BS Murthy

When Roopa entered the bathroom that morning, the very thought that Raja Rao had his bath there earlier thrilled her sensuality, and as she undressed herself, she recalled his searching gaze that insensibly made her imagine him in that setting, which in turn, has induced pulsations in her frame that furthered her craving for his possession. So, showering herself leisurely and sighing for him longingly, at length, she reached for her soap, but seeing theirs, she was drawn to it impulsively. Thereafter, in her bath of fantasy, the soap became a fetish that freshened as well as excited her in equal measure. Then in the evening, When Sandhya came out from the bathroom, Roopa tried to goad Raja Rao into it, but as he insisted that he would shower later, she went in there disappointed. Nevertheless, after her fetish-less bath, about to clear the clothesline, she changed her mind and chose to leave her dirty linen behind. ‘Surely, he would scan my innerwear,’ she thought thrilled about th...

An origination is the outcome of the desire of a group of co-activists of a given calling to organize their group activity effectively and profitably. Given that an organization needs a hierarchy to function, and, indeed, to exist, the group seeks to create one for it. The hierarchy, then, comes into being by the process of election, selection, and / or both for the ostensible purpose of promoting the interests of the group to which it owes its existence. Human nature being what it is, each member of the group, though working for the group interests at large, seeks to promote or at least protect his individual interests, within the group, as he perceives them. It is this compulsion that influences the nature and quality of the hierarchy. As can be expected in such a background, the leadership naturally passes on to those individuals who generally seem to represent the common interests of the group. This is essentially a status-quo approach to leadership selection, which severely...

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had set out to determine ‘whether there can be a legitimate political authority, since people’s interactions he saw at his time seemed to put them in a state far worse than the good one they were at in the state of nature, even though living in isolation’. Consequently, he had formulated The Social Contract ‘as the best way to establish a political community, in the face of the problems of commercial society’, with the immortal opening line, Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains, that is literally true for over two centuries now. However, the socio-religious circles of individual freedom came to vary from society to society, in times to times; and the objective of this piece is to take a cursory look at the same. In this context, it should be noted that traditionally, societies world over, for the most part, tended to restrain women in chains that are far too shorter than Rousseau’s Chains that bound men, and that ensues female freedoms are enca...

“It’s the managerial environment in the organization that is the cause of delay,” read a middle-level manager’s one line rejoinder to the full page memo from his boss. Succinctly put, it summaries the perceptions of most managers at different levels in the Indian organizational setting about the environment in which they are called upon to operate. Their ineffectiveness is attributed to the incapacitating organizational atmosphere in which they are the supposedly undeserving victims. It is another matter, however, that few would bring themselves to expressing exasperation so forthrightly to the presiding powers of their career destiny. Though the causes are many and vary with each organization, the effect is singular and universal - a working environment perceived by many as choking. Root Cause It is this feeling of alienation in managers from the very management body they are expected to provide the soul with, which is the root cause of many ills afflicting the Indi...

The raise of Narendra Modi in the Indian political firmament has brought to the fore the debate on nationalism and anti-nationalism, like never before, and that too with a rare patriotic fervor. With the unfolding events in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, it’s as if the ‘secular’ left and the ‘Hindu’ right have drawn battle lines for what could be a decisive ideological war on the Indian patriotic front.  While the hitherto ideologically muzzled majority is shrill over the campus ranting of ‘bharat ki barbaadi’ as an anti-national activity, the religiously-rooted minorities, backed by high-decibel left-liberals, have come to articulate that ‘Afzal teri katil zindahai’ sloganeering is just an instance of ‘free speech’, that too enshrined in the constitution. Contrast this with the universal taboo on Nazi symbolisms that ironically include the Hindu Swastika, imaginatively ‘tilted’ by Adolf Hitler for artistic effect. And all this is so long after our British colo...

That 9/11 in 2001, when some of the 44 passengers aboard the Al Qaeda-hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 came to know about the carnage of the World Trade Center through their cell-phones, realizing that their lives would soon end in the debris of some notable building, maybe the White House itself, they had conveyed to the callers their intent to unnerve the hijackers to avert further damage to their nation, only to perish in the process shortly thereafter.   But three years earlier, when the Indian Airlines Flight 814 was hijacked by Islamic militants to Kandahar in 12/1999, the families of its 178 passengers managed to build the public opinion for their trade off with terrorists jailed in Indian prisons, which eventually pushed the government in that direction. Whatever might have been the on-board mood of the passengers-in-captivity, the symphony of joy played out at their family reunions carried no jarring note of it having come at the cost of their nation’s well-being! ...

The refrain of a rapist is that he was unjustly arraigned even though the bitch of the accuser had equally enjoyed the fling. While the woman’s possible yielding to the rapist and her probable acquiescence during the act cannot be equated to her having had sex with him on her own volition, her violator’s averment that she enjoyed sex with him is akin to adding insult to her injury. Given that rape is ‘the act of forcing a woman to have sexual intercourse against her will’, the chemistry of female injury is better appreciated by visualizing the physics of male force. Where else is there a better laboratory for that than a household to test the characteristics of the sexes, and to develop the matrix of rape, we must discern the moulds of sex in the minds of the couple. Let us begin with man, the sexual aggressor. Should he be half-hearted about lovemaking, a woman, with her advances, might yet lead him onto the sexual track, and by the same token, a man-in-mood could nudge his of...

The tragic tale of Prince Andrei and Natasha Rostov in Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” that is the centerpiece of Tolstoy’s masterpiece is a brilliant depiction of the fallibility of life, sublimity of love and serenity in death. Andrei was a middle-aged widower and Natasha was still in her teens when love happened to them. While Natasha’s parents welcomed their romance, Andrei’s father was scornful about the match of that ‘chit of a girl’ from the family of no fortune or rank of consequence. However, he gives in subject to the condition that Andrei should put it off for a year and stay abroad during that period. “And then if your love or passion or obduracy – whatever you choose – is still as great, marry!” says the old man.    After their secret engagement with the consent of the Rostovs, Natasha’s parents, Andrei tells his betrothed,   “Hard as this year will be for me, it will give you time to be sure of your own heart. I ask you to make me happy at the end of a ...

While in his personal disposition, a liberal is ‘open-minded, not prejudiced’ (his heart), his ideological underpinnings are ‘favouring individual liberty, free trade and moderate political and social reform’ (his mind). On the other hand, a leftist is someone who vouches for ‘radical socialism that advocates the political and economic theory of social organization, wherein a whole community owns and controls the means of production, distribution, and exchange’. Thus, the left-liberal tag that is loosely bandied about by assorted politicos and upstart elites in the arena of political correctness is nothing but an oxymoron brand. Be that as it may, even as these left-liberals tend to wear their hearts on their sleeves, yet they lock-up their minds in closets of bias. Consider the liberals’ holistic hostility towards capitalism, wherein ‘goods are produced and distributed through private investments’, though it is in synchrony with their ideological moorings of ‘favouring indi...