Ponniyin Selvan. It is an obsession that has followed me since the time I read the book when I was a teen. It is an obsession that continues till, and no doubt will continue till I live. I first read Ponniyin Selvan right after my Class 10 exams. It is a five part historical fiction…
Category: India
Coup d’état, small town style!
It was 9 PM. Men and women in groups of three and four were whispering in a remote village in a district in rural Tamil Nadu. After an interval, of say 15-20 min, a person from one group would move to the other to keep them abreast of the discussion, again in a whisper. That…
Coronavirus diaries: A weekend at mountainous forest in Kanyakumari
After 9 months of staying at home due to the pandemic, my family and I decided to take a short break. It is rare for us as a family to go on vacation. Well, we rarely go for vacations. But all of us needed a break from being home and what better place than a…
Story of sweet rice fritters from South India to Indonesia
One of the best things about Karthikai Deepam (a light festival celebrated in Southern India), is sweet appam (rice fritters). I love this snack. I remember waking up to the wafting aroma of fried coconuts and cardamom as my mom makes the appam batter. I had always looked forward to eating it in the evening. …
Aadi perukku by the river, once upon a time in Nagercoil
Ramu could still hear the river Pazhayar burbling its way through this small settlement near its bank in Nagercoil, where he grew up. Nagercoil is a small town in the Southern tip of India, Kanyakumari. Few feet from the river bank is a Shiva temple that he frequented after bathing in the river. A little…
Mookuthi Amman movie: A movie for laughs, Urvashi’s acting and its picturesque setting, Nagercoil
I was not sure if I wanted to watch the Amman movie Mookuthi Amman. I have grown up watching Amman movies and honestly was tired of the run of the mill good-trumps-evil-to-save-the-pious heroine stories. I ended up watching it anyway at my cousin’s insistence. According to my cousin, the movie was unlike any other Amman…
No Filter: The inside story of Instagram by Sarah Frier is a page turner
Really late to this Instagram book party, but I finally completed Sarah Frier’s brilliant book on Instagram, ‘No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram’. I loved it, like I would love any book that is pacy and addictive. And No filter totally was. For, I did not enjoy it as a mere reader but as…
Poo pallaki festival in Bengaluru that took me back to my hometown in rural Tamil Nadu
Poo pallaki, palanquin made of flowers, in Ulsoor, Bengaluru was one of those festivals I thought was restricted to rural areas. In the month of April, temples in and around the area spend weeks decorating the chariot with flowers before placing the Temple idols inside for a parade. The parade, which starts at 5 am,…
Nandi temple where turtles, gold fishes, sword tails swim carefree
What to do in Bengaluru over a weekends? Pub hopping. Ok, but I would like something else. What do you recommend? That question is a lot harder to answer considering the kind of city Bengaluru is. The city’s weather is amazing, but its public transport system sucks and so does its infamous traffic. Considering all…
Where people voluntarily walk on the bed of fire
On that Sunday evening Ulsoor, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Bengaluru, was anything but calm unlike every other Sundays. It was late evening. People were milling around what appeared to be a large rectangular pit. That was until a group of men, in the age group of 30s to 40s, filled the pit with…
Rice wine that connects the Asian countries
It is not always you meet great group of people when you go for conferences. Most times you just end up wishing for conferences to get over so that you can go back home. Other times you find amazing company that you have a blast irrespective of how the conference goes. I’m not sure if…
Festivities in a rural town
There was never a short of festivals when you are growing up in rural areas. More so when you are close to river, in the banks of perennial river Periyar. People from across the district come to our village for cleansing the idols before the pooja. Often, apart from priests the group also contains folk…
A journalist's diary 