'An open market with democracy is better than Communism'

Chennai-based Indian School of Breathing founder Dr Sukanya tells Shobha Warrier how breathing and meditation are key to a happy and longer life.  Breathing can solve all your ailments and make you calm, so says Dr Sukanya, founder of the Indian School of Breathing. What she offers to people to remain calm revolves around yoga and meditation. "Calm" to her is care, accept, love and meditate. "You can achieve calmness by accepting whatever life has given you, and by loving yourself and ...

They were strangers who met on a bus. They believe God brought them together. Shobha Warrier reports on an incredible story of kindness and giving from Kerala. Here is an unusual story of two people from different faiths and different places with the hand of God uniting them in a bus. And this chance meeting is going to change both their lives. Father Sebastian is a 41-year-old Catholic priest from Kottayam, presently stationed at Chalakkudy. Rasad Mohammed is a 30-year-old from Alappuzha ...

Indian cinema doesn't mean just Hindi cinema; excellent films are made in many other languages in India, says Shobha Warrier, who also feels the national media gave the impression that Hindi films swept the National awards which is far from the truth. Year after year, when the National Awards are announced, I feel angry and frustrated. No, I am not a Malayalam or Tamil film chauvinist. Nor do I get angry when good “Indian” films are ignored and less ...

Prof T Pradeep talks about the nano material he and his associates have fabricated and how it can be used in an affordable water filter in an interview with Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier. Professor T Pradeep is a professor of Chemistry at IIT, Madras, with research interests in molecular and nanoscale materials. One of the notable inventions of the professor with about 50 patents is the material he and his students invented at the IIT, Madras lab named, Biopolymer-reinforced synthetic granular ...

Sri Lankan Tamil poet and journalist Theepachelvan Pratheepan shares the experiences of his petrified childhood days spent in the war-torn island nation with Rediff.com’s Shobha Warrier. He was born when the ethnic conflict and the war broke out in 1983 in Sri Lanka. He grew up listening to fighter planes hovering over his head and watching men, women and children walking hundreds of kilometres in search of safety. There had to be an outpouring of the troubled mind that saw blood, gore, ...

Ever since the Sivagiri Mutt in Kerala invited Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the chief guest of the Sree Narayana Dharma Meemamsa Parishad, Kerala politics has taken a new direction. What has become interesting is the coming together of two major Hindu groups -- the Shree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam and the Nair Service Society. Till now, the SNDP, largely representing the Ezhavas and the NSS representing the Nairs in Kerala, had resisted sharing the same platform. Now, the ...

'What I have been going through for the last 17 years is much more than what I suffered in those 42 days.' 'I am dying every single moment of my life for the last 17 years,' the Suryanelli gang-rape case victim tells Shobha Warrier. As I travel from Thiruvananthapuram to Kottayam to meet the person known as the 'Suryanelli girl', I was quite nervous. I knew it was inhuman on my part to make her rewind to what had happened to her 17 years ago, and go through the harrowing moments again. She was ...

It was five years ago that I spent an evening with Lalgudi Jayaraman, but the music still rings in my ears and the images are still fresh in my memory, writes Shobha WarrierBlessed were those moments that were spent with the legendary Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, D K Pattammal and violin maestro Lalgudi Jayaraman. It was magical to listen to Semmangudi humming Carnatic ragas as he lay on his canvas chair with his eyes closed. It was also magical to sit on the floor along with the ...

Recently, a study on India's State Hunger Index comparing hunger across all India states was released by Purnima Menon, Anil Deolalikar and Anjor Bhaskar. Dr Purnima Menon is a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute's Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division, and is based at IFPRI's Asia office in New Delhi. She conducts applied nutrition research in the South Asia region, with a focus on programs and policies to improve maternal and child nutrition. Now, she leads ...