THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

"Now, however, there remain faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”— 1Corinthians 13:13 Love , in its pure form is like a tree. Even though the people who plant it move apart, the tree remains and shares its shade for those gather around it. And the memory of the one's who had planted the tree remains. Sometimes, the culture we live in, the moral and ethical background in which we are brought up, forces us to suppress the emotion of love. And we, due to the fear of being proved wrong in front of others, succumb, keeping the seed of the Tree unplanted, love unsaid. Those who keep it unsaid never think; after all one is not saying 'I hate you', but 'I love you'.  “The Unsaid” is my new series of i-poems , discussing in depth the moment, when most of us choose not to reveal our love for another person, and the resultant emotional conflict that we all experience. One thing is sure, when love remains unsaid, it gives rise to multip...

The class teacher was an unpopular one. Today he announced a surprise exercise for the students; the reason precisely why most of his students disliked him—for being innovative. Today he wanted his students to look through the nearby window and make a mental note of what they saw outside. He asked them to prepare a write-up on what they saw, by the next class. One boy stood up, moved to the window. He hated the teacher’s class, too. Standing beside the window he gazed out. He noticed termite activity on the windowsill. There were ants too marching outside the room carrying white raw rice. He scrutinized them closer. It was not raw rice. It was ants’ eggs. Suddenly, he felt the wind and realized his eyes drooped down, locked on to the windowsill. He tried hard to focus outside. That is the task, he reminded himself. Then there was something that lured his curiosity, there was a long hair locked within one of the tiny projections from the windowsill. It was perhaps a girl’s. None of...

"Our duty is to be truthful to the call of our soul, even if it sounds stupid for some"-- Anu   Hi Friends, I am one of the 50 bloggers chosen to review   Ashwin   Sanghi's book Chanakya's Chant out of a billion members in Blogadda.com. I published the review below. Happy reading!  Anu. 

Image Courtesy: Google History is not a novel. But it has all the essential ingredients that could enthrone it as one. It has bad guys and good guys, pretty chicks and poisonous virgins who hide snares for trapping the good and miserable alike. History has been in use in Indian novels in English is unavoidable terms and some noteworthy attempts has been made in the direction of experimentation with history, the historiographic metafiction, ever since the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in 1981 and the historical novels of Amitav Ghosh. Something like this is in action in Ashwin Sanghi’s Chanakya’s Chant. In Chanakya’s Chant , history parallels the present. The novel’s story swings between two periods in time, “Present day” and “About 2300 years ago”. The Prologue of the novel, although pictures an off-putting hospital scene with an octogenarian in his sick bed, watching the political “Ram Leela” of the contemporary Indian democracy, the oath taking ...

“What is called the “genius of a people” is only a set of reactions to a given stimulus.” –Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude It is said that humans can experience different forms of realities--unconsciously or consciously--such as scientific reality, academic reality, cinematic reality, political reality, etc. Among all these diverse forms of realities, the people of India , or the people especially belonging to the locale to which I belong (Kerala) experience an incessant bombardment of one form of reality, within which they locate their pleasure, sorrow, sin, redemption, life, death, and space. For them it is the beginning of existence and its edge as well. No one bothers to change this form of reality perception. The form of reality mentioned here is the ‘political reality’. And anyone or any movement or any idea emerging would inevitably find itself or themselves within the enchanting walls of this labyrinth. Anna Hazare is no exception. Who is Anna Hazare? An old man of sev...

I read the original story somewhere. And what I write here now is my own version of the original. But both communicate the same essence, though are created with different cadence. Stories are like that. They are always the same, but told in different ways.                                      This story takes place at a recent time in one of the states situated in the southern part of India , bordered in the East by the Sahya Mountains and the West by the Arabian Sea . The state had recently come out a Communist government after people choosing a Right Wing party in the parliamentary election. The one legacy the Left rule left this sate with was the long lines in front of Ration Shops, a picture that resembles the photographs one can find in National Geographic magazine from a poverty stricken “third world ...

“The best thing about Life is that it's never late to start again.”— Anu. It seems I haven't read anything for ages. Well, at least for the previous couple of days. After entering into my new job, it so happened that Sunday became the only day I could spend time in reading. The busy schedules, time tables, course structure, all the worst things in the world that can handicap a teacher's precious life has been interfering into my life too. Curiously, I now remember some of the desperate sounding comments from the teachers who taught me in the university, whose chair I now occupy and whose pride I inherit. I had this habit of discussing with them the books I read. Whenever I met them after finishing a different book each week or month (mostly fiction because I love reading fiction) full of excitement, their faces would drop and they would say: “We haven't read anything for ages!” And they would look at each other with a sagging helplessness in their eyes. When they w...

The rain had stopped before half an hour. But the moisture from continuous raining hung in the air and gave the feeling of a poignant painting imprinted in front of one’s eyes. The trees, the lawn conquered by weeds and wild plants that flower, multiply and still live an eternity, the cars parked in the courtyard, the flag of the students’ union, the class room with students and the teacher, every thing about that place seemed as if they were part of the portrait.   I was discussing Untouchable with the students of MA English Literature, the novel by Mulk Raj Anand, which dared to tell the story of an underdog for the first time in Indian Writings in English; part of the syllabus in the University I work as a Lecturer. Their judgment about my teaching methods was not very much heartening from the routine feedbacks taken by the head of the department. Perhaps my strategies were new and not similar to those usually employed in the academic circles here. As usual, I enquired the s...