The traditional Bharata Natyam faces an identity crisis? There is a perceptible decline in the traditional art of Bharata Natyam, as we have known for long. On the one hand, there is the prim and proper stiff upper lip of the Kalakshetra style. They have thoroughly discouraged individual talents to blossom. In so many words,…
Madras music season 2006-2007
Appreciating music and dance A middle class paranoia contributes to decline of Carnatic music? Music and dance, a country’s cultural symbols, always were thriving in India, even under difficult situations. There is always an appreciating elite and the crowd in any society, devoted to the maintaining of standards. Now, suddenly, it seems the music and…
Reforming the Indian National Congress Party
Can Karunakaran do what others have failed to do? Mr.K.Karunakaran,88,is an old Congress man of the vintage years.His best days were when he made himself an unapologetic courtier of the late Indira Gandhi when she rode to power.Later when she tried to consolidate her power by splitting the Congress party in 1969 and later when…
Sketch of the school founded by me in the village
This is the sketch by a Santiniketan artist who was working with me at the school I founded in my remote village in South India. This is the view of the original tiled roof along with the trees and the backdrop of western ghats. The school started in 1962 soon after I returned from Oxford….
Rural development cannot happen in isolation
Urban development and much of new infrastructure investments only can change rural India’s fortunes. Sam Pitroda, yes, this is the wizard, who befriended Rajiv Gandhi and helped to bring about the PC booths all over India. That was the first telephone revolution that reached almost the rural interiors also. It was later; now, the new…
TV channels have flashed the news breaks!
It is about the expected wheat short fall. NDTV flashed this news for a near half an hour in prime time news. Also the agriculture minister Sharad Pawar brave assertion as of now there is no cause for worry. Yet the minister in the same breath assures that in case there is a shortfall the…
Our freedom of the press is very thin!
Our civil society must shout more loudly! The AP and Karnataka cases remind us our intolerance of open mind! What education, what liberal values, and what civil society we can be proud about? Open mind is what education is supposed to teach and inculcate. But in India we are yet to travel far. Our education…
A life unparallel/a life with few parallels/an incomparable life/an unusual personality
Each generation learns to study, learn and like to remember certain historic moments or some individuals whom that generation takes as extra-ordinary individuals. They may be leaders, leaders of politics or society or in some significant ways some individuals who in the short run might have had immense impact on that generation. However in the…