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 […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When tennis’ first ‘bionic’ woman Billie Jean King romped home to a grand triumph, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3, against male chauvinist, and tennis’ self-appointed clown, Bobby Riggs, on September 20, 1973, women’s tennis received a shot in the arm like never before. This was not all. The King-Riggs’ ‘showdown’ was billed as the battle […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Just like how loneliness is agony worse confounded by murky isolation and solitude is bliss, optimism always emerges in the midst of growing turmoil. What can also turn the tide is simple — little drops of empathy that bring about more than a sense of harmony, or calm. This occurs primarily because of […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR William Faulkner was a consummate genius, a craftsman without a peer. He was wholly contingent on his writing prowess for his livelihood, and so he had to imperatively write what he thought would sell rather than what he wanted, or desired, to write. Despite such an allegory to life’s commonplace chemistry and basic […]