Perhaps Dr. Christian Barnard’s blazing trail with his work
on open heart surgery during the late 60’s eclipsed the valuable contributions
of another, the Dr. Captain Thomas William Barnard, O.B.E., F.H.A., F.R.P.S.,
M.S.R. who refined X-Ray techniques some three decades earlier, during his
tenure at Madras. That he made a world standard institution of it at Madras
would not be known to many
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Dr Barnard – The X-Ray man at Madras
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The Peacock Throne and the Grosvenor
A Mughal throne in
Pondoland?
Many years ago, I wrote about the peacock throne and touched
upon this very topic at the tail end of that article. The story has not died
despite the musicologist, historian and Grosvenor investigator Percevial
Kirby’s empathic statement that the ship never really contained the kind of
treasure it seemingly sailed with. Revisiting that story was a thought which
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Sound memories from Sholay
1975 was the year the blockbuster film Sholay was released –
I had finished school and joined College to master Electrical Engineering just
the previous year. The music was already all over the radio waves. Radio Ceylon
had been playing a couple of tracks and interestingly, the LP’s and EP’s which came
out not only covered its enchanting music, but also dialogs. We had a regular
song LP and an
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Farewell to a Friend - S Muthiah (1930-2019)
We are not destined to meet some people and, in my case, S
Muthiah was one of them. I have always held him in great esteem, high regard
and in our various communications found him never to be distant or aloof,
considering the stature he had in Chennai, a city he would have loved to and I
still continue to call, Madras.
I had not spent a long time in Madras, but the few years I
lived there
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Letters in Post
I am sure many of you will remember a time when we used to
wait patiently for the postman to deliver a much-awaited letter. The post was
always capable of evoking strong feelings, at times it was a job interview or
an appointment letter or it could be a distasteful invoice or bill to be paid,
a long awaited letter from home or a most awaited and endearing letter from a
loved one, which made
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The story of HE 842, a B24 liberator
I started out writing a fictional story set in our village
at Pallavur starting with an object falling out of the skies and crashing into
our paddy fields. The much consternation it subjected the villagers to, the
investigation of the fallen object and the general furor it created would form
the heart of the story. But I pondered a lot on what kind of a mechanical
looking object could fall over
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The Chatans of Malabar
Driving lazily last weekend, en-route our local desi grocer,
I passed by the Chatam street. We do have several towns and places in the East
Coast of America named after locales of old Britain, and Chatam must have come
from the ancient Chatam port in Kent. That set me thinking about the name, but
I got sidetracked to the Chatans of Malabar and the famed Chatan cult, a topic
that our revered
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Once the Promised Land
The Anglo Indians and
McCluskiegunge
The Portuguese Mestiços had established precedent, when they
congregated in Goa though a few remained in little enclaves at Mattanchery at Cochin
and Bandra in Bombay. The Moplahs (many claiming Arab descent) attempted to
obtain support in creating Moplistan in Malabar but are now well integrated and
scattered across Kerala today. The Anglo Indians also
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The Officer and his Batman
When my friend told me the story of the bench warmer
tradition in his erstwhile battalion, I was somewhat surprised, though not
astounded. The British implanted some queer customs during the buildup of the Indian
armed forces, and if you search you can find many. This one comes from a station
somewhere up North, where the winters can be biting cold, and where the Sikh
regiment had been billeted
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Blowing in the Wind
A
remarkable tale – The Japanese Fu-Go
There are some remarkable stories from
the WW2 period, and this is one of those. Who could have imagined that a few
schools girls participated in the mass production of the world’s first
Intercontinental ballistic missile? And who could imagine that one of those early
ICBM’s very nearly derailed the production of the very bomb which later flattened
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MacBook in the hamlet
This is an incident which amazes me each
time I think about it, for it shows me how small the world has become these
days; how small the distances can be and how opportune life can be. How a dream
can so easily become a reality today, how the borders we once had, with haves
and have nots, castes, creed and the such can so easily vanish is exemplified
in this little incident. To see how, you
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A Chikmagaluru Sojourn
And a little tribute to VG Siddhartha Hegde CCD
The idea of spending a few days at Chikmagaluru at a resort in the middle of a coffee estate sounded alluring,
and my partiality to estates, considering my birth in one, perhaps nailed it.
Some asked why I was going to a place which is quite similar in terrain and
foliage, mention not the scenery, to Kerala. In any case, we had decided and so
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Horse trading and Politics
This brief study started as I was reviewing Portuguese
interventions into horse trading during the 16th to 18th
Century in South India. While it was somewhat slow going, I noticed that horse
trading was starting to get a bad rap. We all know that over time it got linked
to politics and voting, so I thought, why not check back see how that reputation
came about and how politicians got likened to
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The Letter
The post office in Pallavur never had its
own building. I have not figured out why, perhaps nobody would sell land to the
postal department. Anyway, right from my childhood, I have seen it as a
transient affair, first it was somewhere near the lower primary school, then it
moved to houses across the temple and later to the larger home near Company
Babu’s homestead. These homes did not afford
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Bharatanatyam - A 140 year old institution in Baroda
Tanjore’s Nautchinis,
Tawaiif’s or Dancers in Sayajirao’s court
In 1926, the Viceroy to India Lord Reading visited Baroda
and was hosted by King Sayaji Rao. After somber discussions, they say down to
watch a bit of Tanjavur Nautch, performed by the dancers Gaurabai and Kanta.
The reporter wrote - Lord Reading was
minutely surveying the Tanjore Dancers who were giving an exhibition of ancient
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Hanuman’s tunnel
Sheikh Othman (Hanuman)
in Yemen
Many years ago, one Sir Syed Ahmad Taqvi bin Syed Muhammad
Muttaqi KCSI, commonly known as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, an Islamic pragmatist, reformist
and philosopher of nineteenth century British India wrote thus at Aden, circa
1870, in his ‘A voyage to Modernism (Safarnama-i-musafiran-i- Landan)’. While
out of the mosque we were sitting in, we met a Hindu and
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V K Krishna Menon – The enigma
Maddy in conversation
with Jairam Ramesh, author of ‘A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K.
Krishna Menon’
While many people have opined that they could never
understand VK Krishna Menon or his ways, let alone his actions, even those who
have been close to him throughout his life such as Jawaharlal Nehru have admitted
being somewhat puzzled by his character. Menon remained an enigma
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Greatness, lurking in the shadows – VP Menon's Story
A chat with Narayani Basu, author of - VP Menon - The
Unsung Architect of Modern India.
When Narayani Basu signaled her intent to inform history
enthusiasts about the life and times of her great grandfather, Vappala Pangunni
Menon, I knew that the time was right. The Nehru years were slowly fading into
an insignificant memory, the architects who dreamed of a united nation, a
republic from
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The ill-fated Kashmir princess
The year was 1955. Indo China relations were quite warm, the Panschsheel had been signed the previous year. In 1954, Premier Zhou Enlai had visited Delhi, the ICFA was setting up bhai-bhai meetings all over, Nehru visited Beijing, exchange students were selected, delegations and cultural groups go back and forth, and Indian films are carted off to be shown in China. Later in 1955, Defense
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Nedyam Raghavan – Unknown to most
Lawyer, Freedom fighter, Statesman from Malabar
We had been studying the lives of people from a past
generation, those who fought for Indian independence. We read a lot about the
Menon from the West - VKKM, we also perused stories on the VP Menon from the
South, who integrated the country, ACN Nambiar who lived in Europe and along
the way so many other Menon’s and Nair’s, lesser in no way.
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