Words that I enjoyed writing and reading in this bizarre, extraordinary year. Wish you a new year that takes forward your learnings from this year and gives you joy, health and memorable experiences! Writing – mine Being a committed fan: In which I try to pack together my disoriented feelings about being a Rahman fan…
Ten Songs for Navaratri
This Navaratri, I sang a Carnatic song every day. This may have been my most regular singing experience in nearly 10 years, since I practiced with a group to put on a Hindi film classics concert in Singapore. I have a strained relationship with Carnatic music, having felt much pressure to perform well – whether…
I Dream of Airports
I write this sitting in the comfort of my home, secure in the knowledge that my loved ones and I are safe. As the pandemic settled in India and we started working from home, I looked at my calendar on the wall, where I tracked trips, multiple-day meetings, and fun evenings out, and struck out…
Being a Committed Fan
Originally published here on Spark. In the concert film One Heart, AR Rahman refers to his fans who were five or six years old when he released his first couple of albums, and how the Intimate Concert series (which One Heart follows) is made up of songs for these fans, now in their late 20s – his earliest…
Russia on my mind
(not another travel story) About a month ago, I finished ‘A Gentleman in Moscow’ by Amor Towles. It was a long book and took me about a month in between cooking, work from home and trying to keep it all together. But I also took my time reading it – relishing it, stopping frequently to…
Paruppu Usili for Peace
On a sunny but chilly afternoon in Amsterdam in 2018, VK and I took two ‘resolutions’. One was to somehow bring Tamil to centrestage in our lives, for despite being Tamilians born and raised in Madras, both of us could not sustain a conversation in Tamil any longer, didn’t know much of Tamil history and…
How I like my entertainment in gloomy times
I like it funny, hopeful, short and colourful. In a world that is engulfing many of us in different levels of despair, desperation and helplessness, I seek escape through entertainment. This has been a trend for a few years now, where I’ve expressly avoided dark, gritty, realistic films or series (except for The Game of…
In times of the C-word
There seems to be only one thing to talk about these days, and no matter how hard you try, you go back to it. What will we remember of these days (or weeks or months :O) of social isolation, work from home, quarantines and economic losses? What do we have to be cheerful about? This…
On 2020, and on writing for 15 years.
Hello, dear reader. Wish you a fabulous 2020! As we wrap up a year and a decade, I wanted to share with you a little bit about my journey as a writer. I started my blog ‘The Musings of a Chennai Gal‘ in 2005 and filled it with teenage angst, passion and idealism. Through these…
The story of a ballet. In two acts.
(This might be the last of my stories from my trip to Russia. Maybe. ) Act I: A ballet in sandals By day two of my trip to Russia, I was sick. A cold that made it seem like my face was stuffed with cotton wool. I struggled to breathe and a headache made me…