Author Archives: Rajgopal Nidamboor

The Fuzzy Logic Of Our Soul & Ego

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Plato was the first philosopher to resolve, or settle, a dualistic premise — the body-soul construct in ancient thought. He believed that the soul was immortal and distinct from the body, although he elevated the metaphysical ‘fencepost’ for its credence. He believed the soul was also perpetual. He suggested that the soul doesn’t […]

More Than Needle Healing

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR The Chinese have, for long, created a perestroika of sorts. They use acupuncture for stroke victims, among other conditions. The big question. What makes such a ‘needle-centric’ therapy so unique, effective and, sometimes, a wonder to modern scientific thought? Wait a moment. Acupuncture, defined as a go-between orthodox and fringe medicine, is a method […]

The Intelligence Edge

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR The fact is — there is more to intelligence than what meets the mind, eye, or the ear. This is because the whole fulcrum of noted psychologist Daniel Goleman’s articulation for emotional intelligence [EI] highlights a perceptively original synthesis of research with insights into the brain architecture that propels our emotions and rationality, […]

The Grisham Effect

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Celebrity novelist John Grisham is to legal artifice and righteous failing what Lucius Annaeus Seneca was to stoic philosophy — and, still is — the difference being of degree. Grisham challenges to triumph by nurturing the nerve to flunk; the cabal to him is neither the ground nor the consequence of belief. His job […]

Everton Forever

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR All of us know that intelligence is more than a symphony of ‘know-how’ and ‘know-what’ areas in the brain. As Juan Huarte, the Spanish physician, contextualised, intelligence is the ability to learn, exercise judgment, and be imaginative — a case of neural Darwinism, lyrical and evolving. For Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, intelligence […]

Nicklaus: The 110% Golfer

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When P B Shelley wrote, “Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,” he would, perhaps, not have thought that success comes from strength, strength comes from harmony, and harmony requires consistency in all things, especially in a sport-centric context. Jack Nicklaus exemplified such a metaphor; also percept. When Nicklaus, the Midas man of golf, […]

Balance In The Midst Of Turmoil

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Most of us, despite our best efforts, feel out-of-sync, or balance, at times. This is, perforce, normal in the troubled times that we now live in — or, what our ancients articulated as their own essence of ‘troubled’ times. Whatever the epoch, a sense of a creeping, eerie feeling for adversity, or difficulty, […]

Dravid: The Goliath

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Rahul Dravid is a man of steely resolve — and, a quiet achiever. He’s to cricket what Kalidasa, or Saint Thyagaraja, is to Indian art. A classical practitioner with the humane soul and a master composer with a sequence of divine melodies, Dravid was the game’s ‘Methuselah’ in terms of sheer intensity, skill, […]

The Goleman Mantra

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Daniel Goleman, PhD, the noted psychologist and best-selling author, pioneered the concept of emotional intelligence [EI]. This bid fair to his ground-breaking book, by the same name. It was followed by his yet another landmark tome, Working with Emotional Intelligence. It set out a framework of EI that reflects how an individual’s potential […]