Category Archives: My Notebook

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Shyness is often thought to be a behavioural glitch. New research demystifies the idea. Shyness is not a medical disorder, a cause for parental anguish, or societal prejudice. It is a personality ‘type’ — one that is unique to each individual as their fingerprint. In other words, the problem of shyness is not […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Audrey Hepburn’s philosophy of life was direct: never in flight before contemporary difficulties. Her vision was straight and simple — that of a humble utopia that began and percolated in her psyche, for a noble cause: the children of our world. If gentle nature and great courage rarely manifest in one individual, she […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR David Lean’s magnum opus, The Bridge on the River Kwai [TBRK], made nearly 70 years ago, wasn’t just a movie; it’s an epic. Its award-winning cinematography, not to speak of a host of other breath-taking elements, so vital to making classy movies, was a landmark — a sentimental journey beyond the realms of […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When his father first showed Albert Einstein, the greatest of theoretical physicists, a receptacle compass, it was like what the falling apple was to his illustrious scientific ‘forebear’ Sir Isaac Newton. Einstein was barely five years old, but he felt an indescribable experience — his mind lit up with the gadget, in a […]

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 […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR It was a rainbow synthesis of words that made Ernest Paul Lehman’s genius an integral part of his artful dexterity — more so, because his cinematic chemistry mirrored his silky-smooth and built-in delightful ability to entertain multiple pairs of seemingly opposite ideas simultaneously. In other words, of seeing the whole picture, while integrating […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Kōnosuke Matsushita was not a great speaker. His voice was evidently frail. He never displayed quick-silver intellect.  And, even if he did, it was all too rare — never in public view. He also never warmed his audience with hilarious anecdotes. But, he did what all great leaders do. He motivated large groups […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Many of us indulge in self-talk. Self-talk guides us from our own emotional responses to a more conscious level. You’d call this state a learning plateau reflecting our needs and attitudes. When you process experiences and emotions associated with self-talk, you begin to filter not just your experiences, but also beliefs. Beliefs are […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR It all emerged, quite amusingly, from an unlikely pioneer, who, as a kid bearing a fragile, delicate frame, was, otherwise, perky in school with his relentless inquisitiveness. While not much is known of Sigmund Freud’s early life, because he purged his personal writings, twice over, his subsequent papers were strictly embargoed in the […]