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GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI
'Visalam' is a small street side Cafe in Madurai where you can have the best kaapi that can be had at a predawn hour.
T.Sadasivam, MS Subbulakshmi's husband had once told Gopalkrishna Gandhi, "If there is one place where you can get steaming, soft idlis and fresh hot kaapi even at 4 in the morning, it is Madurai."
Excerpts from Kumbakonam Via London, With Stopover in Madurai in The New Sunday Express of 23.08.2026 by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
LN - GOPALKRISHNA GANDHI REMINISCES - LAKSHMI NARASIMHA RANGARAJAN IFS
My family knew him well. In 1962, when LN was serving in the national capital between postings abroad, he once strode into our home in Delhi, cigarette glowing between his lips to 'just drop by for a cup of kaapi' - something no one does anymore. It so happened everyone but I was out, In order to not make me feel utterly valueless, he set me down to talk about the two subjects I was studying in college. "Have you read anything by Toynbee?" he asked. I sheepishly admitted to having not read or even heard of the great writer. "What? And you say you are doing BA Honours in English Literature with history as a subsidiary? Shocking." And with that admonition, he proceeded to recite from memory lines from Toynbee's A Study of History, "Not just because it is history, but for the language. Read the book and remember its priceless lines." Lesson over, he bade me goodbye.
The writer quotes a news item datelined London, August 14.
"Senior UK executive Gautam Rangarajan has been appointed adviser to Prime Minister Andy Burnham on structure and process." Gautam, said the report, has worked for BBC as group director for strategy and performance, with music as his forte. It added: he is a son of Ambassador LN Rangarajan and Joyce Rangarajan. Wow, I said to myselfr. Here we have our own LN's son advising the British PM, noless. The report also informed that Gautam's brother Vijay is chief executive of Britain's Electoral Commssion. Wow again.
Celebrating this news as I was, in came a mail from the nonagenarian Tamil and English writer 'Indira' Parthasarathi or EPaa, as he is known to his readers. Delighted like me by the news, he said that when he was a student at the Government Arts College in Kumbakonam during 1946-49, he read English literature from a teacher called Lakshminarasimha Iyengar. This venerable figure was not his teacher but a mentor. And he was, EPaa added, none other than the grandfather of Gautam Rangarajan and the father of LN Rangarajan.
EPaa said Lakshminarasimha Iyengar was so 'into' English literature that he had directed and staged Shakepeare's Antony and Cleopatra in Kumbakonam in 1948-49. "I was Cleopatra," EPaa wrote. And Lakshminarasimha Iyengar himself had played 'Antony'.
Lakshmi Narasimha Rangarajan is not a name many would recognise in India today. And even within the Indian Foreign Service, of which he was a shining star from 1956 to his death in 2013, many would not know him by that full name. But 'LN,' as Rangarajan was to friends and colleagues, was a redoubtable figure in the small world of scholar diplomats. LN was a scholar who became a diplomat. He remained a man of books while representing India in greece, Sudan, Tunisia Norway and Iceland.
Four decades later, after the admonition in 1962, I happened to move to Oslo and to the office he had held in that Nordic capital. One day I got a handwritten letter from LN in an aerogramme, a postal stationery all but extinct now. He had retired by then, with his gifted musician wife Joyce, to rugby in Warwickshire, England. Not idling away his time, he achieved renown as the creator of of a staggeringly insightful English translation of Kautilya's Arthashastra
Giving me useful tips on the work involved in being India's Ambassador to Norway, LN asked me in the letter if I had learnt to ski, a classical Norwegian pastime. He said he used to ski from the ambassadors' residence to the embassy at times. Like in Delhi in 1962, I once again had to say, this time in 2002, that I had not, preferring to be driven safely to work and back by the embassy chauffeur.
Excerpts from Kumbakonam Via London, With Stopover in Madurai in The New Sunday Express of 23.08.2026 by Gopalkrishna Gandhi
Adaptly is a rare adverb meaning in a suitable, convenient, or fitting manner.
It is an archaic or uncommon variation derived from the root word adapt.
If you meant the more common words adapt or adaptively, they mean changing or adjusting to fit new conditions.
Core Definitions
Adaptly: Doing something in a fit or suitable way.
Adapt (Verb): To change yourself or an item for a new use
.Adaptively (Adverb): Acting in a way that successfully reacts to change.
Common Examples
Adaptly: Used in older texts to mean suitably.
Adapt: "You must adapt to the new schedule.
Adaptively: The body responds adaptively to stress.":
Mylanchi (also known as maruthani or henna) is the Malayalam word for Henna and the traditional body art of applying henna designs to hands and feet during festivals, weddings, and celebrations in Kerala.
Common Design
Floral Motifs
Simple rose, lotus, or vine patterns on the palm
