This time around, from my attic tumbled out an old book which, re-read out of curiosity, took me to the world of political slugfests and rows of decades ago. The 52-page book Naan Kanda Periyar (The Periyar I saw) was published by Tamilagam way back in 1957. My attic (paran) is home to old...
Sometimes even the most mundane of activities, like reading a magazine at a barber shop, could end up being the trigger for bigger things in life. It happened in his youth to 70-year-old Jegatheeswaran who lives in Singanallur, Coimbatore. Jegatheeswaran had just finished schooling when one day...
The paran (attic) is home to old bottles, vessels gifted by grandmothers and great-grandmothers to their grand-daughters for their weddings, easy chairs that used to keep the grandfathers, mostly couch potatoes comfortable in the twilight of their life, four-legged chairs bereaved of one-leg, a...
Epigraphist and archaeologist S Ramachandran has written widely on epigraphy – notably on the upper cloth revolt and the Tranquebar manuscripts, among other topics. His discovery of an anchor, midsea at Tranquebar, with the help of fishermen is considered a milestone in oceanic archaeology....
Silver Tongue Srinivasa Sastry is this week’s rediscovery from my attic. Tamil word ‘paran’ is one of several words knocked out of existence in the language. Part of the old-time Tamils’ common lingo, paran meant attic or loft, an indispensable feature of houses built in those days, mostly in...
The Tamil word ‘paran’ is one of several words that have been knocked out of existence in the language. Part of old-timers' lingo, paran meant attic or loft. It was an indispensable feature of houses built in those days, mostly in villages, where all things dispensed with or condemned were...
Subbu Arumugam's passing away has made it appropriate to recall artiste Poongani who was once a metonym for Villupattu, one of the age-old folk art forms inherited from the feudalistic society and now a forgotten legend. Performing arts such as Villupattu, Kaniyan dance (unique to the community...
Twenty-five years ago, Njattyela Sreedharan, a school drop-out, set out on a journey in search of words. The idea was to compile a dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages, namely Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. Travelling across four states and learning Kannada, Tamil and...
Thoothukudi, among other things, has a certain image associated with it. It's the image of being a fertile ground for heinous crimes and criminals. Serving as a policeman in Thoothukudi gave Anoop Jaiswal an opportunity to see the human side of Thoothukudi. The book Kuttramum, Karunaiyum (crime...
Padma Shri and Kalaimamani Subbu Arumugam slept in music on Monday, his villuppaatu drawing him closer. Born on June 28 in 1928, Subbu Arumugam belonged to Nellai Samuthiram's Puthukulam. And the one person responsible for catapulting him to fame was none other than Kalaivanar N.S. Krishnan....
