chaotic order

Pascal mercier's brilliant novel 2004 "Night train to Lisbon" is set during the right wing nationalist regime in Portugal between 1932 to 1968; headed by Salazar - the controversial but powerful prime minister. It is a beautiful story of a  young aristocratic doctor who joins the resistance against the dictatorial rule of Salazar. The novel begins with a Swiss professor's search for Amadeus de Prado (the young Doctor), whose short book of poems falls into his hands by accident. The search takes the professor to Lisbon almost on instinct and a strange love for its poetry;- and there, slowly and patiently, he touches the lives of all those people who were intimate with Amadeus and the different ways in which the political unrest in the country have shaped their individual destinies. The enigmatic portrait of Amadeus's tortured life, pulled in different directions by his deep mystical propensities, his profession, his love, his friendship, his distaste of the regime

He was a short, diminutive man with dark, deep black eyes.  His head was covered with sparse white hair and his back would slightly hunch forward as he walked with his hands twined behind him. His face would slant a little as he talked, and in his left hand he would perilously hold a thick half broken pair of glasses, that he would wave back and forth as he gesticulated while making a point. Always dressed in a half shirt that was never tucked in... He would never have passed for a professor, until one hears him speak... He was my history teacher in High school: Mr Ramanaprasad - the man who initiated me into a world which I never knew existed before I met him - the world of informal knowledge, the excitement of learning and discovery through the written word, the path of introspection and the need to understand life as whole, and not in specialized compartments. He was a complete misfit in the educational system. He scarcely gave thought to what syllabus or curriculum or examina

One of the important questions that educated Men and women keep asking themselves in the dark recesses of their own minds is this :  "Is "God" really necessary to explain and live a moral, ethical and orderly life.....?" I know, I would be touching a lot many sensitive nerve endings when I posit such a question. But yet, this question is absolutely necessary to be faced squarely on its face. Let  me be very clear, that I do not claim to be atheist (not at least,in the common sense of that term), Perhaps, somewhere down history there has occurred a basic misconception of what Godhead "is", and a millennium of indoctrination has so firmly entrenched the need to look upon an external cause for this wonderfully varied universe. You might now accuse me of pitching scientific rationalism against religious convictions and dogma. But that is precisely what is wish to negate. All that I want to state is the fact that both science and Religion (as used in original

The world of Jane Austen is one of Morals, manners and an impeccable sense of propriety. She was born in North Hampshire, England, a few months after General Washington issued orders to begin the American war of independence and died in Win chester in the first quarter of the eighteenth century (1775- 1817). A brief, incandescent life during which she chronicled the social ethos of England in a succession of brilliant novels, which unfortunately did not bring her any fame or money during her life time, but is now recognized in English literature as masterpieces of classical writing and characterization. “Pride and prejudice”, “Sense and Sensibility”, “Emma” – all of them are stories based on Women, marriage and the clash of social status in resolving the matters of Human heart. Her prose has a majestic cadence to it, a soothing classical style of writing that took the reader along a journey that is often long, twisted but eventually satisfying. Every character clearly etched, every

She is a middle aged lady from the southern part of India, pretty new to the organization and obviously a bit reticent. Her flight was delayed and she rushed into my class yesterday profusely apologetic, and preferred to sit in the back row of the conference room. Though she had missed about forty five minutes of my lecture, she was quickly up to speed, and before long, was cruising through her l abs with a great deal of ease. About three of us from the class went out for dinner, and that is when she began to open up. She had a very interesting story. Smita had come to the United States in the year 2004, newly wedded to a software engineer. She was educated to be a dentist, but before she could pursue a career in it, she was married, and came into this country with wide eyed dreams like many others. For a few years, she preferred to remain a housewife acclimatizing herself, and then started applying to colleges to pursue higher studies in her chosen field of dentistry. By that time, h

In my Hotel room in Louisville, this week, I happened to watch a very insightful TED talk by the famed literary critic and book reviewer for the NY times, Parul sehgal. She was talking about ‘Jealousy’ as an emotion that is so psychological ly debilitating, and yet in a strange way, helps to truly understand the person who one actually is, and the aspirations that drive us to explore different relationships. In a wonderfully concise talk of 14 minutes Parul illustrates the fact that literary fiction is probably the only medium that has expressed and explored jealousy in its various hues, and almost every classic in English language defines and stitches jealousy in some way or the other into its story line and characterization. Close on the heels of watching this video, I tuned into Netflix to play a 2011 drama named “Young adult” featuring my favorite actor these days, Charlize Theron. It is a very simple story about a young, beautiful career oriented rural town girl, who moves into t

She is a young south Indian lady in her early thirties: soft spoken, shy, dressed in T shirt and jeans with a certain self consciousness about her that was evident in the manner she was tugging at her collars frequently to cover herself. I learnt from her that she had moved to Louisville about fifteen days ago as a contractor. Her family - Husband and two little children aged seven and five, co ntinue to live in Cincinnati, and she intends to commute home every weekend (a two hour Grey hound bus drive). They been living in the US for the last seven years and both the kids were born in America : a dream come true, I must say, for many Indian parents.. II was during one of our breaks that I got talking to her . The other participants had a short meeting to attend and we were alone in the classroom. During the last two days, I have been observing that she has been preoccupied , neither able to concentrate on my lectures nor complete lab exercises with any amount of confidence. She seemed