Bhavana penned

I have had heard a lot about Dracula novel and movie by Kiran (my husband). He loves classic novels and he is slowly introducing me to them. I should say I am enjoying reading the classic novels and the language the classic authors’ uses are unbeatable. The stories in classic novels revolve around usage of the language  by the authors and lots of descriptions are used in order for the reader to picture the weather, feel the love and lust, sweat with horror and to smell the sweet smell of the nature. A reader can imagine a lot and every time classic novels are re-read, the picture from the descriptions becomes clearer. After reading Harry Potter series, the story of Dracula to me is mediocre. But the way it is written is so different. The Author Bram Stoker uses a different and very effective method in this novel. He has written this novel as the collection of diaries and journals written by the characters. During 19 th century, then educated people used to write journals and d...

In March 2007, Infosys BPO had its new building in Brno city center and Narayana Murthy was one of the Guests along with Czech President Vaclav Klaus. We decided upon lighting of a candle as an Indian tradition by the guests and I drew rangoli and decorated it with flowers. The lamps were lit and the function went smoothly. Few of us (outstanding performers apparently) were invited for dinner with Narayana Murthy and I never thought in my life that I would be sitting with him for dinner. During this occasion, there as one lady from Bulgaria and when she introduced herself that she is from Bulgaria , Mr. Murthy, said he would like to tell one of his encounters with Bulgarian authorities during communist regime (sometime in 1974). Mr. Murthy was hitch hiking in the location called Nis , a border town between former Yugoslavia , now Serbia , and Bulgaria . He was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore , India . Mr. Murthy was dropped by a driver to Nis railway st...

I was 6 years old when our Kannada film director Puttanna Kanagal died and even today I fondly remember his movies and most kannadigas do so too. He was one the best in the industry (I can say, one of the best in entire Indian film industry itself!!) who made movies on social evils and issues such as handicapped people's life, life of prostitute, life of a wife whose husband becomes impotent, life of a doctor who falls in love with his mental patient and cures her and after cured she falls in love with someone else and then he goes mad, about education in villages and politics in the education system, life of conservative village and women's life in conservative village and the pros and cons of inter-religious relationships in conservative villages, women's independence, theme of psychological problems, double standards applied to men and women, lonely life of an actress and so on. Most of these films were based on Kannada novels and Puttanna himself wrote the screenpla...

During these cynical days in India with scams, corruption and so on, I felt its good to look at the bright side of our country. Comparing India to all the big economies and big countries, ours is truly heterogeneous society. We have 1000’s of languages spoken and we are fairly tolerant to each other. All the other biggest developing countries (BRIC- Brazil, Russia, India and China) either have one language (Brazil and Russia) or maximum 2 languages (China). So we should be proud that we are fairly getting along well. We as an >independent republic< are a very young country and democratically strong. There are people who might not know any history of India and history of democratic rule and its consequences AND history of authoritarian rule and its consequences and there are many who might not understand the strength of democracy since we never studied it properly in our schools nor soceity gives any importance to history. Democracy can be understood when we read our history ...