VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN I just finished reading Philip Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, yet again. The term, ‘Scoundrel Christ,’ would make most devout Christians, as also others, recoil in anger, as it did when Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, the book, and not the movie, was launched — more so, in India. Well, the […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN I visualise sometimes, at the risk of being immodest, when by dint of honest hard work, patience and perseverance, I may get well-deserved recognition — national or global — and, accolades to go with it. I may be invited to speak to an open audience — youngsters and coevals — about ‘myself.’ Speaking […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN India is a big-government country. From the national, state and city to village levels, there are millions of ‘babus’ with permanent jobs — some of them sinecures as well — entrusted with responsibilities. Of managing, sustaining and developing the systems around them and promoting social welfare, and happiness in the best of cases, […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN The Mercury Retrograde and the associated disruption of transportation and communication equipment/device — and, ah, the foiling of travel plans. Some call it hogwash as Darwinians would label creationism; some believe in it truly and thoroughly as one would have trusted Rahul ‘The Wall’ Dravid to bat through the most challenging of conditions […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN It has always been a matter of perspective. Half-empty, or half-full, to cull the psychologist’s lingo. This applies to what the anthroposphere was regarded as “waste” not long ago. Half-empty has become half-full now with the onset of the circular economy. This is factual in the Western world which leapfrogged in the 21st century […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN The monstrous rape of a tiny eight-month-old baby girl, in New Delhi, last month, has triggered this sombre piece. You may well say that our anger and fury will subside, and this may just be forgotten like every other heinous crime committed. That’s too bad. It is, indeed, high time we talked of […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN Johannesburg, or Jozi. This was the first foreign city I visited and stayed in — at age 32. Quite late, for someone, to embark on a foreign trip. Well, my parents have never been abroad. My apologies for the comparison. Well, what a sojourn that was. Like the debut Test for a cricketer […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN Science has been characterised by paradigm shifts – some welcome, some questionable, yet all of them contributing to knowledge, more knowledge and expanded knowledge; or, learning, re-learning and unlearning. From being one with Nature, or spirituality at its best, we have toggled one way to dominating Nature — the mechanistic view — and, […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN Professor Giuseppe Genon. Politecnico di Torino. Turin, Italy. I remember having received an E-mail from him in 2012. I also recall not having acknowledged it. Of course, I did not know him at that time. I met him when he visited the Norwegian University of Science and Technology [NTNU], in Trondheim, where I […]
VENKATESH GOVINDARAJAN The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, is a memorial, not just to one girl, or her family, but to all Jews and humanity, who endured the macabre onslaught of the Nazis, in the 1930s and 1940s. A visit to the Dutch capital would be incomplete without a two-hour walk up, down, […]