Arjun Narayanan

Clicked this pic 5yrs back at a sabha canteen. Today, it's the icon of my new website madraswallah.com Check it #chennai #madras

History repeats as farce. NTR launched an austerity drive once. Don't use official car for inter-city trips, he told his ministers. Minister duly took a train, arrived at destination, got into official car that had come by road and was waiting for him. His reasoning: How else can I go around *in* the city? 🤷‍♂️

The Anaimangalam copper plates have some amazing details. Some of the highlights of the plates are here.

Christianity did arrive early in Kerala around 4th century AD but the legend of arrival of St Thomas in India has been dismissed even by the Vatican. The legend continues though like the claim that Thanjavur periya Kovil gopuram casts no shadow

Rashbehari Bose threw a bomb on the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, and then went back to work in Dehradun the next day like nothing had happened. He even organized a gathering to condemn the dastardly attack on the Viceroy.

RSVP is French for “Répondez s'il vous plaît” which means “respond, please” and literally means “Respond, if it pleases you”. English uses lot of French phrases verbatim. Some of them are : 1. Faux pas (false step) 2. Quelle surprise (what a surprise) 3. À la carte (by the menu card) 4. Bon appétit (good appetite) 5. Résumé (summary) 6. Fait accompli (thing done / done deal) 7. En route (on the way) 8. déjà vu (I have already seen) 9. Au contraire (on the contrary) 10. Enfant terrible (disruptive child) 11. Touché (valid) 12. Voila (there it is) 13. C'est la vie (that is life) 14. Coup d'état (strikeout of the state) 15. Raison d'être (reason to be) 16. Tour de force (feat of strength) 17. Vis-a-vis (face to face) 18. M’aidez (help me) - distress mayday signal 19. Double entendre (double meaning) 20. laissez-faire (allow to do)

Most of Chennai' real estate has grown based on a nexus between corporate houses, builders and politicians. Even after years, those areas even lack basic drainage facilities, making those areas a cesspool during monsoons.

This is how newspapers beat AI, digital media and everything else thrown at it. By sheer talent and art. By using institutional memory. You can spot AK Antony, K Karunakaran and Oommen Chandy in this. Any guess on who's the fourth person hiding? Hint: he's also a former CM.

People who ruled TN cracked such crass jokes on public platforms and will do it again if given a chance.

@prasannavishy Dhirendra Brahmachari was exactly the name I thought of when I heard this news. The man not only got easy access to the cabinet of the PM but also amassed a lot of land and wealth beyond one's imagination in the 1980s

Considering the kind of shady and deeply dubious characters who have operated within the inner corridors of power under both DMK, ADMK governments, the sudden faux outrage over Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam govt and its choice of astrologer as OSD (he is also their officially anointed spokesperson) appears rather farcical. While astrology is followed across communities in Tamil Nadu, including Abrahamic adherents, the selective outrage seems less about 'rationalism' ( the state can never been even remotely associated with any kind of enlightened rationalism) and more like a dog whistle aimed at keeping anti-Hindu bigotry politically simmering, largely because the field is culturally associated with Hindu traditions. More importantly, this is also the same country where figures like Dhirendra Brahmachari and Chandraswami wield enormous influence under Congress govts of Indira Gandhi and P. V. Narasimha Rao respectively. This performative moral panic over an astrologer associated with a regional party appears bogus.

You got the direction of reasoning wrong. Indians love trekking and that is why there are temples at mountain peaks !! I know this was a joke but let me utilise this for a little bit of wordcelling. Elevation inviting sacredness is a recurrent theme in all ancient religions which had temples at hilltops. Hills and mountains, by rising above the ordinary terrain, create a sense of separation from everyday life and closeness to the divine. In the ancient Greek world, Mount Olympus was revered as the dwelling place of the gods. In Athens, the Acropolis hill housed the Parthenon temple of Athena, while nearby hills such as the Areopagus (named after the Greek god of war named Ares) were associated with specific deities and judicial rites. In Rome, the Capitoline Hill functioned as the religious heart of the city, housing temples to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. Beyond the Mediterranean world, similar patterns recur. In Ireland, the Hill of Tara served as the ceremonial centre of kingship, while the Hill of Uisneach was regarded as the symbolic navel of the island. In early Slavic Poland, Mount Ślęża functioned as a long-standing cultic centre, sacred well before Christian times. In the Slavic lands further east, the Peryn hill near Novgorod was associated with Perun, the thunder-god, whose cult centred on elevated, oak-covered sites. In the Basque region of northern Spain and southern France, mountains such as Anboto were associated with the goddess Mari, who was believed to dwell within the mountain itself and emerge in storms and natural phenomena. In the Germanic world, the Brocken (also known as the Harzberg) stood out as the highest peak in northern Germany and accumulated layers of mythic and folkloric significance over centuries. Across Europe, hilltop sanctuaries, ritual enclosures, and offering sites appear repeatedly in archaeological records ; from Celtic oppida in central Europe to Scandinavian hill forts that contain ritual deposits. Elevation itself, independent of any building, seems to have invited sacralisation. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem itself became a sacred area in Judaism and housed the Solomon's temple because Jerusalem is at a higher altitude in the background of its surroundings and has always been referred to by the phrase “the city on the hill”. Even in the New Testament, parables like “The Sermon on the Mount” given by Jesus are vestigial continuations of this same theme that long predates Judaism and Christianity. Europe has forgotten that sacred grammar of mountain climbing as a pilgrimage of ascent to the divine and has reinvented a descacralised version of it as the secular fun of trekking while Asia still preserves it. Pic : The Areopagus hill at Athens

