THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

A SPIRITUAL OUTLOOK To the winners and losers of the Indian Parliamentary Elections 2014, Every contest breeds two sides: winners and losers. Here are some spiritual steps that should be taken by both of them.   The layman, who wasn’t even part of the contest, takes great pleasure in attaching himself with one of the parties, the winners or the losers. He finds it part of his pride, his self-respect to do so. They sing, they dance, and they become one with the winner, and they choose this to be their destiny. There are others, other the other hand, who stand by the failed candidate. They cry, they beat their chests, and drink the bitter juice of failure with their leaders, and chose this to be their own destiny. Therefore, it is important for the winner to carve out the victory in the hearts of the multitude. The victory is never complete until it reaches the roots of the nation. If victory remains limited to the number of votes, percentages and intellectual di...

STATUTORY WARNING: If you bookmark this article for later, you are in serious trouble. Image Courtesy: Google With just a swirl of my hammer, I could demolish the complete social media system, which has already become an institutionalized system that governs, controls, and punishes its subjects, for all the harmful impacts it has upon us. That is if I were Thor, the god of thunder in Norse mythology. However, with the reality being made clear, no one can tether social media to the iron bar of a prison cell. Such attempts would be called authoritarian and by nature, I am not one of them. To criticize social media on the harms it had brought upon us, you have to be either a moralist or a fundamentalist. There is no choice, once you start voicing your concerns, from being labeled under any one of these narrow political icons. An iconoclasm in the powerful political arena is not underway yet and would not ensue in any recent times. Therefore, there is no other choice othe...

Where does fiction differ from real life? The juncture where I asked this question is related to the Indian English writer of great renown, Ms. Jaishree Misra. She has her roots in Kerala. Her parents are Keralites. Well, deep roots. In one Youtube video, I even heard her talk in Malayalam.   Ever since its publication, I have been coming across her novel Rani , based on the life of Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, on and off the shelves of the campus library where I studied Literature. It was a thick tome and so I kept it away thinking I will watch a movie if they make one out of it. They didn’t make one yet, though. However, I felt renewed in my interest in reading Ms Jaishree Misra recently. There is a reason I would like to share this incident with you. This event can be seen as a trivial occurrence. However, such triviality has important roles to play in changing the way we look at certain things in our lives. Before sharing the event, let me confess that I had ...

When I started reading Stephen King, I decided I would not read another book by the same author. However, when I was about to finish the book I was reading, I amended my decision and became his Constant Reader . This is my story of how I read Stephen King. This review is hardly important, because the book I am reviewing here is Stephen King’s novel, Misery , which is read, re-read and reviewed many a thousand times before I even read the book. However, for a true reader, each time a book is different. As they say, no one reads the same book again. What did you say? Oh, you have read Misery even before I was born? Yeah, I know. Let me state that I am jealous of your seniority in this business. Paul Sheldon, the centre upon which all feral deeds are committed, is a popular novelist. He writes two types of books, in his own words, “Good books, and bestsellers.” In order to finish his latest novel, he takes off to a mountain hotel. A snowstorm hits hard on his plans to get ba...

Author Anu Lal in Wayanad Dear friends , today, on this year’s May Day, I would like to announce that my 3rd book, which is the result of long nine years of meditation and journeys undertaken into the unexplored realms of human consciousness, is about to be published. The book contains 20 important stories of wit and wisdom. I thank the Cosmos for blessing me with this treasury of wisdom and helping me share it with my fellow beings. This book has been conceived even before the ideas for Wall of Colours, (my first book) developed. However, I could finish it only now, after many, many years of waiting and suffering. There were times when I had thought I would never be able to finish this book. This was the one I wished I could call my first book, my first-born. Of course, for every writer, his or her books are babies that they bring out to this world.  In this process, however, I have learnt one more important concept. What we (as a writer) share with the world does not ...