Let's back the local lads

Hockey team of lads from the 'kuppams' of Besant Nagar, backed by an autodriver, practise at the uneven Corporation ground. They were beaten in the local league...because they can't afford sports shoes...Perhaps actor Vikram, who is also a Besant Nagar resident, will do a Shah Rukh Khan and sponsor this hockey team...More...

Trfficking in women

Did you know that India is a major destination for trafficking in women and children? So says a UN report. The country is a source and transit point as well...
Globally, human trafficking is the third largest criminal business after arms and drugs...More...

Obama's take: 'Yes, we can'

It's funny that in the world’s greatest nation people can’t look beyond these physical attributes. Probably it’s because there'sn't anything else to choose, with both Obama and Hillary speaking pretty much the same thing...More...

Djokovic and his onstage didoes...

Djokovic is well known for his mimicry, and has done impersonations of others like Rafael Nadal, Andy Roddick and Roger Federer...But this girl Sharapova is really a good sport and didn't add too much of mirch masala to all these merriment and took it in the right spirit...More...

Dyslexia: Some 'whys' and 'hows'

Some children would have experienced delays in speech acquirement and development, which later leads to language processing difficulty...Children who suffer from constant colds and coughs and ear infections may later develop auditory perceptual difficulties...More...

Animal torture

Seven bulls were sacrificed in this most cruel manner. Lakhs of people were witness to this barbaric ritual telecast by E TV Kannada On January 22 2008. This comes on the close heels of an another ritual of a differeent kind of torture of animals...More...

Feedback on tree-corridor idea

Without providing for manpower and resources for proper after-care of planted saplings, there is little point in thinking big, according to Janet.The point is, Janet may not be aware that her tree-sponsorship idea has sparks of morphing into a civic movement...More...

Londonstani – electrifying read

To a certain extent, you should have lived in UK to really feel the book, but well, it is an interesting read…helps you understand the youth of today and the alienation they face with cross cultures, backgrounds, the vicious racial pressures that alternatively hold them or push them in varying directions...More...

A few moments of panic

I could see a boy picking up something and giving it to an elderly man. I ran faster. Panting, I looked at what the man had in his hand. It was something black, and I immediately recognised it was my wallet...More...

Mango: Season's first at Olavipe

it stems from the Tamil word mangkay. The Portuguese called it manga. That is the Malayalam name as well. According to Wikipedia, the Vedas refer to it as ‘food of the gods’...More...

Dyslexia: Of kids with writing difficulty

If a child has very severe degree of difficulty to write, then the child is said to have dysgraphia.Since these children have poor spatial ability, they can not understand how much space would be required to write a longer word at the end of a line...More...

Of punkahs

Not only the palaces and the bungalows but also churches in India had punkahs, rows of them. The New York Times dated January 6, 1884 carried an interesting report on the subject...More...

Dyslexia: the right handling

It is wrong to force a child to use his/her right hand while the child may prefer the left hand. The left or right handedness depends upon the dominance of the left or the right hemisphere of the brain...More...

A tattooed head

A boy with a head mower.

A great win

Ishant Sharma. How old is he? 19? He keeps the seam of the ball straight till it reaches the destination. Apart from him, only Sreesanth seems to have this quality among India’s current fast bowlers. With the pacers in the team performing so well, Sreesanth may find it difficult to get back into the Indian side...More...

Miracle at Perth

A series in Australia is the ultimate conundrum to solve for the visiting teams; more often than not, the riddle remains unsolved and the overseas teams are always found wanting. This can be due to a myriad of factors, apart from the usual cricketing skill of the players...More...

ERR for empowering umpires

Umpires make their decisions in few milliseconds, and the experts watch it from all angles for around 15 minutes to condemn the umpires! The spectators watch that for days and take a decision as to whose effigies have to be burnt!...More...

Season of passion

It is not simply a description of Nature. As Chandra Rajan says, "it is an interweaving of the beauty of nature and woman, with the emotional response to both". Kalidasa sees nature, not as a backdrop, but as an active participant...If you'd like to read Ritusamharam, try Kalidasa, the Loom of Time from Penguin Classics. It is a selection of his plays and poems, including Meghadutam and Abhignyanasakuntalam...More...

Abandoned at Matheran

The place is populated with two kinds of bipeds. One, a hairy, ravenous, loudly chattering species native to the Indian state of Gujarat. The other, rhesus macaque. Because of both of these, the place rocks and the wife and kids enjoyed it enormously.I thought the whole place was a little tatty...More...

Pongal at Kilpauk

This annual get together is like a local jamboree of games, events, food and sales.
As it grew bigger and the demands stronger, the sales have tended to dominate the utsav, robbing it of the warmth and informality that it began with.At least that is the feeling of some of Kilpauk's residents...More...

Potters save my life

A woman in the potter’s colony had seen the accident and had raised alarm. In no time the Jeep was lifted and I was pulled out. They carried me to one of the huts and laid me on a mat...But for the potters I would have died of a broken neck at the age of 34...More...

Dyslexia: Different strokes

At 2 1/2 to 3 yrs, they start looking at letters in books and are made to understand that certain letters may look similar, but the direction of the strokes and curves differentiate them from each other. Children with visual perceptual problem will not be able to understand this concept and hence unable to discriminate between similar looking letters...More...

Guarding the borders

Here was a grim looking aurat looking me down through her eye glasses, through the bullet proof windows. The lady had still not finished deciding whether my passport was genuine and if I was a terrorist or not...More...

Cochini Jews – Dreams don’t die

Last Sunday I happened to watch parts of the 2003 Malayalam movie ‘Gramophone’ by Director Kamal on TV. I had seen it, a good one, earlier. The story takes place in Jew Town, Cochin. Basically it involves two dreams...More...

Dyslexia: When a child is at risk

There are developmental norms in various domains of child development and children differ in their pace of attaining these norms. If they persist beyond the age of 8, then special assessments for LD need to be done...More...

Rush ... to Head Start...

Participation is holistic, from all the players in the innovation lifecycle: academicians, researchers, entrepreneurs, solution architects, marketers, large companies, technology geeks, venture capitalists and customers...The synergy ...is one of the focal spark points to accelerate the pace of innovation in India...More...

Ajay Devgun encounters Naren Shenoy

Thus, when Ajay Devgan, Arshad Warsi and Ayesha Takia walked into a Provogue store in Malad West, I was standing non-chalantly, leaning against a wall and making snide remarks that I had seen better looking personnel in airlines and restaurants while the wife and kids were busy swooning...More...

Dyslexia: Its indicators

Here we need to understand that there is no pressure upon the child to narrate the dialogues of a hero nor will the child be evaluated by anybody for at the end of this task! And the child has learnt it of his/her own free will...More...

Lives that long for family support

Ramesh accidentally hit his car against the car of the former prime minister and local Janata Dal (S) politician, Deve Gowda. The accident happened in the morning, but by evening the young man, Ramesh, had committed suicide...More...

The mind in a burger

We were traveling together on a California highway and had to reach the stadium in time for the game. Paul is my guide and mentor for the stranger ways of this land...More...