Colour and tricolour

On my way to the Chennai Central station to take a train out tonight. Got rather excited at seeing the Ripon Building all lit up, but this is all I could get of it on my phone.

Maybe the colours were to mark Mahavir Jayanti, though I would have assumed white to have been the colour of choice in that case. The Ripon Building was fitted out with a 'dynamic lighting' system in June last year. A little over 200 light-units have been placed around the building, each of which could take on various combinations of the primary colours red, green and blue. Had thought of checking out the building on Independence Day last year, but missed that and also this year's Republic Day, both of which would have seen the building decked out in the tricolour. 

Sheer coincidence then, that my scramble to click a picture also got a tricolour painted on the wall of the bridge. I have no idea how I managed to get all of these in one shot!

 

Question back

It was unreasonably exciting to be back at an open quiz after... well, quite a while. The Republic Day quiz began in 2002 as something of a counterbalance to the Landmark Quiz, which has morphed into something else, I think. 

And the Quiz did not disappoint. Great questions, great participation, a celebration of the trivial and the esoteric. The school kids - there were quite a lot of them participating - were all enthusiastic to the extent that the Quizmaster had to shush them up every now and then, for fear that they'd give away the answers to the teams on stage. 

Came away feeling that it is time to get back into the quizzing groove. Soon, soon!

 

Republic day

Sixty-seven years ago, it was on this day that India formally declared itself to be a republic, with the constitution that had been adopted exactly two months before coming into force. The choice of this date is significant; between 1930, when the Indian National Congress 'officially' promulgated India's independence and 1947, when the country was actually granted independence (and Dominion status), January 26 was celebrated as Purna Swaraj Divas. With the Constitution of India coming into effect in 1950, the monarch of Britain ceased to be the Head of State and that power transferred to the President of India. That structure is replicated in each state of the Union of India. Part VI of the Constitution deals with the States, with Article 153 creating the position of Governor and Article 154 invests in him the executive power of the State, with a Council of Ministers to "aid and advise" the Governor. The position is something of an anomaly in that the people of the state have little say in who their Governor should be; a person is appointed to hold that post at the pleasure of the President of India. 

Tamil Nadu has been without a full-time Governor since August 31, 2016; the Governor of Maharashtra holds this position as an additional charge. It is not the first time this has happened, but on both the earlier occasions, it was the Governor of Andhra Pradesh who also played the role of Tamil Nadu's Governor. The first such was when Krishan Kant took charge for 55 days and the next was C. Rangarajan, who had a longer stint of six-and-a-half months. On neither occasion, however, did Tamil Nadu have to deviate from the practice of the Governor taking the salute at the State's Republic Day parade - it came very close to that in 1997, but Krishan Kant handed over charge to Fatima Beevi on January 25, ensuring that protocol was intact. This year has been the first time in Tamil Nadu that the Chief Minister takes the salute. 

What does all this have to do with the picture for the day? Not much, really. Except that I had seen two former Governors of West Bengal at The Hindu's LitForLife a few days ago; that got me thinking about why there has been such tardiness at finding a Governor for Tamil Nadu. Not that I have any answers for it, of course!