On hardbacks
Kathleen Parker on the importance of touch: The tactile experience of reading is also crucial to my reading pleasure. Holding a book compares to nothing short of a baby’s contact with his favorite...
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Aaromale
Despite numerous recommendations, I have not watched Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa. For one simple reason — Aaromale. The song is so perfect that I cannot imagine how the movie would do justice to it, let...
View ArticleThe new ‘elite’
Anne Applebaum writes in The Washington Post about the slow death of meritocracy in American politics. At one level, the use of “elite” to describe the new meritocrats simply means that the word has...
View ArticleGMail Priority Inbox
Google announced “Priority Inbox” a few weeks ago. Roughly this is how it works. When an email arrives, the user can flag it as important or not-so-important. Gmail will use a learning algorithm that...
View ArticleAadukalam
To the point: a riveting movie whose screenplay, casting and acting will keep you at the edge of your seat at all times. The success of Vetrimaaran’s previous movie Pollaadhavan rested on three...
View ArticleHoli
Co-worker: Don’t you celebrate Holi? Me: No. Co-worker: I’m surprised you don’t. I thought it was a big deal in India. Me: No, it is a North Indian thing. Co-worker: Oh, I didn’t know. What are you?...
View ArticleSir Isaac
I read Carl Sagan’s Cosmos back when I was 14, back when my dream was to become an astrophysicist. (I must admit that the dream is now just a blur, so much so that I patted myself just now for spelling...
View ArticleThe Gentleman
Back when I was in high school, one of my favorite books was my mother’s old copy of High School English Grammar and Composition by H. Wren and P.C. Martin. I have lost count of the number of times I...
View ArticleS&P’s $2 Trillion Mistake
The funniest reaction to S&P downgrading the US credit rating came from the most likely of sources — the Treasury Department. In a document provided to Treasury on Friday afternoon, Standard and...
View ArticleTo love, to suffer
Bishwanath Ghosh has a fabulous post on the pain of letting go of one’s audio cassette collection. For anyone who had lived through the era of cassette tapes, a sense of nostalgia is inescapable. Ghosh...
View ArticlePowerless; clueless
President Obama on the S&P downgrade: “Markets will rise and fall, but this is the United States of America,” Obama said. “No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a...
View ArticleBut Ram Guha is wrong!
Writing for Cricinfo, Ramachandra Guha asks of Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri: Why have these two stalwarts of Indian cricket never spoken out about the damage the IPL has done to the country’s Test...
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மாயாஜால இசை
Several years ago, Prabhudeva starred in Alaudin, yet another in a string of forgettable movies. The name of the movie is etched in my mind for a very different reason. The movie’s trailer told you,...
View ArticleFlutist or Flautist?
The word “flautist” entered my vocabulary when I started listening to Sir James Galway several years ago. It did not seem right to me at the time, because “flutist” was elegant and to the point....
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Grow old along with me
An excellent short film — a beautiful tale, very well told. Like Robert Browning wrote: Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made No related posts.
View ArticleUrumi
Summary: Technically brilliant, historically inaccurate, well-packaged fantasy tale of a man on a singular mission — to kill Vasco da Gama. What I liked Packaging: Movies set against a historical...
View ArticleSteve Jobs (1955 – 2011)
Christmas Eve 1987 will forever remain etched in my mind. I was four years old. And it was the first time I witnessed my mom, a strong-willed lady, cry. MGR had died. I did not understand back then why...
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Kay Adams
[To Gokul] In his review of The Godfather, Roger Ebert explains why we are enamored of the movie’s characters: We tend to identify with Don Corleone’s family not because we dig gang wars, but because...
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After Apple-picking
This morning I helped an elderly couple pick their first ever smartphone. It was a wonderful experience; eye-opening at times. I have known them for a while, and they have been telling me for a couple...
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