Be it a Netflix show or a YouTube video or, for that matter, even YouTube Shorts, I end up fast forwarding every single video without having the patience to watch anything fully! My kids keep telling me that the day I am going to break the fast forward button in our TV remote isn’t very far away. But such is the impatience level coupled with content overload on the internet that I just don’t have it in me to watch anything fully.
I come back to Singapore from Madras and start unpacking the luggage. I open the snack cupboard with one hand holding the peanut chikkis, Gems and candies on the other, only to find a whole lot of biscuits, dates and peanuts falling out from it. I open my wardrobe to place all my new kurtas and out comes tumbling all my dresses. I open the bags cupboard to keep all the empty bags only to be showered with more bags. I open my kids’ stationery cupboard only to see it already overflowing with all sorts of pens, erasers, pencils, binding clips & what not! This pretty much summarizes my decluttering & organizing skills!
There was a time when I spent a good chunk of time reading books & watching videos on decluttering, organizing and minimalism. As the years passed, I realized that there was no way that I will ever be able to adopt minimalism as a way of life. Then came the time when I realized that decluttering too was becoming more & more difficult.
We, as a generation, are owning a lot of stuff. There is no longer only the saree or the salwar kameez than an Indian woman wears. You have the lehengas, the western formals, the workout attire, the loungewear and what not! Footwear too isn’t any simple. You have to own at least a pair of slippers, sandals & walking shoes. The gadgets with their endless tangled cables and all the digital media documenting every other moment of our lives are no longer easy to manage too.
You never really realize when your kids outgrow playing with their toys and you are suddenly left with all sorts of toys, board games, cycles, scooters and what not! The same goes with books too as the kids transition from cloth books to board books to fairy tales to Geronimo Stilton to Harry Potter.
As yet another new year has begun, I am still debating as to whether or not I should even take a resolution to make my home more organized.
For the first time in the last 25 years, 2025 was when I didn’t feel excited about any of the A.R.Rahman’s songs of a new Mani Ratnam’s movie and I didn’t even have the inclination to listen to the songs multiple times to see if I will even like it. 2025 was also when I didn’t even watch the newly-released Mani Ratnam’s new movie. But I did spend a really, really lot of time watching and rewatching Bombay, Roja, Kannathil Muthamittal, Agni Natchathiram, Kaatru Veliyidai, Ok Kanmani, etc. On the ARR’s songs front, I didn’t listen to most of his new releases of which there were plenty. I seem to be stuck listening to a set of about 30-40 songs of ARR in a loop and nothing much apart from that.
Coming to the reason why I didn’t watch Thug Life, to begin with, I am not a big fan of Kamal Hassan’s movies & I didn’t want to watch the movie without checking out the initial reviews. The very storyline of the movie itself made me not want to watch it.
On the Carnatic music front, I went to just 2 concerts of Sanjay Subrahmanyan, 1 fusion-like concert of Sandeep Narayan and 1 Jannal Oram programme of Sikkil Gurucharan. While the concerts of Sanjay were top-notch as usual, his recent interest in singing ‘compositions’ of Sean Roldan and composing music of a film lyricist’s verses & singing them in Carnatic kutcheris isn’t really something of interest to me and that’s why I didn’t really prioritize attending Sanjay’s kutcheris over other plans during December in Madras.
I attended 4 fantastic lecture demonstrations on Dikshitar’s compositions in Music Academy during the Season and felt all my excitement for the Carnatic compositions rekindled yet again.
2025 was when I was in Madras during Navaratri after more than a decade and I absolutely enjoyed the Navaratri atmosphere of Madras replete with golu bommai shopping in Mylapore. Of course, I did slightly miss keeping my golu in Singapore.
2025 saw us doing a lot of travelling and exploring new places, just like the previous few years. We did a good mix of temple-hopping, seeing nature’s beautiful landscapes and admiring a lot of architectural marvels.
2025 too continued to see my kids’ interests expand beyond academics and I was juggling between accompanying them to their sports & arts pursuits.
2025 saw me struggling more than ever in fighting a losing battle over my kids’ screen time.
2025 continued to see LLMs & Agentic AI ease the life of a software engineer like never before & it makes those yesteryear days of coding totally outdated. Didn’t we all go through those woes of having to write lengthy lines of Java code on your own, compile it & run it only to see that you have missed out a semicolon in one line?!
2025 continued to see me struggle with my weight loss pursuits & I experimented with everything from all-millets diet to no-sugar diet. The good part is that I have finally incorporated a good mix of strength training, cardio & yoga into my daily routine.
