The Blog
The Invisible Sharp-Shinned Hawk
From the newsletter Inbound (go ahead and subscribe now!). Pigeons abound in North Station; South Station doesn’t have an indoor bird in sight. WGBH investigates and finds that the reason is the BIRD-X Repeller, a small speaker that randomly plays bird of prey calls, which...
Read MoreMadurai is not just Meenakshi, of course
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 by colourful festivals for each ancient street or the rustic...
Read MoreIndecent Exposure (to radioactive elements she’d discovered)
We are talking about a review of a biography on Marie Curie... "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...
Read MorePurple Windows, Blue Blood
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 the deal? Between 1818 and 1824, an English company sent...
Read MoreGuru Nanak College, The English Patient, Rajaji…
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 in the Indian Review of Books (1997), will , S....
Read MoreHolmes & Gandhi
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 of the Sherlock Holmes Society of Madras, in common with...
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