Tales of South India

The Reluctant Maami

I'll come out and confess this: I am an abject failure. A bitter let-down to a proud tradition and lineage, one who failed after barely trying, who lacked even a pallid and watery version of a single attribute required for success.

The Sublime and the Ridiculous

September blows in with cool winds and dazzling sunlight, the skies awhirl with lazily spinning leaves. A perfect day fades into a long, still night wracked by feverish coughs and disjointed dreams. Wild thoughts bubble up, puncturing the surface of sanity. A cool hand soothes a hot brow and in the twilight zone of delirious reflections and drifting reveries, one phrase repeats itself: plainly mad, plainly mad, plainly mad….

Here and There

North and South, West and East, the cities of New York and Madras would appear to have nothing in common. And indeed, the ways in which they differ are too numerous to list here, and would serve perhaps as a useful exercise to while away time on a rainy day. Yet, both these places, founded as early-modern colonial cities within a few years of each other (New York came into being around 1624, as New Amsterdam; Madras, in 1639), can proudly claim to be among the most culturally vibrant and diverse in their respective countries. And I, resident of one in body and the other in spirit, am the happy beneficiary of this.