2025 saw me cooking more of new millet-based recipes and not experimenting with anything else. I had already mastered cooking a variety of side dishes for chapathi and 3-4 recipes of sambhar and rasam. I continued to struggle to make an upma of the right consistency & taste.
2025 had its share of highs & lows. 2025 saw me struggling to let go. 2025 saw me having my own anxiety moments. 2025 saw me seeking inner peace. 2025 saw me prioritizing my fitness goals. 2025 had some very special happenings.
Passing on wishes to an exciting 2026!
For all my claims of being a city person, I must tell you that cities are not really my favourite travel destinations.
I remember how during our trip to Cambodia, we cut short our stay in the capital city, Phnom Penh, and left for Siem Reap a day earlier than planned. We visited the palace, the museum, the Mekong riverfront, a Buddha temple and didn’t know what else to see. That turned out to be the best decision since there was so much to see in Angkor!
Then there was that evening in Yangon, when after visiting Shwedagaon Pagoda we thought of visiting the city centre next. But the ride in itself didn’t go well with old taxi seats leaving my kids with an itchy skin and the moment they saw the place we got down full of crowd, all they wanted to do was to go back to the hotel and that’s what we had to do!
Give us a choice between visiting Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi in Malaysia, Langkawi will definitely win hands down. The Petronas Towers was majestic, the Batu caves so beautiful, but beyond that how long can you walk through the malls or how many more British era buildings can you see? We did try to cover as many places as possible, but whether I would be willing to visit those again is the question.
Visiting Ahmedabad, I saw that it was a mix of many new high-rise buildings and old ones. But the walk through the heritage part of the city full of crowded roads which were not so clean had me wish we were back visiting places which just had the heritage part intact without all the development of the city surrounding it.
During our trip to Kolkata, the scorching sun left us drained despite the fact that we are used to this kind of weather. The traffic jam in the roads and the crowds everywhere and the fact that all the unpainted buildings there were unattractive. Not to mention the people who were taking bath on the road side! We did take a walk visiting all the heritage buildings from the British era, but the entire place seemed in dire need of a fresh coat of paint.
Even in Singapore, we avoid Little India on Sundays which is an off-day for all the migrant workers, since it has never been a comfortable experience walking amidst hundreds of men, despite the fact that no one misbehaves.
Even as we walked around looking for some of the British-era buildings in the UNESCO Heritage area of George Town, Penang, my daughter asked us, ‘Ok so some random person built something and it got labeled as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Can you tell me why you want to see it? Do you really find it stunning?’ But take her to sites like Chittorgarh Palace or Rani Ki Vav, you don’t hear her complain. Well that pretty much sums up our taste.
We are not the ones who prefer roaming around malls, but sometimes that appears to be a comforting, familiar thing to do rather than roam around crowded streets.
Maybe it’s an overdose of visiting and living in erstwhile British colonies or maybe it’s the effect of walking in the hot and humid weather through the city roads which generally don’t have as many trees as in the countryside, but give us either a rustic retreat amidst nature’s beauty or a guided tour of a heritage site in a small town and we will be happy to indulge in those.
Believe me, my kids don’t have any complaints about shopping in T. Nagar or Mylapore. They enjoy it despite the crowd. Because, that is, after all, home! 🙂
We landed in Penang at around 3 pm on a Friday and departed from there at 8 pm on Sunday. I am sharing our itinerary with you, along with some alternative that you can choose.
Day 1:
16:45 hrs: Check-in to Hotel (Stay near Georgetown and not in Batu Ferringhi area if you want to cover more places in a short time) We stayed at Evergreen Laurel Hotel.
17:00 hrs: Leave for a Hindu temple tour:
20:00 hrs: Back to Hotel or explore the Georgetown area
Day 2:
10:00 hrs – 14:00 hrs: Explore Penang Hill
Penang Hill (known also by the name Bukit Bendera in Malay or Kodi Malai in Tamil) recently received UNESCO Biosphere Reserve status.
14:30 hrs: Lunch at Woodlands Restaurant, Little India
15:00 hrs – 17:00 hrs: Explore UNESCO World Heritage Zone of Georgetown by walk
(Will take an hour more if you go inside each place)
17:30 hrs: Back to hotel to take a break from the sweltering sun
19:00 hrs – 20:30 hrs – Explore the rest of the Georgetown World Heritage zone
Day 3:
7:30 hrs – 8:30 hrs: Catch the sunrise
While the lazy-me chose to do this right from my hotel room since we got a sea-facing room, you can start early and visit Batu Ferringhi beach to catch a sunrise over the beach.
