Inner Metamorphosis

Meeting friends after long is always a pleasure, but this time it left me with mixed emotions. A realization dawned – somewhere down the line I missed the bus. Even with the rose-tinted glasses I occasionally sport, the chances of revival appear bleak. 20s is when possibility overshadows actuality; 30s signals the end of this honeymoon (or delusion?). It’s common for many in their 20s to think that they can successfully pursue many streams of work simultaneously. But this is fool’s errand. To attain even a decent depth in any discipline demands large amounts of time and dedication. For every turn we take in the road of life, the opportunity to traverse several other roads is precluded forever. To take up the path we desire, we must renounce several others permanently. The hardest part of this learning process is that life seldom affords man an unlimited choice. The endeavor to taste food in all the leading restaurants of your city can be realized effortlessly, but many li...

To sum up the story so far: Rohan Murthy, son of ‘Infosys’ Narayan Murthy, spearheading Murty Classical Library, an initiative to translate 500 volumes of traditional Indian literature into English, has refused to consider removal of Sheldon Pollock as the mentor and chief editor of the project. Rohan Murthy with Sheldon Pollock "It is quite rich to sit in the peanut gallery, pass comments and throw empty shells at those who are actually rolling their sleeves up and working on the ground," said Rohan of those 132 academicians and intellectuals petitioning them to reconsider their decision.  Many Hindus do not grasp the enormity of what’s at stake here and join the chorus to brand any indigenous attempt to question West’s stranglehold on Hindu academics as Hindu chauvinism (or is it Hindu nationalism of late?). Intellectual Colonialism One of Rajiv Malhotra ’s important points again comes to fore: other religions are “defined” by their practition...

Author Stephen King, the master of the macabre, to demonstrate his ease with variety wrote “ Different Seasons ” – a collection of four novellas, probably in an effort to avoid being pigeonholed into his forte of horror genre.  Yet, when a young film-director Frank Darabont approached him for rights to adapt one of its novellas “ Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption ” into a movie, he didn’t think much of it. The rest, as they say, is history; with some alterations the movie “ The   Shawshank Redemption ” turned out to be the best-ranked movies in IMDb, surpassing even the cult-film “ The Godfather ”. Plot A banker Andy Dufresne is sentenced to life at Shawshank State prison for murder of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. At prison, he befriends Ellis Boyd “Red”, the prison entrepreneur, and turns out to be the most unconventional prisoner. Meanwhile, the ruthless prison warden is eager to exploit Andy’s financial skills for his selfish e...