RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Sir Jack Hobbs was a purists’ purist. He brought to batting a new dimension, a rare canvas of perfection: something that is as yet unmatched. Hobbs’ art was full of profound expression, a fount of wisdom. Of subtle refinement and classical definition — a celebration of cricket syntax and grammar. Hobbs [December 16, […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Sir Ian Botham. The name’s the high-maiden of cricket — an epiphenomenon of classicism and the abstract. Of varied alternatives for every situation. Botham’s identity was such that it always shone, what with the great man’s several zones of potentialities. It also filled in the slots between what was done; at others, of […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR I’ve been, right from my formative years, witness to elders in the family attending discourses on philosophy, also scriptures. I’d, however, never ever gauge the tenor of their impact on anyone. I’d be aloof without being officious of their ‘hold’ thereto in the perimeter of my nascent, albeit expanding inquisitiveness. This was, doubtless, […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Hope is, in simple terms, a hovering, oft-soaring element in our culture. It is also a part of received wisdom, not to speak of works of fiction — old and new. Yet, it is only in contemporary life that hope is disclosing its connotation in scientific studies. Most adults plagued by long-lasting illnesses, […]
RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR He first left Avignon, a city in Southern France, in 1517, at age 14, and travelled across the countryside exploring and ‘researching’ herbal and other native, or natural, remedies. He embarked on a career as an apothecary too, a decade+ later [1529], following which he enrolled at the University of Montpellier, for a […]
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 Sachin Tendulkar was one of cricket’s greatest ever composers. He brought to the game a new symphony — the music of the spheres. The first lyric for him took place through initiation; the second in execution. It was from there the song and stroke of the willow followed — thanks to his own […]
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 […]