People Archives - Page 2 of 2 - A Central Banker's Miscellany

On going vegetarian and beyond

William Shakespeare was pointing to the cruelty that mankind meted out to animals, while writing these lines in the second part of his historical play, Henry VI, based on the life of the 15^th century King of England:

Thou never didst them wrong, nor no man wrong;
And as the butcher takes away the calf
And binds the wretch, and beats it when it strays,
Bearing it to the bloody slaughter-house,
Even so remorseless have they borne him hence;
And as the dam runs lowing up and down,
Looking the way her harmless young one went,
And can do nought but wail her darling’s loss.
– William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II

Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer: My first boss

Only very few of my friends know, or now remember, that my career, so to speak, started with a stint working for Late Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer.

Before I joined the Reserve Bank of India, I nursed for long the idea of doing my Ph.D. in Environmental Economics. With that in mind, I had been reading up on the environment, and environmental economics, apart meeting people connected with environmental issues. Continue reading “Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer: My first boss”

M.D. Ramanathan: A Musician’s Musician

When I was young, good music was heard only over the radio and from rare records that one possessed. The moments to cherish were when your favourite musician came on the radio unexpectedly. When MD Ramanathan’s rare record was played, my father would raise his hand to silence all of us, as we listened to his rendering in Nilambari or Reethigowla. I would have included MDR, as he was known to his fans, in my series of forgotten musicians, but for the fact that his following today is much more than what it was when he died. If Ramanathan were alive, he would have been 97 today, the 20^th May 2020. Continue reading “M.D. Ramanathan: A Musician’s Musician”

University College: My brief stint, and a bit of history

College logo

Last year, 2019, University College, Trivandrum, was in the news for all the wrong reasons. It brought back memories of my own association with the College over the years. I discuss below, my association with the College, a bit of history, and some alumni. Continue reading “University College: My brief stint, and a bit of history”

Srinivasa Ramanujan: A Life in Infinity

Opened in 1901, the Victoria Students Hostel in Triplicane, Chennai, is an Indo-Saracenic structure designed in the style of residences at Oxford and Cambridge by Henry Irwin, Consulting Architect for the Madras Presidency. It was built in memory of Pundi Runganadha Mudaliar, Professor of Mathematics at Presidency College, who had died at the age of 45. The hostel housed students of Presidency College, and nearby colleges including the College of Engineering. Continue reading “Srinivasa Ramanujan: A Life in Infinity”

Forgotten Musicians: Lakshmi Shankar

This is the second in my series on forgotten musicians. It is on the life and music of Lakshmi Shankar, who was married to Rajendra Shankar, one of the Shankar brothers. Continue reading “Forgotten Musicians: Lakshmi Shankar”

Forgotten musicians: Mysore B.S. Raja Iyengar

My earliest recollection of listening to a music concert was sometime in 1966 or 1967. I was about five or six years old. The occasion was the inauguration of a temple built by FACT, which was set up in 1943 and is the oldest fertilizer company in India. My father was there on deputation for a second term, this time to set up the Ambalamedu Division of the company, near Kochi. When the land was acquired, one or two villages were displaced, which became the subject of a famous short story, Sakshi, by T. Padmanabhan, celebrated Malayalam celebrated short story writer, who wrote the story after six years of enigmatic silence. Continue reading “Forgotten musicians: Mysore B.S. Raja Iyengar”

The Victoria Students Hostel

“In great cities, the great buildings tell you things you don’t know and remember things which you’ve forgotten. It’s a collective wisdom, an engine superior to your own intelligence. Architecture is the biggest unwritten document of history.”
—Daniel Libeskind, We mustn’t forget the deep emotional impact of the buildings around us – Special to CNN – 7/1/2015

“One century’s building is another century’s useful aberration.”
— Jane Jacobs, The Life and Death of Great American Cities

When great cities forget their great buildings, it evokes images of falling giant trees, burning libraries, blue whale victims losing their grips over ledges, abandoned parents, distant wails of unborn children, and wasted memories. A visit to the Victoria Students Hostel was one such experience, aberrations from the past. Continue reading “The Victoria Students Hostel”

The Nobel Week

I spent five days from 7 to 11 December 2019 at Stockholm, attending the Nobel Prize events. An article on my experience at these events was published in the OPEN magazine. A link is given below:

https://openthemagazine.com/features/five-days-abhijit-esther-stockholm/ Continue reading “The Nobel Week”

Menon and Menon

Against the background of two recent biographies, of V.K. Krishna Menon, by Jairam Ramesh (A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon, Penguin, 2019) and of V.P. Menon by Narayani Basu, I wrote an article in OPEN magazine titled “A Tale of Two Menons”. You can read it at the link below. Continue reading “Menon and Menon”