I have written elsewhere, some time ago, about the number of persons who influenced my thought and also the way I think about issues. Those whom I didn’t not know personally but whose books influenced me form one set of such persons. These range from poets to philosophers, journalists, men like Boris Pasternak and other…
Public Schools? Where are they? What use they have?
Do they produce leaders? Not anymore! With all pretensions of a public school education, the neavou riche and the old families too stick to an ever-constant Indian prototype. The students are all driven by the predominant middle class aspirations of IIT/IMM/competitive education. The new generation Marwari/Punjabi parents might opt for a family business. Even here…
Congress Forum for Socialist Action
My entry into politics started as soon as I came back from England in 1961-62. Fresh from my Oxford Fabian socialist enthusiasm I looked for socialist friends in the Congress party. In 1962 or so, there was a new movement in the party started by Gulzarilal Nanda to promote an ideological shift towards a doctrinaire…
First poetry book in Tamil, 1959
This was my first poetry book in Tamil published in 1959 while I was in England. Like all first poetry books this is a thin volume of few pages got together by a few friends of mine. Besides the fact that the first poem was written while I was barely 15 years old. This piece…
Life and Art of C N Vasudevan
This was a rare book that brings to light what the outside world does not know about how Rabindranath Tagore’s arts, in particular the famous Santiniketan, style of dancing was evolved. Tagore was infact lucky to have this unknown artist from the deep south of India from Pollachi, Coimbatore District. He studied art at…
Congress Election Manifesto 1967
The Congress Manifesto for the 1967 General Election was prepared by a team with which I was entrusted the job of the final copy and bringing it out of the press. The brains behind this manifesto were Atulya Ghosh (the then Congress party Treasurer) and Saddiq Ali (General Secretary) and assisted by two Delhi…
Oxford and other essays on education
This book was composed in the year 1984 and contains autobiographical recollections of my years at Oxford. The other essays deal with my educational activities and experiences. One article sums up my establishment of a secondary school in a remote village in the South of India. There are also articles summing up my visits…
Prime Minister’s Red Fort Speech: Agriculture, just an excuse!
Very weak and uninspiring, the domestic agenda! The Prime Minister on the Independence Day makes the mandatory speech from the Red Fort. This, under the present incumbent had become a routine speech? Yes, he has warned the Pakistanis, he had reiterated commitment to the US nuke deal, he, more importantly had said something about the…