real ones transplanted brick by brick from the four South Indian States – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu...More...

Human rights course for cops

It is refreshing to note a top cop, in the rank of additional director-general of police, taking a stance on the issue in an open forum...What I read in his article, however, wasn't so heartening. He says he wasn’t shocked by the TV pictures of a Bhagalpur cop on a motorbike towing a battered chain-snatcher tethered to his vehicle...More...

Blog of the day: Aarambh

Rakshit Khare, a tech. student in Lucknow is a day-night blogger, who took to it to combat boredom in his 7th sem of B.Tech course, when, he says there isn't much studying to do. Hope Rakshit sustains blogging when he joins Infosys after graduation...More...

A Malayalam movie that moved me

The song also reminded me of one from yester years...I remember only the first line now: Nalukettin thirumutta thilaveyi lettunilkum Krishna thulasi poove… Does anyone know the rest of it?...Coming to the movie – it is by the one man movie machine (a borrowed usage), Balchandra Menon. I never used to take his creations seriously till I saw ‘Achuettante veedu’...More...

Traffic Jam Rant

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, the Mumbai driver abhors a vacant space in the traffic, regardless of how small it is in relation to the vehicle he is driving. He has to occupy that gap. Now everyone else wedges in and the resultant impasse can be quite depressing...More...

Miss Teen's mega blunder

Q: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?...
Lauren Caitlin Upton: "Personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on a map...there should be more emphasis on geography in our education so people will learn how to read maps better."...
She ended up as third runner up – Miss Teen USA...More...

Bangalore's NRI-funded police station

I spent rest of my auto-ride speculating who would want to fund a police station building to perpectuate the memory of the donor family in its native town. Maybe the NRI was once a policeman, or son of a cop...More...

More on book-binder

After worrying about my book-binder for so long, I have found an apt conclusion for my incomplete blogs--and this, dear readers, is for real. Mr. Manikyam might close down, but his family will survive, and the old man might consider retirement...More...

Flight of Bar-tailed Godwits

The last leg of E7's journey ...entailed a non-stop flight of more than eight days and a distance of 7,200 miles, the equivalent of making a round trip flight between New York and San Francisco, and then flying back again to San Francisco without ever touching down...More...

Mysore's man of the hour

Manivannan is the best thing that has happened to Mysore in a long time. Whether it was by design or administrative convenience we now have an administrator with a proven track record. And he is open to ideas, public views and opinion...More...

People's radio

Though the state says it is keen to see many thousand radio stations across the country, its processes and policies are discouraging...But people are not giving up. I heard that a body which represents the autorickshaw drivers of Chennai had applied for a radio licence. So did a well known residents' association in Mumbai...More...

More on the caste-driven madhouse

The author, Deyvid Aleksandr Raffo Setti, calls it ‘Structure of the Indian society by castes’. I would have liked to give the caption ‘Indian Social System: Head to foot and below'...More...

The First Touch

They help bring in artists from various forms of art - fine arts, theatre, dance etc and conduct interactive sessions with school kids during weekends and thus stir up the artist in a child...More...

Delhi roads are not for driving

I used to think roads were for driving till I read The Times of India during my recent visit to New Delhi. People there apparently ‘zip on roads’, and the newspaper I used to work for has become more imaginative in giving headlines than in my time...More...