The 136-year-old baby, argues Shyam G Menon, is taking a tiny step to tackling the biggest dread of old age: Change.

People may line up to see Rahul Gandhi, given he is currently, the only major politician speaking of inflation and unemployment in an India bombarded daily by Right-wing delusion. The challenge is how to transfer the goodwill into votes when the object of curiosity is surrounded by usual suspects and sycophants, observes Shyam Menon.

The Bengal Tiger, the Asiatic Lion and the more widespread leopard have had to swallow their pride. Rarely has the prime minister turned up in person, sun hat and camera at the ready, to welcome a member of the big cat family, notes Shyam G Menon.

Given the fiercely competitive political environment, observers naturally associated an element of appeasement with the Shinde government's move, Shyam G Menon points out.

If you are serious about countering the Chinese threat, then the best weapon is investing in real freedom, plurality, elections and democracy. Unfortunately, it isn't an approach all Indians currently seem to agree on, asserts Shyam G Menon.

Kerala will be one of those places where the line between tourism, a land, a people and their way of life will blur. It won't be tourism; it will be a visit to experience Kerala.

If they can sit together and hammer out 'Black Sea Initiative' deal for much needed food shipments, surely, they should be able to address the madness of the larger military conflict?

Agnipath may be an exercise to address the genuine needs of the armed forces. But overall, it betrays the tendency to use the military and paramilitary for employment generation and shaping a national character, instead of treating them as the professional services they are, notes Shyam G Menon.

If it doesn't do that, what Uddhav Thackeray postpones addressing today will be there on the table to confront, for whoever anchors the Sena in the years ahead, observes Shyam G Menon.

With its political colour dominated by less than democratic trends, BRICS currently leaves some of us wondering -- where in this grouping is there an assurance that human freedom will be respected unconditionally? It would be nice to see the new members of BRICS drawn from the ranks of countries wedded to preserving and guarding human freedom, observes Shyam G Menon.

Silverline seems symptomatic of how Kerala -- its claimed education, awareness and all -- overlooks its real problems, notes Shyam G Menon.

The country may become militarily impressive, pile on GDP and the durbar of the ruling party may fill with the wealthy indebted to the rulers for their riches. But the spontaneous camaraderie of a free people will diminish and with it, our shared ownership of the country, warns Shyam G Menon.

'What would we feel if we found the world behaving the way it has?' 'Forced to fight our own prolonged battle; nobody from outside really demanding that the war end or actively working to make it end, and above all, a completely toothless United Nations reduced to pleading for a halt to the violence,' notes Shyam G Menon, exactly a month after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.

Notwithstanding how the current impasse is solved, at some point in the future, Russia will realise that just as centuries ago it developed the paradigm of securing its heartland's safety through annexing vast buffer zones between itself and the enemy, a more modern security is possible only through friendly relations and sustainable peace, observes Shyam G Menon.

He appears to prefer controlled environments and secure, guided outcomes. In this format, he seems to be at home across scales ranging from a studio-based interview to giant stadiums. It highlights the significance of control in the ruling dispensation's idea of narrative, observes Shyam G Menon.

Without periodic booster shots to display of strength, how is this government what it aims to be? There was also the landscape of prosperity pictured; the in-season affair with 'amrit' stretched to a longer residence in 'Amrit Kaal', notes Shyam G Menon.

What we have in the Congress is a useful glue to hold a non-cultural, unified Opposition together. That is the sacrifice the Congress must be willing to live with if showing the BJP the door is what the collective Opposition wants, observes Shyam G Menon.

A great war memorial goes beyond the list of dead, to contemplation of the phenomenon of war. To me as a civilian, it didn't matter that our war memorial stood under India Gate, a creation of the British; it didn't matter that it didn't name all the fallen. The fact that we embraced it and respected it made it an unforgettable war memorial, notes Shyam G Menon.

College is where the manicured view of the world provided by one's family, encounters new trends. It is the dawn of exploration. Wishing for a sanitised bubble on campus appears hypocritical. The correct strategy, one would assume, is to weed out the violence while retaining the right to political debate, argues Shyam G Menon.

Sure we understand that isolating affected communities is part of the pandemic protocol, but we don't wish our life and freedom to be tossed aside at the slightest excuse, states Shyam G Menon.