High Heels & a Shotgun

It is quite a distance from Dances for the gods. to Rock Music. The girl in this photo seems to have traversed it quite well. She is Susan Ann Isaac. It was her Bharathanatyam performance five years back that prompted me to write the post mentioned above. More...

Kerala Bishops on abortion

The Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference (KCBC) has come out with a press release about the stand of the Church regarding abortions. I feel that it is only fair to mention it here in relation to my post The Savita case, a tragedy in Ireland   more... 

The Savita case, a tragedy in Ireland

A man takes his wife and their young son boating. The boat capsizes in deep waters. The man is a good swimmer but his wife and son can’t swim. The husband can save only one of them. The question here is who should be given the preference. If a decision is delayed, both would drown.

Was it something like this that happened in Ireland last month? 

 

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Photos: A Thravad Decorated

To see the photos, click here

A Festival's Aftermath

Yesterday was the festival of lights. 

Perhaps the festival of noise, smoke, wasted paper and wasted energy too. Deepavali. 

Through my window, I heard enough the whole day. 

Through the same window, I hear the "music" of brooms cleaning up after yesterday's excesses. 

The sound of that music has just moved on, and yesterday's leftovers are out again, to create further leftovers. 

This in a city where there is no place to dispose of solid waste intelligently. 

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TEDxTrivandrum

With a TEDx edition happening in town, it was not difficult to get oneself a ticket (₹750 per session) to attend the event at the Trivandrum Technopark campus.

The newbie organizers did a great job though they must have faced several hiccups. One cannot but like the  convenient and attendee-friendly format (18 minutes per speaker) that TED events follow.

Have a look at the list of visionaries / thinkers / speakers:

Sabriye Tenberken of kanthari

Mathew Jose of Paperman

The one and only Sashi Kumar

T.P. Sreenivasan, a former Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations

Bina Paul of India Foundation for the Arts

G.Vijayaraghavan, a former CEO of Technopark.

The bonus at TEDxTrivandrum, on 10 November, 2012, was a video featuring Mallika Sarabhai's Nov 2009 TED talk  (see Mallika Sarabhai: Dance to change the world), and a brief rendition of instrumental music by a local amateur group.

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One more Cochini Jew Bids Adieu

Johnny Hallegua of Jew Town, Cochin, India died on October 25^th at the age of 90. He was ailing for sometime after breaking a leg. He was buried in the Jewish Cemetery near the ancient synagogue. The one to die before him was his relative Samuel Hallegua, two years back. Sam was the Warden of the Cochin Synagogue, and a scholar. Incidentally, he was a club mate of mine. More...

Are You Weeping, Mother India?

The usage ‘Mango people’ by Robert Vadra had me confused for a while. I didn’t know its meaning. Only after a quite a bit of Internet search I realized that the phrase is a sort of translation from Hindi meaning ‘common man’...more