RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Our mind is more than an advance — a mirror to life itself. It’s also far ahead of what René Descartes, the mediaeval philosopher, reasoned: “I think, therefore, I am.” We all know it — that within the world of matter is the body, even though our fundamental body goes beyond matter in […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR The word, cancer, sends an eerie chill down everyone’s spine, or cascading gun fire in one’s mind. In medical terms, cancer is a group of cells, usually derived from a single cell that has lost its normal control mechanism. The consequence is unfettered cell growth. Cancer can begin almost anywhere in the body. […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Genius, said Arthur Schopenhauer, the great philosopher, is the ‘completest’ objectivity; a decided predominance of knowledge over will. It holds up to us the magic glass of all that is essential in the clearest light. So much so, what is accidental, or foreign, is automatically left out. Genius, added Schopenhauer, is not merely […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Our mind is just not limited to subjective and objective feelings. It is also not just the seat of intelligence. It loves amusement as much as rest, juxtaposed by habitual periods of activity. Get the point? People, especially night workers, who deprive themselves of adequate sleep show signs akin to psychosis. This demystifies […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados, West Indies. March 17, 1962. The match — Barbados versus India. The atmosphere is electric as Charlie Griffith, a demon of a paceman, gets ready to launch his next thunderbolt. There’s an element of suspended animation, all around — more so, in the Indian dressing room. For no small […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR The legendary Greek philosopher-mathematician Pythagoras often echoed that good music was allied with the varied rhythms and cadences of life. He also employed his findings in music to the ‘conduct’ of cosmic objects — in other words, the smallest intervals in the musical scale — that added up to seven whole tones that […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR His name is Mark O’Meara. He was to golf what Arjuna Ranatunga was to cricket — a matter of steadfast temperament, perseverance, constancy, and professional design. The quaint similitude did not, however, end there. O’Meara, like the former Sri Lankan Test and one-day skipper, had every asset that champions are made of – […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR December 1974. The mood in the English cricket camp is anything but upbeat. It is as cold as the far-from-hospitable ‘bleak’ weather back home. Cricketing forays Down Under are, no less, under the cloud for a side that had, until then, been the epitome of professionalism — an English archetype. Mike Denness’ touring […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR A great all-rounder is too often a graceful character that instils a sense of fear, and awe, in the opposition. Keith Miller, a champion performer, from Down Under, espoused the description to a T. Miller, a terror in many a batsman’s mind, was a world-beater — all by himself. A giant of an […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR John Keats lived for just 25 years — and, yet, his literary reams of gold have left their imprint on the sands of time. As Percy Bysshe Shelley, another great poet, wrote, “He [Keats] has outsoar’d the shadow of our night;/Envy and calumny and hate and pain,/ And that unrest which men miscall […]