THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

  Editing is perhaps the most challenging of all activities in the life of an author. Once the author realises that the story is complete, she is ready to set up a scaffold of indifference towards whatever comes up in the manuscript. Although one, has assuredly enough written the draft, it is out of one's control to face the words and lines that come up in the reading process.    The reading process endows its inbuilt challenges upon the author. The act of reading what one has written is often a process full of wonders- wondering who wrote these lines or, wondering when I wrote this crap.    Those authors who are experienced in their craft know that only a scaffold of indifference can help us. First, they stand upon this scaffold and then observe the writing with a degree of distance and with an ample dose of indifference. Whatever comes up in this manuscript, I don't bother appreciating or criticising the author of this stuff.    This indi...

When you are reading this title, you might even think that I am referring to my personal life. Those who know me personally are bound to think on those lines. If you are not thinking in those lines, then it’s certain that you don’t know me enough. Before moving further with this post, please subscribe to this blog by using your email id. I assure you that it will be worth it because you’ll get all the updates first hand.  About getting noticed or grabbing people’s attention, I never had a real problem. This is because I am taller than the average Indian. Even if I am standing in a crowd, you might notice me from a distance. I am six feet two.  The story that I am going to tell you is not about one of those occasions when you’d have discovered me in a crowd. This is about the post that I made on my Instagram page a couple of days ago.  I went to Mattannur, a municipality which neighbours Kannur International Airport with my father a couple of days ago. My visit was mostly ...

Have you read all the other posts about my day out after Onam to do Three Tasks? These three tasks are included in four blog posts, which is a single long post that I broke into four parts for the less patient lot of you.  One is here Two is here Three is here Before reading the fourth part Subscribe to my blog by using the box to the right. Give your email id so that all new updates and the latest information regarding the many necessities of life shall be delivered directly to you, first hand through your email inbox! Enjoy! There are Alternative and Allopathic medicine centres that give free treatment and supply free medicines to the public, irrespective of your social class.    After waiting for about half an hour, the ration shop keeper was able to distribute the kits. Between seeing the kits with our eyes and receiving them, there were several phone calls that the shopkeeper placed to some officials in the government to update their system with the number of kits re...

 If you are reading the continuation of the previous post , you can subscribe to my blog right away- that is, if you haven't subscribed yet! See the box on the right side?  I moved towards the bottle of gum. The bottle of gum in post offices is well known in India to have adhesive qualities only slightly better than pure water. So I hesitantly took the gum with an old pen sticking out of the bottleneck. To my utter surprise, the gum looked great. I pasted the opening of the cover using the gum and it worked.     If it is my ignorance that caused me the confusion regarding the sealing of the cover in Book Post VPP and if you know the details about this service, please comment below so that others reading this might be able to make use of the information.    I came out of the post office and went to the ration shop near the locality. It was also the day when food kits for Onam festival were delivered at the ration shop. It was the free Onam food ...

Hi there, welcome back to the continuation of the previous post . If you have not subscribed to my blog, please do so by using your email id in the box to the right of the blog. You will get all notification in your email inbox. Comment below if you have any questions.  VPP means Value Payable Post. It’s a service to send goods run by the Indian Postal Service. Here is a link that you can use to read about this service and make the best use of it if you are in India. For authors and publishers, this service is a boon when Amazon, Flipkart and other service providers are not performing up to their best.  https://www.indiapost.gov.in/MBE/pages/content/value-payable-post.aspx#:~:text=The%20value%20payable%20system%20is,the%20agency%20of%20the%20Post   Sending a VPP necessitated me to go to the post office. In the past, when I attempted this service the postmaster told me that I shouldn’t seal the cover. I had the book covered with good packing material and it was tight...

  In Kerala, You Get Tons of Free Stuff and that Include Food   The other day, I went out. It’s a pandemic situation. The good angel in my mind kept warning me that it was not safe to go out on a random day without a solid reason. I had solid reasons. Yes, not just one but three solid reasons. But before I tell you what transpired, subscribe to my blog and comment if you are new here with a solid “HI”. I hope you understand when I talk about “going out” as if it's a matter of life and death. The pandemic situation is not just a regional problem, the frames of references overlapping across cultures and regions.    After the COVID-19 pandemic struck us all like a lightning bolt out of the blue, we had gone into hiding in self-imposed exile. No one can prepare you for the end of the world, or the end of anything, for that matter. It comes and takes you by surprise.    With my day job at a total loss of sensibility and finances (that's all I can say...

Those who are familiar with the grand spectacle of Malayalam cinema celebrate this day for a particular reason.  Before you read further, please subscribe to my blog by giving your email id on the box you see to your right-hand side. Also, make sure you share the posts with your friends and family. Comment using the comment section below to let me know how you like this page.  Today, 7 September 2020 people who are familiar with the grand spectacle of Malayalam cinema celebrate the birthday of Mammootty, the person they call the Megastar.  There is a reason why he is called the Megastar. His films haven’t exhausted their capacity to put us in awe, thanks mostly to his acting skills and the earth-shaking looks he renders while on screen.  The first Mammootty film I watched was “Oru Vadakkan Veeragaatha”. That was when I was studying in my first standard. My sister was just a year or two. We watched the film from Mattannur, now a municipality, near Kannur International...

  Hi there. I am here to tell you that life on earth as we know it has changed.  Change is transformation. But every time something transforms, it is either for the best or the worst. There would be those with the middle ground too- people affected with not much harm or not much comfort One of the changes in the COVID-19 infected world is that we went online for everything. Teaching, being my day job, occupies the majority of my concerns when I am online. Unfortunately, that meant only one thing- my writing life suffered. I didn’t get enough time to spend on my passion or hobbies and also heard my colleagues complain about not having enough time to spend with their family.  Because I spent more time online, just like my colleagues, I stumbled upon a video interview by Dr Sashi Tharoor. In that video, he narrated a funny incident from a meeting that he attended in some school. One of the students asked him which new word would he want them to learn that day. To that questi...