I am fascinated with Tamil politics & society. Incidentally, my Ph.D. looks at why Tamil Nadu performs relatively better than most other Indian states when it comes to provision of basic public services. As of now, there is a small selection of articles on Tamil Nadu spanning topics from government to cinema. Hopefully, this will grow with time…in the meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy this small selection.
Articles on Tamil Nadu
There is almost an invariant formula for a Tamil television serial: a catchy title song with an amateurish dance, three units of sentiment, one unit of crying (with joy or sorrow), and one unit of suspense towards the end. The formula gets repeated at least ten times a day across television channels. Where is imagination? [...]
Salsa in Madras: Social dance in a conservative city
Published by September 3rd, 2009 in Fun stuff, Naan fiction and Tamil Nadu. 0 CommentsMadras is one of those conservative cities that likes to keep its boys and girls at a safe distance. Parents clamour to get their children enrolled in colleges that are rather strict about this, and colleges have responded to this with enthusiasm. One famous college made a rule that girls will sit at the front [...]
Horray, Google News is now available in Tamil I have been a great fan of Google News for a few years now. So much so that I read most news starting here rather than through news papers or their websites. . A big lacuna with it was that Tamil news was not covered in this [...]
Obituray to a great soul: T R Vishwanathan (TRV)
Published by June 23rd, 2008 in India, Social Movements and Tamil Nadu. 3 CommentsT R Vishwanathan was one of the founding members of the communist movement in South Arcot District I met TRV for an interview two weeks ago. Though he was unwell and very old, he insisted on speaking to me. “I may have a heart attack and pass away anyday”, he said, “if I talk to [...]
A little note on how Hariprasad Chaurasia’s concert left me between agony and ecstasy Hariprasad Chaurasia is a man who never disappoints. I have been mesmerised for a while in every performance of his and always. Typically I walk out in a semi-trance with a feeling of ecstasy that only a great live music performance [...]


Powered by Wordpress & K2 | All rights reserved | Copyright CC | 2006