THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

Vishu is an important cultural festivity in Kerala, the southern state that stands for coconut trees and the Indian version of “melting pot”. Yes, indeed, if you are looking for the right kind of cultural amalgam in India, we are the right sort of people to dig into. Eat us with some salad, and you can certainly learn a lot more about how much flexible the otherwise rigid and edgy customs and traditions that mark Indian tradition could get. In Kerala, you can get KFC to Shavarma, from beef to pork. All sorts of religions can be found here, and all sorts of customs, including “everything”. Image Courtesy: www.narayanalayam.org Although there are slight variations in the way people respond to religious incidents and issues of conversion, relatively peaceful Kerala is a contributor to the modern Indian image of a highly educated and free democracy. Vishu has its impact beyond the unbreakable walls of religion and caste system. Crackers, fireworks, and non-vegetarian meals add...

The sense in a senseless car racing does not interest me at all. I am not a sports loving guy. I do not entertain the idea of spending long time playing with cars either in my computer or in the real world. The metal booth, in pink, blue, white, or black that stand on four wheels and a little arrogance does not create any sort of adrenaline surge in me. I have kept my life simple enough to take public buses as my daily commuter service. Not cars ever, until now. I watched Fast and Furious 6 , directed by Justin Lin and produced by Vin Diesel, Clayton Townsend, and Neal H. Moritz, and I loved the cars. Especially, the gear changes, clutches, and stomping the accelerator. Although at first, I stopped watching the movie after twenty minutes, at a later attempt, during one of the days when everything around me seemed rather frustrating, I watched the rest of it, and believe me, the movie blew me away. The reason, I believe, why I stopped watching it in the first twenty minutes o...

Often, the argument surfaces during the Easter season that Easter is not exactly a Christian celebration, that it is not the commemoration of the resurrection of the Messiah, but the pagan festival honoring Esther, the pagan goddess of birth and regeneration. This argument, whenever raised, creates a chasm between language and its interpretation, without even considering it a valid possibility to assuage the rift between Christianity’s most fundamental concept and a fascinating pagan concept. What appears strange to me is that each year, as Easter approaches, someone will share a picture, in social media, of goddess Esther standing with her left hand raised, holding a mirror-like instrument or club along with standard recipes such as ancient pagan mythology plus stories of Christian assimilation of the name of this pagan tradition. This recipe constructs the question; is Easter really Easter, or is it really the festival for Esther, the pagan goddess? The problem with this questio...

If you were given a chance to write a love story, would you ever worry about the formula of a successful love story? A chance being “given” indicates a second individual or source involved with your writing process. Be that source the universal Creative Source. Would you care requesting the Creative Source of all being the formula for a successful romance novel? It seems someone has done just that. In her debut book itself, a contemporary romance titled He Fixed the Match She Fixed Him , Shikha proves that her writing skill is par excellence. Shikha Kumar has a B-Tech degree in Computer Science from Bharati Vidyapeeth, Delhi. She works as a manager with Tata consultancy services. Having been able to travel a lot, in and out of the country, author Shikha seems to have acquired a skill to get into the psyche of her characters and create dramatic scenes through their interactions. It’s indeed true that journeys teach us great wisdom. In her deep understanding of the human mind, w...

We left twentieth century, almost ten years ago. However, we are not that far away from it yet, as much as that if one wills a good peek into the past century, it could still be a possibility. What if we are given the gift of glancing backward in time? Would we learn new lessons? Would we unlearn what we learnt wrongly? We know clearly that this is not a real possibility. Perhaps, there is one thing we can still long for: reading a book from a time that has no longer the possibility of making available its own unblurred image through the mist of time. What if we are given a book from another time, another India, that was the abode to some of the most amazing rishis and thinkers, who created art and literature unparallel to our contemporary standards? Wouldn’t that be a great experience? Yes, I’d say. I’d certainly grab the chance on the very first time itself, because missing such a chance to read and learn from one of those amazing books written in the ancient India seems fo...

Ancient Promises is Jaishree Misra's debut book with a fresh narrative voice in comparison with the other novelists of her time. An unforgettable story, told in first person narrative, Ancient Promises combines in its narrative strategy, romance, myth and social criticism. Jane Austen succeeded in bringing irony in her novels, through interesting and poignant observations, which were most often witty as well. Taking the same line of novel-writing strategy, Jaishree Misra gives opportunity for readers to enjoy the book in multiple perspectives than just a single faceted love story. Of course, Janu, the protagonist is the narrator and this is her story. However, this is also the story of Kerala and its marriage customs. Many irrational and unjust customs still exist in this southern land situated in India's south. Many European cultures have established trade relations with Kerala, even before the time of the British. But in the long run, it can also be observed ...

A short story written by Mr. Stephen King tells us about a Milkman who leaves cartons full of poisonous cyanide gas in the morning. You might deny the ‘reality’ in the story arguing that the story borders fantasy. The reputation of the author goes beyond any possible conviction that could be attached with the words written by this ordinary blogger. I am fully aware of it. However, I would like you to ponder this small piece of sadism that the Milkman plays with the people in a small town as a probable scenario. At one point, he even puts a tarantula in an empty milk jar and leaves it for someone to open. Many proper nouns that exist in our world, at our time, are much like the bottles left by the milkman, early in that summer morning in Stephen King’s story. Today, our proper nouns are eerily similar in their capacity to poison us or to damage us. Well, it surely depends on whether we open the cap on those bottles. There could be two options here. One can get into a smooth...

24 February 2015 Hello everyone! If you are a regular visitor to my blog, The Indian Commentator, I would like to address an issue more in tune with what you might be feeling right now. At last, we have a blog post live, you might be thinking.  There have been a series of events, good and bad, confusing and confiding that altered the path of my life as a regular blogger into a fortnightly blogger, and that again into a monthly blogger. Although I eagerly wish to avoid this gap that has been occurring in my blogging schedule, the firm decisions made by the Cosmos are taking me into territories traversed never before. I am talking about those same events that mattered more than blogging. Ensaf Haidar, wife of jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi Perhaps, you might read an article online talking about pitfalls in blogging, and find “not attending one's blog for a considerably long period of time” as one of the reasons for low number of pageviews. Needless to say, the ...