Madras Musings

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Tamil Books, with Taste and Rigor

When I first met S. Ramakrishnan at his Tiruvanmayur office, I carried with me a glossy paperback of Dilip Kumar’s Ramavum Umavum. He gently prised it out of my hands and replaced it with the Cre‑A edition — the same text, but dressed in surreal...

Eyes of Madras 2.0

The last article I filed with my beloved editor. There was not a cloud in the January sky when I stepped into the C.P. Art Centre, the venue of Eyes of Madras 2.0, an annual street photography exhibition. Inside, thanks to the vivid streetscapes on...

The Knowledgeable Chennai Crowd

The cricket stadium in Madras has always been a mythical place to me. I have never once been there though I grew up in the city. Chennai’s M. A. Chidambaram stadium in Chepauk is considered the home of the “knowledgeable cricket crowd.” Who coined this...

A Grandmother Remembered

...or an ode to all women whose labor -- physical and emotional -- was dismissed as duty. “Don’t come too close,” our normally affectionate grandmother would beseech us. (மேல படாதே, மேல படாதே was the refrain in Tamil.) Once she had showered, no one --not even...

S.S. Vasan, wife Pattammal and son Balasubramaniyan at the terrace of Gemini House. Picture Courtesy: Musings Archive.

Tales from Gemini Studios

Recently, my American nephew asked if we could visit Gemini Studios, the next time we both find ourselves in the old hometown Madras, present-day Chennai. I tell the American teenager the studio had stopped making movies even by the time I was in my teens....

Amrutanjan and The American Legend

Chennai can be proud of having hosted the FIDE Chess Olympiad of 2022 in style and at such short notice too. Believe it or not the seeds for this event may have been sown fifty years ago, in the United States. In 1972, at the...