Now, because one was born in West Bengal, and even though one identifies as an Anglo-Bihari, people kept asking me before the election who was winning. And now they ask me why they won. So, here’s my honest take: Bengalis have a cultural, pronounced kalcharal, chip on their shoulders about their homeland to the point that the world is divided between probashi Bengalis and non-bashi Bengalis. Somehow, one of the hallmarks of that culture became ensuring that one never voted for the BJP, which is rather odd given that the BJP’s precursor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, was founded by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. In other words, Bengal spent decades looking at the BJP as a Hindi heartland import while quietly ignoring the small historical inconvenience that one of its founding fathers was a Bengali bhadralok. This is a little like discovering that the loudest DJ at a Punjabi wedding was trained in Santiniketan. My first brush with cancel culture came long before it was co-opted by the woke community. Having grown up in Chhapra, of Ara Heele Chhapra Heele fame, and the centrist’s Promised Land, Singapore, one wasn’t very familiar with Bengali bhadralok cancel culture, but one learned very early in life. As a nine-year-old, I was asked, “What’s your favourite Rabi Thakur poem?” My answer, that I had no clue who or what a Rabi Thakur was, Tagore’s non-anglicised name with some filial love thrown in, was immediately met with pierced looks and derisive stares at my parents, who were promptly berated for not raising their only child properly. That was the moment when my deracinated personage was cast out of Bengali heaven, and I realised that not venerating Tagore is the only cardinal sin that exists for people born either in “Ooest” Bengal, because the letter W doesn’t exist in the Bengali lexicon, or East Bengal. For some reason, Bengal’s politics wasn’t politics but an aesthetic choice, a moral declaration, a pronunciation test, and proof that despite the mendicity on display across the state one was still somehow superior to non-Bengali speakers. The bhadralok imagination had its own sacred trinity: Tagore for the soul, Marx for the conscience, and Ray for the camera angle. Everything else was suspect. Hindi cinema was too loud. Gujarati businessmen were too efficient. North Indian politics was too muscular. Voting for BJP was the gustatory equivalent of ordering paneer at Olypub. And yet, here we are. Now I don’t know why my fellow brethren are so upset. Will we have to stop listening to Rabindrasangeet? Eat paneer steaks at Olypub? Watch propaganda films instead of Satyajit Ray movies? Paint our buildings every year instead of leaving them unwashed like they survived from the Harappan era? Worship a different bearded deity instead of Tagore or Marx? Only time will tell. But this, perhaps, is why everyone is behaving as if the Hooghly has turned saffron overnight. The fear is not merely that Bengal has voted differently. The fear is that Bengal may have lost the one thing it treasured even more than Rabindrasangeet, mishti doi and the right to correct your pronunciation: the belief that it was too intellectually refined to vote like everyone else.

Casual hatred now normalised inside the assembly, not in a public speech.

Happened after reading आषाढ़ का एक दिन by Mohan Rakesh

@labstamil True that!

@madraswallah Bharathi was immensely blessed with words, nobody could have guessed this is a translation. Maa Saraswathi does have her favorite kids

It's a pity that today in TN there are leaders who even question the link of Vande Mataram with our land and culture. In 1907, Bharathiyar translated Bankim Chandra's Vande Mataram, with a notable revised stanza published in his pamphlet Swadesa Gitankal. As a journalist and editor of journals like India and Vijaya, he promoted Vande Mataram. Bharatiyar's song "Vande Mataram enbom" became a an anthem in Tamil Nadu, often used in protests. Here is a small glimpse of his Vande Mataram sung by @ranjanigayatri

@madraswallah Yes, here is my version of "Vande Mataram Enbom" by Mahakavi Bharathiyar - that I recently released 3 months ago youtu.be/OLKYAq6g86o?si…

That was done without mincing words

Tamil Thai Vazhthu was written around the same era as Vande Mataram by Manonmaniam Sundaranar, a respected scholar rooted in advaitic thought. The version immortalized by MSV was composed using the ancient Tamil musical scale Mullai Pann (akin to Mohanam) and rendered by iconic singers TMS and P. Susheela, making it deeply embedded in the cultural consciousness of generations of Tamils. For decades, it has been customary in TN to begin government functions with Tamil Thai Vazhthu and conclude with the National Anthem. Unlike many other states, TN evolved its own state song tradition organically over 60+ years as part of its cultural identity. While Vande Mataram is a beautiful and revered song, it is also important to understand regional cultural practices with sensitivity and respect. Expecting the average Tamil public to learn and render all its stanzas in every official setting may not be practical. India’s strength lies in accommodating such diversity, not flattening it.

If as a secular Tamil, you have no qualms in singing praises to a Tamil mother metaphorized as a divine goddess in Thamizh Thaai Vaazhthu, remind me again, what is your problem with Vande Mataram that metaphorizes India as a divine Bharat Mata?

Here is the full rendition done by them youtu.be/UT5idyyWkUY?si…