Musings from Antique Origins

– Mario Vargas Llosa’s historical novel “The feast of the goat”- A few years ago, during one of our conversations, my younger brother, Hari (Dr.HK Varma) told me about the brilliance of the writing of the Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa. It was heartening to note that that the scientist in him had not lost touch with human sensibilities despite his busy schedules involving lots of international travel and the nitty-gritty of administration. I was working for a Company at that time and my days were mostly in the office or in travel leaving me with little option for reading. Still, I managed to read Llosa’s “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter”, that made very interesting reading with its many hilarious anecdotes. (I remember the scriptwriter in the novel who used to sell his Radio scripts to telecasting companies by weight. This I feel is applicable to many of the TV serial scripts presently telecast by most of the regional language channels in our Country.) The book i...

Return of the Native! I welcome back my good readers to my blog after a gap of 6 years. The gap represents a good time in human life during which the communication had been lost and so much had happened in each of our lives. The death of my father had caused in me a deep vacuum and I had lost the thrill of writing. Added with the vagaries of an official life it was not easy to relax and write. As Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish Nobel laureate, rightly observed, “Every man’s death begins with the death of his father” and I felt the ripples very earnestly.  Later in November 2016, my dearest mother too left the world and it was mentally very shattering for me. In moments of aloofness and some despair, I felt the void and the absence of caress and experienced the chill of being an orphan. I thought about many little things I could have done for them, about the leisurely time I could have spent with them and about the soothing touch my presence would have given them. Even now, the ...