Miscellaneous

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City Lights, Vanishing Stars

One December evening I climbed up to the mottai-madi, the bare terrace atop my parents’ four-floor apartment building in Chennai and waited for darkness to descend. The sun still hung low—an orange-red orb in the distance. Overhead, rose-ringed parakeets zipped towards their nightly roosts, squawking...

Martyr’s Corner by RKN

An RKN story which was part of the English syllabus in my BSc days. Just being in a textbook took away all the sheen from this brilliant story. So here it is in full glory -- after decades. A fine example of a master's work....

Cat in the Agraharam

The wealth of contemporary Tamil literature has always been just out of reach for readers like me who speak the mother tongue well enough but tend to stumble over the printed word. But you don't need Tamil roots to appreciate this new collection of translated...

Meenakshi and The Supernumerary Nipple

Legend says that the Pandya king, the ruler of Madurai, rejoiced at the birth of his daughter. She had beautiful eyes, like a pair of chiral fish. So she became Meenakshi, which is Sanskrit for “fish-eye”. The royal child had another physical characteristic, which the...

Veet — A Brick

And the conversation drifted to sons who don't take as good care of their ageing parents as they should. The blame shifts to the daughter-in-law. The son gets off the hook -- old story. Which reminds me of the "sthalapurana" or origin story of the...

A Writer Meets His Idol

At the age of 14, Dilip Kumar had become a wage earner for the family. They were members of a mercantile community from Gujarat. These immigrants to Tamil Nadu lived in Coimbatore and Chennai, the state's capital. The death of this father slammed the doors...