Kadambari – The mysterious one….

I started on this topic by chance. The plan was to get to the origin of a particular song. The song was one that I had previously written about, sung by the person I covered then, the sonorous Kozhikode Abdul Khader. The song being Padan orthoru madhurita ganam….as the words went ‘The sweet song th…

Walter Kaufmann

The man behind the AIR signature tune…. The other day I was sitting at our local Tamil restaurant in Cary and munching a rava dosa, happily musing about my days in Chennai (it was Madras when I was there, but not so long ago) and the fantastic food in Hari Nivas and so many other places, while at t…

Manu and her friends

Sometimes it is very difficult to separate the threads of truth from the vast fabric of a tale woven over decades. Such was the case as I set about unraveling the story of the girl named Manakarnika, fondly called Manu, the product of a family displaced by the tussle between the Marathas and the En…

Mahabali and his story

Onam is around the corner, Mahabali the Kathapurushan, dear to all Malayalees is on his way to visit all of us. But is he really well known to us other than the brief story we have all heard since childhood? Not that I know of and everybody takes him for granted. So, I started on a trip to find out…

Conan Doyle, Holmes and Watson….

I am a great fan of Sherlock Holmes stories, and have somewhat of a decent collection of Sherlock Holmes books, stories and publications. Having hovered in mind at the nonexistent 221 b Baker Street home of Sherlock Holmes and after passing by the street many a time, most characters have become fam…

Bachelor of Arts, Madras University 1870

BA as it was called was quite popular in the early parts of the century, and then it sort of fell by the wayside with the clamor for the 1st group, engineering, CA, medicine and management and much later Computer science, bio chemistry and so on. BA has now lost all its allure; not very many go fo…