THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

“Throughout the night the work continued, but as dawn approached not a single gun had been dragged into its allotted position.” (299) Image Courtesy: Google Christopher Hibbert’s non-fiction narrative The Great Mutiny; India 1857, deals entirely with the Rebellion that sparked among the so-called sepoys in the Indian army, set up by the British. Those soldiers recruited from among the native population were the ‘sepoys’. The Great Mutiny; India 1857 although is not a typical history book with its monotonous description of political reforms and causes for this move or that change of throne. Instead, one could call The Great Mutiny; India 1857 an entertaining vista of a part in Indian history, written with amazing clarity and sincerity. Christopher Hibbert was born in Leicestershire, England in 1924. A British writer writing on an episode in Indian history is problematic, on plain sight. However, on a closer analysis, The Great Mutiny; India 1857 proves otherwise. Th...

William Shakespeare’s name in the title is equally misleading about certain things you are soon to come across, as the anger the main character in this fictional narrative experienced surging inside himself. Image Courtesy: Google “I beseech you!” One of the characters from one of the plays written by William Shakespeare said to another. He did not remember who exactly the character was. Neither was it a significant quote to which he needed to produce a proper source. In any of those magnificent plays written by William Shakespeare, any of those characters might have said this to anyone else. It’s such a common way of making a request in Elizabethan English. A poorly cordoned off class room, adjacent to the National Highway 17 would sure to be a hard task for the teacher to manage. The noise from the Highway often rises above levels of compromise, and students often find it hard to focus on their subjects. But in an otherwise neat and efficient college, the young teacher...

The Gritty Part: Locally speaking, I am a global citizen, and globally, I am a local. Image Courtesy: Google Pretend you are the layman who has always been counted into numerous statistics about such topics as media rating, social influence of mass media, blogging, Is Facebook eating Google, etc. Now try to think on the reasons about why you would go for a blog rather than a newspaper or a television channel for the information on any particular data, scene, event, movement, and the like. You see, this ordinary person’s mind that you have got is a really useful property. Some even exchange it for other propositions and material advantage. Rating is one such thing. Most of the news channels and print papers are gluttonous for audience rating on their programmes. Open a media rating service, distribute stars, and you will be a millionaire in days. Not that being the lord of millions of rupees is a bad job. You are not getting my point. Harmless as it is, my article, does n...

Saturday Flick Image Courtesy: Google “We are both killers. We are the same, you and I.” — Emil Kovac to Benjamin Ford. “A young cowboy named Billy Joe grew restless on the farm A boy filled with wanderlust who really meant no harm He changed his clothes and shined his boots And combed his dark hair down And his mother cried as he walked out.” [“Don’t Take Your Guns to Town” by Johnny Cash] Killing Season is released in 2013 under the label action thriller. However, this movie is a search into the heart of war and peace. The binary of the hunter and the hunted fixes an existential angel on this movie. Through its storytelling, Killing Season raises pointers towards the dilemma in the line of separation between the victim and the victimizer. The story is etched through the journey of a revenge, sought by a Bosnian ex-terrorist, Emil Kovac, played by John Travolta, who comes to the US to ‘hunt’ the army officer responsible for the killing of his friends a...

I still could not figure out if I am being judgmental. Forgive such attempt, if this article reflects it in any form. Image Courtesy: Google “After a particularly long day at college, I took my bus back home in the evening”...This is nonsense, I thought. I knew the start was not up to the mark. I lacked my usual fire. The article had to be published at any cost too. It was a commitment that kept me going. It ‘is’, i must say. Blogging ‘is’. I did not have anything particular to write about. There was no idea, no issue that came calling for my pen, on that fateful evening. I stood in the New Bus Stand, Kannur. The noise from the buses, entering and leaving the bus stand tortured my ears along with the suffocating sound of the announcer over a screeching, edgy microphone, from some invisible place, somewhere inside the bus stand complex. It was a newly constructed building, and had better facilities compared to any other bus stand complexes in the whole of Kerala. Some...