Aubrey Menen – a tribute

Salvatore Aubrey Clarence Menen – The wicked satirist Black and white movies had given way to Eastman color, television was just making an entry but Radio Ceylon and Vividbharati ruled the airwaves. There were no fast food places and cricket still took all of 5 days with Anand Satalwad and Suresh S…

A Game of Chess

and the Ambalapuzha Paal payasam.. We have so many legends about the gods and their interesting ways of reminding people about their existence, to the common man. One such interesting tale is this legend from Ambalapuzha. I was reminded of this as I was reading a recent issue of the Guruvayoor Bhak…

Dr Syud Hossain – A true patriot

Part 1 The fiery orator and nationalist Most people would not know who this person is; some people may have seen his name on a few websites talking ill of the Nehru family and others studying the independence movement would have seen fleeting mentions here and there. But simply, 99.99% of the peopl…

An Afghan, two Indian poets and a German

And their connections to Minute Rice and Harvard What earthly connection can all these people have and how can one mix rice with poetry? Therein lies an interesting tale concerning an enterprising individual, a fiery orator, a German scholar and the Urdu poetry of Ghalib and Mir. I stumbled into th…

Ranjit and Leili

The legend of Leili Well, people wondering what I am upto this time may be led astray by the title thinking it has something to do some love story. Well, it sure is, but not involving two people, but a man and a horse. Some years back, I wrote about the Kohinoor diamond, a particularly popular artic…