Penguin India turns 25 this year and to celebrate this, they have a range of quirky merchandise based on popular Penguin titles – so there are mugs (The Great Indian Mug, A Suitable Mug), bags (ditto), keychains, notebooks, diaries… I want them all! I particularly like the idea of drinking from The Reluctant Mug – a daily reminder to cut down my coffee, perhaps?
My earliest memories of a library are of Murugan lending library in the neighbourhood of Adayar in Chennai where I grew up. This was my most eagerly awaited trip of the week, where I used to go with my father (and later on, by myself) to pick books. Comics, detective novels, classics – I...
Remember Baby Falak? In a country where babies, especially girls are abandoned and killed every day, the story of the bruised and battered two-year-old girl is not really new or particularly shocking. Now leave Baby Falak for a moment and travel with me across the country. To Tamil Nadu, which has one of the...
I am a big one for lists – I love making to-do lists (but necessarily the doing!) but rarely set goals. All along, I have been taking work as it comes without making ambitious and aggressive plans. No longer (I hope). 2012 is the year of the ambitious plans. So as a first step,...
Come December and Chennai begins to hum with the start of the kutcheri (classical music concert) season, referred to in the city simply as the “Season.” It’s one of the largest music festivals in the world, with more than 1,500 concerts over six weeks at various locations. The Season attracts not just aficionados of...
I am in a proper kolaveri about the way my story on the kolaveri song in the BBC has been mutilated – that staccato tone is just not my writing style. I have had journalist friends advising me to stop being possessive about my story once it has gone out of my hands into...