March 2020 - A Central Banker's Miscellany

Blogging in times of Covid-19

Blogging in times of corona

I think it was Bertrand Russell (or maybe it was Bernard Shaw) who in the introduction to one of his books speculated as to what an exiled Greek statesman or a Chinese bureaucrat would have done in the olden days. A discredited Greek statesman, according to him, would have gathered a motley group of warriors and organized a revolt against the city state. On the other hand, a discredited Chinese official would have retired to the hills and written poetry. Continue reading “Blogging in times of Covid-19”

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”

A Case of Two Lullabies

This article was first published in Business Standard on 16 March 2013. It is a comment on the controversy around the lullaby in the film Life of Pi. It was alleged that the lullaby was plagiarised from a 200-years old lullaby in Malayalam, composed by Irayimman Thampi in 1813 on the occasion of the birth of his nephew, Swati Tirunal, already anointed the ruler of Travancore. The original lullaby continues to be very popular even today in the State of Kerala, India, where Malayalam is spoken. Continue reading “A Case of Two Lullabies”

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”

A Tale of Two Menons

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”. See here. An earlier version is below: Continue reading “A Tale of Two Menons”