I was disappointed by the way our ‘Tamilian’ Nobel Laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan reacted to the surge of messages of appreciation that flooded his email in- box. Talking to a news agency he expressed ‘disenchantment’ with people from India “bothering” him “clogging” up his email box and found it “strange” that there was sudden urge to reach out to him. “All sorts of people from India have been writing to me, clogging up my email box. It takes me an hour or two to just remove their mails,” he said. He said the deluge of emails had buried important communications from colleagues or from journals concerning papers we have in press.
“There are also people who have never bothered to be in touch with me for decades who suddenly feel the urge to connect. I find this strange,” he said. He expressed anguish over “all sorts of lies” published about him in a section of the media that he went to school and pre-Science in Chidambaram, the Tamil Nadu temple town where he was born in 1952. “People I don’t know, for example a Mr. Govindrajan, claim that they were my teachers at Annamalai University which I never attended, since I left Chidambaram at the age of three,” Dr. Ramakrishnan clarified.
I wish Dr Ramakrishnan had appreciated the sense of belonging the people of India have in his winning the coveted prize.
Herb Elliot, the world record holder in the one-mile run from 1958 to 1962, said: ‘To be a world-record holder in the mile, a man must have the arrogance it takes to believe he can run faster than anyone ever has at the distance; and the humility it takes to actually do it.’
Another Diwali, the festival of lights, has come and gone. This time it had an international or a global connotation. Yes, President Obama celebrated it in the White House, while a priest chanted the Sanskrit verse ‘Asatho ma’. In India almost all leaders had greeted the people on the occasion, excepting of course the DMK leader Karunanidhi!
It was celebrated with traditional gaiety and enthusiasm in Chennai. People clad in new clothes burst varieties of colourful crackers along with their neighbours and also exchanged sweets with their friends and relatives.
For this Diwali, the Co-optex displayed two saris that exhibited the talent of weavers.
The Thiruvalluvar Tirukural Sari is a master piece that contained the Zari portrait of the saint poet Thiruvalluvar and 1330 Tirukkural couplets written by the Saint poet. It took four months to make the sari, which is priced at Rs 70,000. The 6.25 metre sari contains 350 gms of silk and 1200 gms of Zari. Another silk sari--Semmozhi--contained the 247 alphabets of the Tamil language. The cost of the sari is Rs 40,000.
The past is within us. Even if we do not see it, we can always feel it.
The 150 year-old Madras University proposes to start new PG courses named after rationalist leaders of the state, the late E V R Periyar, founder of Dravidar Kazhagam and a doyen of the rationalist movement, DMK founder C N Annadurai and Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. New MA programmes in Periyar Thought, Anna Thought and Kalaignar Thought will be introduced soon and “we will take steps to create Centers (named after these leaders) also by next academic year,” said the newly appointed Vice-Chancellor of the Madras University, G Thiruvasagam.
Some people know which side their bread is buttered.
We have heard of missing persons, missing things and the like. Now, a whole village is missing! Residents of a panchayat union in Tuticorin staged a demonstration for a novel reason, demanding retrieval of about 247 acre land in a village whose name they claimed had been removed from revenue records. During the protest, staged in front of the Collectorate in Tuticorin recently, people of Sankaraperi Union also alleged that two ponds in the Pulipanchankulam village were in the process of being sold by some persons in connivance with officials. However, officials said no one lived in the village due to drought and denied that the village's name was missing from records. The people of the village had migrated to neighbouring villages.
It’s difficult to miss your home! How agonizing will it be if your village itself is missing?
Good news for elephant lovers. The elephant population in the Erode district has increased from 200 to 220, as per the latest enumeration. In addition to Erode district forests, more than 200 elephants have been spotted in the Sathyamangalam forest area also.
The more the merrier!
Recently read: “You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed”
-Rabindranath Tagore.