Congress workers celebrate with a langar following the party’s victory in Kerala, New Delhi, May 4, 2026 There is an inimitable French expression — ‘ennui’. I first came across it while reading Jean-Paul Sartre as a university student in Thiruvananthapuram in the mid-sixties. It roughly translates as a feeling of listlessness, profound boredom, and dissatisfaction …
Ruminations on the ‘Vimochana Samaram’
Kerala Chief Minister EMS Nambooripad (L) received Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (C) at Thiruvananthapuram Airport, Circa 1958. Today marks the 60th anniversary of the dismissal of the communist government in Kerala. It is a poignant occasion to do some reality check on the democratic foundations of the Indian state. Clearly, it is apparent to the …
Why Kerala balked the Modi wave
Through the looking glass of a staunchly ‘secular-minded’ Malayali — a dirty word in the current idiom when triumphalist cultural nationalism is on the march — the Indian election results evoke mixed feelings. On the one hand, there is the wave of fear, anxiety, despair raging in the mind as one surveys the dismal national …