Posts Categorized: Sri Kantha

by Sachi Sri Kantha, January 6, 2017 ‘Better late than never’ has been one of my working mantras. So, I pen this memoriam to one of one of my benefactors and big fans of my writing, Dr. Alvapillai Vijayaragavan, a neurosurgeon of repute among Eelam Tamil doctors. Though a kin and living in Colombo, as… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, December 17, 2016 Recent death of Jayalalitha Jayaram (1948-2016), the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, generated quite a quota of elegies for her services to the cause of Eelam Tamils. These elegies noticeably hid one ugliest contribution of what Jayalalitha and her coterie did in April 2002. This was, after the… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, December 4, 2016 Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro bid adieu to millions of his fans, supporters and adversaries on November 25, 2016. Castro had thousands of fans, even in Sri Lanka. Certainly, I was one of them. He had charisma, which many of his political contemporaries (like Richard Nixon or Junius Jayewardene)… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, October 23, 2016 Part 36 Front Note by Sachi Through the courtesy of Mr. R. Kannan, fellow MGR biographer and friend, early this month, I received a copy of the 263 page book authored by journalist Sudhangan, who had published a book with a title, ‘Suddachu – Suddachu’ [I’ve Shot! I’ve… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 30, 2016 Charles Santiapillai, a brilliant Tamil zoologist of our generation, died on October 29, 2014. It is a pity that I came to know about his death only early this year. Quite a few appreciations about his career and character did appear in a few journals (listed at the… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 11, 2016 The fifteenth Anniversary passed by silently last month. Only three living individuals know about it. One is me. Other two are, Nadesan Satyendra (the founder editor of now defunct Tamil Nation website) and Dr. Rajan Sriskandarajah (the founder editor of sangam website). As 15 years had passed, I… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 23, 2016 The news that I read from the TamilNet about the death of Mr. Kurumbasiddy R. Kanagaratnam [https://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?catid=79&artid=38301] on June 22nd, saddened me. During my Peradeniya sojourn period (1977-1981), I had met this gentleman and was strongly influenced by his dedication to preserving the print documents which had been… Read more »

Part 35 by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 18, 2016 Front Note by Sachi Uploading of the complete text of the first 32 chapters of series in the Research Gate site (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sachi_Sri_Kantha) last February, under the title ‘Minimum Guarantee Ramachandran: A Life in Cinema and Politics’ has garnered 452 reads up to now. I appreciate the… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, June 9, 2016 Boxing champion Muhammad Ali meant different things to different people – to Americans and non-Americans, to Blacks and non-Blacks, to sportsmen and non-sportsmen, to journalists and non-journalists, to Muslims and non-Muslims, to Vietnam war participants and Vietnam war opponents. There are no boxing champions among the Tamils. But,… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, May 28, 2016 In the recently concluded 2016 general election to the Tamil Nadu State Assembly, the DMK party leader Muthuvel Karunanidhi (b. 1924) lost his chance to topple Jayalalitha (the AIADMK leader), his bete noire for the past quarter century. He will reach 92 in June 3rd. When 2021 comes… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, May 6, 2016 May 5, 1976 marked the 40th anniversary of the establishment of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). As an unusual tribute to the genius of Prabhakaran, I made an attempt to scan, how many times Velupillai Prabhakaran (1954-2009) made it to the New York Times. This has not… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, April 26, 2016 Part 34 For reasons known only to him, MGR had never described in his autobiography, written between 1970 and 1972, what happened at his Ramawaram Gardens residence on January 12, 1967. It turned out to be one of the most eventful days of his life. Many political commentators… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, March 16, 2016 MGR Remembered Part 33 A Conflict at the Movie Shooting of TholilaLi (Labourer, 1964) In the previous chapter, I had inadvertently omitted a 1964 MGR movie, TholilaLi (Labourer), in which M.R. Radha had co-starred with MGR. This was a Devar Films Production. According to the reminiscence of ace… Read more »

snake oil: n. informal. A substance with no real medicinal value sold as a remedy for all diseases. [New Oxford American Dictionary, 2001, p. 1613] The March 2nd issue of the New York Times carried a travel-related opinion piece by Joshua Hammer, which I consider nothing but snake oil. I checked on the profile of… Read more »

Front Note by Sachi Sri Kantha I contributed a regular column about Tamil personal names to the Tamil Nation (London) [August 12, 1992] print edition, under my pseudonym C.P. Goliard. As 23 years had passed since then, I revisit this vital theme on the onomastics of Tamil personal names and provide additional materials which were… Read more »

MGR Remembered Part 32 Additional details on MGR’s 1965 trip to Ceylon After reading Part 32, my friend and fellow MGR biographer R. Kannan had shared with me the information which had appeared in the DMK party’s organ Murasoli daily during October 1965, from Murasoli archives. I provide below the material he had extracted: “The… Read more »

The ninth death anniversary of humorist Art Buchwald (1925-2007) falls on January 17th. And for this occasion, I also release my 7th consecutive list of news-making individuals from South Asia (or of South Asian origin) for 2015. To repeat the three conditions that I have instituted for selection of the Art Buchwald Humor Awardees, (1)… Read more »