Archive of An Unknown

Indian National Congress party was founded in 1885. It was founded by Allan Octavian Hume. The first woman president was Mrs. Annie Besant in 1917. The first Indian woman president was Mrs. Sarojini Naidu in 1925. The only session presided over by Mahatma Gandhi was held in Belgaum in 1924. Calcutta hosted a maximum of 9 sessions, Madras 6, Bombay 4, Allahabad 3, Lahore 4, Lucknow 3, Nagpur 2, Ahmedabad 2 and ‘Bombay and Delhi combined’ 1. There was only one session held in Delhi, which was in 1932. Dadabhai Naoroji and Jawaharlal Nehru have been the president for 3 times. Sir William Wedderburn, Rash Behari Ghosh, Subhash Chandra Bose, Surendranath Banerjee, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Motilal Nehru have been the president for 2 terms. It has had English presidents. Yes, the party founded to fight against English imperialism had English presidents. The first Tamil president was C. Vijayaraghavachariar in 1920, the second S. Srinivasa Iyengar in 1926. Vijayaraghavachariar is religious. He...

I did really well in the interview. I think my year-long search has ended today. I got back home. Karthi was waiting anxiously. He was more keen on the results than I was. He kept saying, “If one of us got it, the other one would also get it soon. And, we can manage with one person’s salary until the other one starts earning.” Karthi and I didn’t become friends after coming to Bangalore. We studied together for four years. We were best friends from the first week of our college. We stayed in the same room in the hostel in the first year. We managed to stay together in the final year also. Even in the second year and third year, when we didn’t stay together, we always used to be together. He would be in my room or I would be in his depending on whoever woke up first. We would never go to eat without each other. There were a few friends like us. We were like an exception yet. A lot of our friends used to make fun of us. Some of them used to call us ‘twins’. Today, most of those friends h...

It was a hot dark summer night. I was chatting with multiple people at the same time, as I always do post midnight on almost all days. I always sit facing the window in my room. I was juggling between multiple windows on my Windows laptop and was looking out of my window every now and then as a reflex whenever I had to think about something. “Oops… Wrong Window!” is the bottom most unread message in my Messenger window. That made me curious about the previous message.   Aditya Kumar (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx) Sai Babu (Twitter ID: xxx, No Facebook ID) Mohammed Ali (Twitter ID: xxx, Facebook ID: xxx) ... A long list of names. I follow each one of them in the list. There are boys, girls, men, women, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, North Indians, South Indians and all types of people in the list. There is one thing common about all of them. Each one of them is an opinion creator in my country. Each one of them writes against the government all the time. They ask a lot of ...

  Those days, exactly at 10:00 pm, the electricity used to be cut for a minute and at 10:01 it would be back. The elders used to say, “They change the line”. Even today, I don’t understand what it means. I never experienced this phenomenon after I grew up.  One of those nights, the elders were playing Thayam , a South Indian board game, in our thinnai , a raised platform in front of the house, which every house used to have those days and I don’t see in the houses being built these days anywhere. Ram uncle, Lakshmi aunty, Abdul uncle and Meeran uncle were the players. There were five other people, three adults and two kids, watching the game. Vadi and I were the kids. It was 10:00 pm. The game was in a critical stage. The power went off as usual. Everyone was so engrossed in the game that no one was prepared for that minute. Within the first few seconds, almost everyone in the group cursed the ‘line man’ who would just be doing his job.  I was so well prepared for that mi...

“I can't think of marrying anyone else. I will stay unmarried forever then. Leave me alone.” This was my grandfather yelling at his favorite aunt.  “Don't talk like that, dear. Your dad can’t take it. I will ask your uncle to speak with him. I’ll speak with your mom too. One of you should come down. If both of you stay where you are, there is no end to this. Don't be adamant,” she tried to reason her brother’s point of view to her nephew.  “She's not an alien. Mathalapuram is just here. Just one and a half miles from here. Why is he this adamant for that? Let’s see. If a 45 year old man is so stubborn, a 20 year old young man, how stubborn will I be? I don't want you to speak with him for me. I'll take care of my problem. Leave it to me. Thank you.” “No, dear. What’s he saying? Isn't there a single girl in this entire village that you like? Nobody in this family has ever married anyone from outside. He wouldn’t mind a girl from a different caste. But he won’...

While entering the palace, the king turns to his chief minister Iyer, “Mr. Iyer! Do you have any details around why the Pandyas shifted their capital from Korkai to Madurai? Why did they move from Madurai to Tenkasi again? Would you be able to do some research tonight and come back to me with the details tomorrow?” “Sure, Your Majesty! I did hear about the confusion that is bothering you these days. It’s a good idea indeed. We don’t need to do everything in one shot. We can have two capitals for now,” suggested the chief minister.   “Wow! You got to know about that as well? What sharp ears you have!”   The chief minister smiles.   ***   The palace in the town has given a feeling to the people of the town that they have an illustrious history. As Nagalapuram was on the northern border of the country, the Ettayapuram King built a palace here as well. He wanted to have dual capitals initially. That’s why he built a palace here. He built a tunnel connecting the two towns...