Reflections

Picture from www.bbc.co.uk Two of the greatest icons of pre independence India who still wield immense influence over the minds of Indians of today were born within a couple of years of each other barely a kilometer or so as the crow flies in the city of Calcutta, then the capital of the British empire which seemed destined to last a thousand years. I refer, of course to Rabindranath Tagore and Vivekananda, one the poet philosopher who was, as Amit Ghosh once put it, the first global literary superstar and who was the conscience keeper of the Indian independence struggle. The other was the person who interpreted Hinduism in a way that many had not for a thousand years away and set up a Mission in the name of his master which is till today one of the biggest and most important educational and service organization in the country. It is surprising therefore to find that these two savants barely acknowledged each other’s existence and there is only one unequivocal record of a meeti...

On July 12, one hundred and seven years ago, a boy was born in the small Chilean town of Parral some 350 km south of the capital, Santiago. His father was a small time railway employee and his mother, who was a teacher who died very soon after his birth. This boy, Ricardo Eliezer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto, was to become one of the twentieth century’s most famous and well loved poets, Pablo Neruda. Neruda was lifelong communist. He became one during his stint in Spain during the Civil War and clung to his ideology despite the infamous revelations of later years. This led to many estrangements, most famously from his longtime friend, Octavio Paz, another legendary poet, who could not stomach his admiration for Stalin. While today it is easily possible to see Stalin for the monster he undoubtedly was, it was not so plain to people in the days of the Second World War when Stalin and communist Russia stood basically alone against the all conquering Germans. The British had drawn back to their...