The obit of a Tamil writer Arshia, superbly written by Kavita Muralidharan reminds us. In mainstream Tamil cinema and literature, Madurai has almost always been defined by clichés. It is either the exotic temple city characterised…
On a balmy winter’s day in 1954, Paul Dirac a Nobel Laureate in physics gave a general lecture at the Senate House in the University of Madras. The hall was packed. Outside, people sat in…
.She strove throughout, and especially at the end, to keep a firm distinction between her personal and scientific life. But in this she failed, and a woman of greater understanding of the world would have realized that she was bound to fail. She was awarded the Nobel prize for chemistry at the height of the open scandal over her affair with Langevin. A member of the Swedish Academy wrote to her indicating that she would not be welcome in Sweden and should refuse the prize until she had cleared her name. But, she replied, the prize was given for her discovery of polonium and radium, and nothing else. Was she right to insist - is any scientist right to insist - that there is "no connection between scientific work and private life"? Given the facts, and that she had written an incredibly indiscreet letter to her lover, with detailed recommendations as to how he could withhold sexual favors from his wife and thus make a break inevitable, there was probably no way that Marie Curie could be treated fairly by contemporary French society. ….
Boston's Beacon Hill, one of its oldest neighborhoods, was once home to Boston Brahmins. Take a walk there and you'll notice that some homes have purple tinted windows. And the panes are sometimes mismatched? What's…
A series of unconnected things you'd think but here is a nice Madras story by S. Muthiah connecting them all. Lt. Gen. Inderjit Singh Gill passed away on May 30. This piece, which first appeared…
Could these gentlemen have met in London? The answer is yes -- and I find the reasoning brilliant! G. Ram Mohan deduces in Madras Musings... Let me clarify matters – Kittu and his fellow members…