Light of the Lamp

Hi,       I thought I would not be writing this one at the end of the year as I thought it is becoming repetitive. But this one has become another annual ritual just like events and festivals. Festivals are both joyful and tiresome for women. Joyful because it involves the family gatherings , but tiresome because the lady of the house has to stand long hours in kitchen, but anyway one ends up doing it to the fullest due to force of habit, failing which one feels something short or emptiness. This may have to do with writing also, I feel now.                                                    When I write about the year that is about to leave us, the title will be same, but the contents are of course, different. Because the events that happen throughout the year are unique from the previous year. The two mammoth events that took place this ye...

Hi,          A wedding took place in a hotel in Kochi  on November 25th which shook the whole of Kerala and made the Malayalees (that includes me)! sit before the TV screens and the internet. It was between the famous on-screen pair, Dileep and Kavya Madhavan who 'officially' became the off-screen pair from Nov 25th, 2016. Dileep had earlier married the popular star Manju Warrier but got divorced sometime in 2015. They have a teenage daughter Meenakshi. It was second wedding for Kavya too, who had divorced a Dubai-based  banker. Dileep is a popular Malayalam star, though not a super star like Mamooty, Mohanlal, Suresh Gopi, and hence is not known much outside Kerala. When he announced all of a sudden that he is going to tie the knot to Kavya on 25th morning, the whole of Kerala came to a virtual standstill that morning. All the Malayalam news channels were telecasting live their wedding. Everybody absorbed every moment of it like a sponge. The boons ...

Hi friends,                  As another year is seeing its sunset days and many of us waiting to have an annual break, I scrolled the list of articles I penned so far. They are a little less compared to previous years, with two of them being penned by my dad. As I have mentioned before, I always love to explore new places and whenever I go somewhere, I take care to make note of details and of course take a lot of snaps. I scrolled down my blog to see if we visited new places this year, and realized that Thiruvannamalai is our first trip and that too at the fag end of the year. Will we explore one more new place before the year ends? I would love to do so.                                 It is almost customary for us to go to my in-laws' place in Hyderabad every year for Diwali. But this year, it did not happen due to miscellaneous reasons. To ward off our disap...

                                                             On plastics menace By S. Muthukrishna Iyer  Hi folks,  I am publishing yet another article written by my Dad, Shri. S Muthukrishna Iyer titled "On Plastics menace". My dad is a retired Engineer from VSSC, Trivandrum and has published 3 books  in his name of which 2 are in Malayalam and 1 in English. He is passionate about writing on current topics and and also some grave issues that might be a threat to the coming generations. He also gives talks in various seminars about some topics, mainly on energy availability for the future generations.        Here, I would like to put in some of my words. As somebody who has been living in Bangalore for more than 5 years, I could see the changes and the awareness created on the menace of p...

"Oh, well, there is a difference between privacy and secrecy"  -  Laura Schlessinger Hello everybody,                     As the nine days of fasting, feasting of snacks (read as 'chundals'), pujas are on (Navarathri or Dussera), there is a chief minister who is fighting for her life from September 22. It is almost 3 weeks since J. Jayalalitha, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, has been admitted in the Apollo hospital citing 'fever and dehydration' as reasons. But, as the days passed, the chief minister still remains in the hospital and the period is obviously too long for the simple 'fever and dehydration'. In this age of flashing news (also rumours) every other minute through all kinds of channels and social medias, it was looking strange and conspicuous that there were no updates on her health condition in the news channels and the leading English and Tamil  dailies of Tamil Nadu. Few words somewhere would mention t...

Hi,               I don't know how many of you follow the Olympic games of 2016 going on at Rio in Brazil. But when I talked to some of my friends, they do ardently and passionately follow some events in Olympics and also sports where Indians are involved. This time, largest ever Indian contingent (about 120 people) went to Rio to represent the greatest sporting event on earth. So naturally, some more medals were expected this time. I wanted to write this article after I, rather the whole of India, witnessed Dipa Karmakar's stupendous performance in gymnastics.  But it got postponed to another 2 days, and now I am sitting and writing after Sakshi Malik became the first woman wrestler to win a medal in the Olympics and which came as a huge relief for the medal starved country.                  I am sure my fellow Indians would not have heard of 'produnova' vault in gymnastics which is life threatening...

Hi,               Now that summer months are over, and the rainy season is on in some parts of our country, it is the time of cold and other infections. As such our country lacks cleanliness and civic sense and it is not surprising that the infections and fever are common among children and also among poor. So it is again, as you sow, so you reap. The two incidents which recently happened in the North East are the death of the famous writer Mahasweta Devi and the ending of the 16-year-old fast by the Manipuri iron lady, Irom Sharmila. Smt Mahasweta Devi stood for the oppressed, mainly tribal population, and fought for that marginalized society against the powerful Government and corporates with pen as her weapon. She is the winner of many prestigious awards for her writing and social work. Irom Sharmila's fast was to protest the enforcement of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Manipur, giving Army special privilege to detain people in the na...

Hi folks,                      I would like to present an article written by my dad, Shri S Muthukrishna Iyer, recollecting his childhood and formative years. Deepa. This article could help ‘seniors’ to recollect their childhood days. More importantly, it could give a glimpse to children on how their grand parents led their lives   “Change is permanent” is an age old saying. Universe underwent significant changes over billions of years. Changes which took place on earth very long ago include continents formation, and formation of unbelievably vast deposits of coal and petroleum underneath earth’s crust as a result of millions of years of weathering on biological matter. The changes which took place on utilization of these fuels in a very large scale after 1900 A.D. are beyond description. The young are unfamiliar about the life of those who lived, say, until about half a century ago. A glimpse on the younger days o...

Hi all,                  My previous article about my late maternal aunt is 3 months old! Yes, after that I have not posted anything though I keep visiting my space everyday to check on visitors. Forget about other visitors, even my visits here reduced as the vacation bug bit me. Though I planned to write something during the break, as they say, it never happened. Yeah, there were lots of distractions also. The rains, shopping, minor commitments, travel etc kept me away from this space. At the end of each day I just wanted to hit the bed and sleep tight. Due to pleasant weather in Trivandrum, my hometown, sleep was not a problem and everyday was relaxing and so I came back refreshed.                                          During the month of May, this year, Assembly elections were held in 4 States and one union territory to decide who...

Hi all,                A relaxed and a fresh mind paves way for the words to flow from a writer. And what better time one can get to write a planned article other than Saturday night, if one has relaxed the whole day and look forward for a lazy Sunday ahead. If I write something unplanned and out of instinct, I do not need a Saturday night. With all the ugly events in the name of nationalism or anti-nationalism in JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) and that which took place in the name of caste in Hyderabad University (death of a Dalit student Rohit Venmula), it is natural to wonder where our country is headed. With the words like sedition, jingoism, caste, anti-nationalism looming over us like demons, it is understandable that if we want to voice our opinion, people like me will think twice before putting down in words out of fear that it might offend somebody who may read these lines. Among all these depressing events, one incident which brough...

Hello everybody,                               I am back soon as I promised. I have this so-called 'travel bug' in me, though I am not a frequent traveller. If I travel a lot, in the sense, leisure travel, this blog would have doubled up as a travel blog because I love putting down in words and pictures, the experience a new place gives me. So it is no wonder that somebody like me will always cherish the visit to the first place or a country abroad.                                                    The very first foreign land on which I set my foot was many moons ago. The name of it is not San Fransisco, not London, not Sydney or Melbourne but Isle of Man which belongs to British group of Isles. This island looks like a drop from an aerial view and is perched in the Irish sea betwe...