Category: OTHER COMPOSITIONS
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BLOG À LA TWINKLE KHANNA: EPISODE 3
For the third Sunday in a row, Twinkle hasn’t published. She doesn’t know I suppose that a daft old man has lost his lonely way in a desert where not even a mirage of a Twinkle column … well, … um, … err … twinkles … if you know what I mean … Sometime ago,…
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BLOG À LA TWINKLE KHANNA: EPISODE 1
Recently, I have turned into a fan of Twinkle Khanna’s column in TOI. My recipe for soft-boiled eggs. India;s agricultural sector Which reminds me of the buffalos in abattoirs. By the way, Mr. Trump has now overpowered not just Iran but also the courts in his own lair. It seems they can no longer question…
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A Chance Encounter with Eternity
… One morning, as I was trying miserably to concentrate on my books, I heard sounds that appeared to emerge, not from the direction from which they usually did, but from my immediate neighborhood. A man was singing it seemed in the ground floor flat of the building right next to ours. I peeped out…
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হংকং পাঁচালী
নিবাস অধুনা মোর কাও লুন টং, জেনে রাখ একটুও দিচ্ছি না রঙ। কাও লুন টং কোথা? হং কং চেন? ওখানেই কাও লুন এটুকুই জেন। এর বেশি আর কিছু কোরো না জিগেস, কলকাতা থেকে বাপু দূর আছে বেশ। তাছাড়া নিজেই কি রে চিনি রাস্তা ? ফেলে দিয়ে গেছে কারা শুধু জানি তা। এর বেশি লাভ কি…
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Nisheeth-babu: Small Man in a Large World
There is a proverb in Bengali which, translated, runs, While Emperors and Kings merrily fight, The small fries suffer a dreadful plight! The words conceal deep wisdom, as amply borne out by the treatment life meted out to Nishith-babu. Nisheeth-babu sold books, but he was more of a hawker than a seller.
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Tagore, Savithri Krishnan and Carnatic Music
Savithri Krishnan (nee Govinda) was a fourteen year old girl who lived and went to school at Adyar when she was introduced to Rabindranath Tagore. She was a student of the Fourth Form and had no idea at all who this man was, when her drawing teacher came to fetch her to be presented before…
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Economics Department: Snippets from the Sixties
Written for Oikonomica, a webzine run by the Economics undergraduates, Presidency University. PROLOGUE I joined Presidency College as a fresher sixty-four years ago in 1959 and the undergraduate Economics programme in 1961. Naively perhaps, it was a practice at the time to view the college as the best undergraduate institution in town (or even the…
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Dr. Sudhir Kumar Das Gupta – An Obsequy
The river of life, like any other river, flows forwards. And by the time it reaches its estuary, it is often difficult to figure out where it originated. This is not true of mighty rivers, such as the Mississippi or the Nile or our own Ganges. But there were endlessly many smaller rivers that had…
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That Cloud
Don’t pamper, or that cloud will surely Perch atop the crest.Will it thaw, or budge an inch,However much you request?It won’t melt, oh no, it won’tTotter from the peakFrozen aloof in vain conceitWill its feet on earth e’er rest! For thirsting birds and ploughed fieldsIt won’t send a drop of rainOnce snowy white it turns…
A KALEIDOSCOPE WORLD 