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Tyagaraja  “Naa jayammunu joochi nammare devuni” Last August, senior musician O.S.Thyagarajan was performing at Mumbai’s Shanmukhananda Sabha. One after other Tyagaraja kirtanas flowed. It was blissful, but was a surprise as well. It was not specifically a Tyagaraja festival, but one was delighted. Just a few days before that an article appeared that tried to portray a composer, revered as a Saint by singers of many generations now not in the right spirit. The writer had tried to show Carnatic Music is inherently casteist and how it is proved from what Tyagaraja himself had written in his famous Gowlai Pancaratna Kriti, ‘Dudugukala’ in one of the Caranams. Coming soon after the publication of that article, perhaps many in the audience would have been grateful to OST for making his whole concert a homage to Tyagaraja. OST brought out the greatness of Tyagaraja in all his true colours. When he sang ‘Sattaleni dinamulu vaccena’ in Naganandhini, Tyagarja’s lament on the nat...

I got a lesson in how not to tell stories to our children about our past, about our puranas, itihasas and our festivals recently. My cousin who grew up in Kerala, went to school there apparently commented that what a state it is to celebrate a fall guy. How insensitive, arrogant it is I thought when I heard his mother say this, and immediately told her, don’t we celebrate Narakasura on Diwali. There is a problem about how we look at our festivals, and how we narrate our puranas and itihasas to our children. For long I have been irked by, should I say the western way of looking at every festival as “victory of good over evil”.  We have no clear good and evil, for an evil can transform to good, a saintly soul can turn a sinner. I am still angry at what my cousin had said, for his parents now live not very far from the Thirukatkarai temple, the Lord who graced Bali. When we were there last week, Onam utsavam was in full swing and we had darshan of Thirukatkappan as Nar...

I had to write this as a follow up to the Slander post that I wrote in June. Sunday, September 4th Raghuram Rajan will leave Reserve Bank of India, handing over the reins to Urjit Patel. By now many questions would have been raised on the choice of Patel, markets reacted, and Prime Minister’s detractors taking their usual potshots at the Ambani connection. But, in all this the man who went against Rajan, first mainly on him being not fully Indian has endorsed Patel. Subramaniam Swamy has no problems with the fact that Patel didn’t “officially” become a citizen till 2013 when he had to assume office as deputy governor of RBI. The charge against Rajan was he held on to his green card, that was akin to being a US citizen for Swamy. But, Patel having worked with the government in various capacities since 1998 opted for Indian citizenship only in 2013 is immaterial. Patel was also educated in institutions abroad, from London School of Economics to Oxford and Yale. ...