Musings from Antique Origins

  With my Dad,1995 The third Sunday of June is honoured as Father’s Day all over the world. When your parents are gone and if you have entered the twilight years of your life, their memories come to your mind more often. It reminds you with a pinch about the countless things you could have done for them when they were alive. It is a weighty burden that one carries to the graves or the funeral pyre. Orhan Pamuk, in his inimitable words, said, “With the death of my father, it wasn't just the objects of everyday life that had changed; even the most ordinary street scenes had become irreplaceable mementoes of a lost world whose every detail figured in the meaning of the whole.” The Museum of Innocence I cannot agree more. I have experienced what he had written once; “Every man’s death begins with the death of his father”: My Father My father, Rama Varma Thirumulpad was born in 1919, one year after the First World War ended, to Kandanchatha Othikkan Raman Namboodiri (Vedic schola...

Everyone has an Achilles heel. Mine happens to be the incapacity for “acute physical activity”.  Right from my school days, I have not been too active in sports. Of course, I used to participate in sports activities like long jump, high jump and football but was never too good at any of these. During the school days, I was also a Boy Scout, but the frequent wanderings in the hot sunlight always made me very dizzy and I never made it to the Jamborees. In the college, I enrolled the NCC. I wore ill-fitting dresses for the drills on holidays at the college compound, the main attraction being the snacks served at the end of the physical training. Usually, it used to be bananas. I always had dizziness while doing physical exercises and was never a regular cadet.  I also played ball badminton and cricket at the college in an acceptable manner but, was not in the top league, to make it to the college team. Later, at the Cochin University, I captained our department in Cricket. But th...

Of People and Places 1 Arranging books on a beautiful mahogany shelf is an art by itself. It helps you to choose a book according to your mood when you sit on a relaxing chair in the evening, by the table lamp with yellow warm light, and a glass of  wine   if you prefer. In modern times, we organize eBooks and photos in a portable hard disk that has astounding storage capacities. It is a herculean task, as I experienced because you have saved thousands of photographs –both priceless and trash-over decades especially since the advent of the digital camera. While browsing these, I chanced upon an old photograph that brought back many happy memories.       1982 -With K.R.Swamy and P.J.Joseph at Alleppey                 The photo dates back to 1982. You can see me standing beside Sri. Swamy, a doyen who started a gymnasium for bodybuilding and physical fitness in ...

Dr.B.Vasanthan  In the course of one's career stretching over 4 decades, it is quite likely that we all meet a handful of men who leave an indelible impression in our hearts due to the sheer strength and magnetism of their personality. Dr.B. Vasanthan, eminent banker and the former Chairman and Managing Director of Andhra Bank who left for his last journey on 24th January, 2020 was one such great soul with whom I had the privilege of acquaintance during the formative years of my career. He was indeed the foremost among a handful of decision-makers with the great executive calibre that I, in my various assignments in India and abroad was fortunate to come across. He had all the qualities of head and heart, led by knowledge, razor-sharp intelligence and profound wisdom. Hailing from Kanhangad, Mr.Vasanthan was a Kerala University topper for his B.Com before he joined Syndicate Bank. His brilliance and executive capabilities brought quick promotions and he headed the Kerala ...

Payyanur Pavithra Mothiram This week we visited Payyanur in Cannanore district that is famous as a cultural centre. An unfulfilled promise is a burden to the common folk especially when it is to the deity that a family worships. So, it took me and my wife Sindhu close to fifteen long years to keep a date with one such offering and to take the burden out of our minds. While I have definite views of my own regarding the concept of God and spirituality, I am not averse to following some rituals that were mostly followed by my parents in good faith for the welfare of all, including all life forms of this Universe. Sindhu, my wife traces her family origins to the Colastry (Kolathiri) dynasty – as the Europeans called it- of North Kerala. The Kolathiri Rajas, whose antecedences are to the Mooshikavamsa were very powerful after the imperial Kulasekharas of Mahodayapuram were weakened by the 12 th century CE. In 1498, the Rajah of Kolathunadu had hosted Vasco de Gama aft...

M ost people who have heard of Frits Staal, the philosopher and Sanskritist, know him as the chief organizer of Athirathram , an ancient Vedic ritual also called “Agnicayana” that was conducted in a small hamlet of Panjal, Kerala in 1975. I was completing my graduation and my father was retiring from service around the time keeping me tied up with future plans, lest I would have visited the place that had aroused much interest in a 3000-year-old ritual and tradition. The  “Agnicayana ” rituals were documented with the help of Harvard anthropological filmmaker Professor Robert Gardner along with others like Romila Thapar and Adelaide de Menil, a photographer and an heir to the Schlumberger oilfield-services fortune. The Vedic ritual conducted from 12 th  to 24 th  of April 1975 was funded among others by the Harvard University, Smithsonian Institution, and the Rock Foundation. Agnicayana 1975 Panjal, Kerala During my recent Onam holidays at our ancestra...