Vijee Venkatraman

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The Odd Couple

The first of these stories featuring an old couple and a host of zany characters appeared in the Tamil weekly Kumudham in 1963 and has entertained fans ever since. The writer was Bhagyam Ramasami; the illustrator Jayraj. Sita Patti [full name: Sitalakshmi Appusamy], the madisar-clad sixty-plus bombshell, is the president of a ladies...

Elephant Conservation Conundrum

Those who grew up in southern India may fondly recall temple elephants with their tinkling neck-bells. As children, we didn't notice the shackles on their legs. Elephants have iconic status in India, they were used in warfare, and also in construction and transportation, apart...

The Surveyor of Jungles

Priya Davidar grew up in picturesque Ooty, a town in southern India with the misty blue mountains of the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot, as its backdrop. In the 1950s, the family lived in an isolated hillside bungalow, and the babysitter told the children ghost...

The Bigshot

Curious kids have been known to disassemble devices to see what makes them tick. How about letting them assemble something from its parts? If they can get the device to function, chances are they will understand the science behind it as well. This is the...

Mumbai is his Muse

Every big city has an ethos of its own: Paris (romance), New York (ambition), and Beijing (political power). “For Mumbai, that distinguishing trait would be jugaad,” says Parmesh Shahani. He translates the Hindi term as “innovatively making do with tremendous constraints.” Thanks to Mumbai’s energy...

The College Science Teacher

It is common to encounter Ph.D. students and recent graduates who want to focus solely on their students, on teaching and advising. They picture themselves in college faculty roles, but teaching is their first love. Unfortunately for them, tenure-track faculty posts pretty much always come...