Category Archives: Literature / Culture

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Burrhus Frederic Skinner was a pioneering, also provocative, psychologist. His work led to the emergence of a new understanding of human behaviour while changing the contexts of how society viewed everything from penitentiaries to childcare. Skinner deliberated that free will was an illusion and that all our actions were a result of conditioning […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR It was Nicholas Copernicus who first proposed, in 1853, that the earth was not the centre of the universe, but it, in fact, revolved around the sun. It took over a century for the idea to sink in — a gradual and rather agonising transformation. The Darwinian perestroika has been no different, notwithstanding […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Nelson Mandela remains a brilliant subject — a subject that is every biographer’s dream-come-true. His long life spanned the tribal rituals of rural Africa, the Anglicised tenets of the 1940s, the Gandhian ‘formula’ of anti-apartheid battles, a short guerrilla resistance, long imprisonment and, finally, power — power that brought majority rule to South […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR All of us struggle with moral dilemmas. Such quandaries define and affect our lives and of the people around us. What’s more, most moral dilemmas are difficult, complex and demanding. They involve not only risk, but also discomfort, even when we are convinced that we have conducted ourselves in an upright manner. Remember […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR No yesteryear Bollywood hero — to state the obvious — held as much appeal as Shammi ‘Yahoo’ Kapoor, when he was at his peak, giving just about every star a run for their money. That Shammi, as he’s fondly known, established a sublime niche of his own, like no other, in the 1950s […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR We live in an era of paradoxes — of sometimes pleasing, usually passable, and most often ear-splitting music, aside from the typecast ‘stamp,’ or raucous remix[ed] digressions, thanks to hi-tech glitz. This isn’t all. There seems to be a growing penchant for Punjabi-accentuated songs in Hindi films today — rather than perceptible Hindi numbers. […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy’s rib-tickling genius knows no age, because they beamed the lighter side of life, the child and the adult, wrapped within our psyche, like never before. Oliver Hardy: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into.” Stan Laurel: “Here’s another nice mess I got you into.” It’s such […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When a crazy fan shot dead John Lennon, in a mad frenzy, forty-four years ago, it marked the end of an era — an age which was unlike any other epoch in music history. It’s also everything that made the Beatles, the Beatles — for yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The Beatles influenced just […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR For a man who did not relish writing, Octavio Paz, Mexico’s most renowned poet, simply savored and enjoyed its result, be it plaudits, or brickbats. He never used the good old typewriter, the word processor, or computer. He always wrote by hand — the creator’s most simple, yet powerful tool — the oracle […]