09:00 hrs – 12 noon: Go Buddhist temple-hopping or visit Penang National Park
09:00 hrs: Visit Buddha temples in Burma Road
10:30 hrs: Visit Kek Lok Si Buddhist Temple
13:30 hrs: Lunch at Annalakshmi, an Indian vegetarian restaurant
14:30 hrs: Penang Botanical Garden or visit KOMTAR or vist some malls like One Pranglin Mall & 1st Avenue Mall
17:00 hrs: Leave for the airport
Bali seems to be currently the go-to destination for many people all over the world and we too decided to join the bandwagon and explore the place. 🙂 With beautiful scenery of every kind and abundance of rustic cultural landscapes, Bali did live up to all the hype.
From the moment we landed till we flew back, we saw that Bali was generally clean overall. Only downside was the high prevalence of smoking everywhere (even within temples! & even in the presence of children).
Roads predominantly had only two lanes – one for either way. So there was traffic most of the time, since it was like a procession of vehicles in a single file. But the good thing was, there was discipline despite the slowing down caused by traffic – no overtaking and no honking of horns at all. In fact, traffic or not, we hardly heard the sound of horns, despite there being too many two-wheelers too on the road. Barring a few mini buses in Ubud, we hardly saw any form of public transport anywhere. Everyone seemed to have their own two-wheeler or car.
The terrain was generally not plain, so a lot of the commute was having slopes and sometimes hilly regions too.
The buildings here, be it shops or hotels or houses, were predominantly of only one or two storeys. We didn’t spot any building beyond 4 storeys at most. I wonder if this could be to facilitate easy evacuation during any volcanic eruptions.
Places around all the tourist attractions had a lot of restaurants or food stalls (called warung in Indonesian language). A lot of these places had boards clearly mentioning that vegetarian options are available. Indian food too was advertised to be part of the menu in many places.
There were temples literally everywhere, especially in areas in and around Ubud and other countryside regions. The temples were all clean and well-maintained too.
Statues of Hindu Gods like Arjuna, Gatotkacha, some Dwarapalakas (guardians) or some divine figures similar to Dwarapalakas were found in many junctions of roads.
A lot of shops and other commercial establishments seemed to have idols of Lord Ganesha.
A lot of roads were named after Hindu Gods and characters of Mahabharata and Ramayana. The characters ‘Jln’ which precede the name of a road is a short form for the Malay/Indonesian word ‘Jalan’ which means ‘Street’/’Road’. One could spot everything from Jln Hanoman to Jln Eka Laweya to Jln Kunti.
Paddy fields, coconut groves and banana plantations were ubiquitous all through the island.
This, more than anything else, kept giving me the feel of travelling through our very own fertile Kaveri delta region. 🙂
Located right in the city centre and just a few minutes walk away from J B Sentral is this Sri Rajamahamariamman Temple. Filled with huge, colourful statues and colourful paintings of Gods and Goddesses all through the temple, this temple has such a divine, vibrant atmosphere.
The atmosphere resonates outside the temple also, what with so many shops selling lovely, colourful flowers and flower garlands. The colours continue outside in the form of some shops selling colourful Indian ethnic wear too.
As soon as you reach the entrance to the temple, beautiful statues of peacocks and elephants on the wall greet you.
Once you enter the temple, you can see the colourful carvings of Srinivasa Kalyanam near the shoe stand. Next to the place where coconuts can be offered to God, there are statues of men throwing the coconut. With tall statues of dwarapalikas and angels on either side, a series of steps lead you to the temple.
This temple has sanctums of the presiding deity Sri Rajamahamariamman, Krishnar, Vinayaka, Muruga, Shiva, Durga, Navagraham, Bhairavar among other Gods and Goddesses. The shrine of every God has related paintings and statues in its surrounding walls, vimanam and the ceiling outside it. Every single painting and sculpture in this temple is very beautiful and colourful.
When in Johor Bahru, do spend some time to soak in this divine atmosphere and enjoy all the lovely, colourful art.
This temple in Malaysia is famously known as the glass temple (கண்ணாடி கோவில்).
The statues of Lord Vinayaka playing musical instruments are on either side of the main sanctum of Amman.
True to its name, almost every surface here including the walls, ceilings, pillars, mandapams, doors, vimanams and gopurams are plated with glass of different colours, sizes and shapes. Small chandeliers are placed everywhere to light up the glass.
This is relatively a small temple, but houses the shrines of Lord Vinayakar, Muruga, Rajakaliamman, Perumal, Lakshmi, Durga and also Lord Shiva and Parvati in the form of Sri Arbaneswarar and Thilgavathy Ambal. Abhishekam can be done by the devotees for this Atma Lingam.
There are statues of many saints like Sai Baba, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Ramalinga Adigalar, Raghavendra, Buddha and Guru Nanak.
There are some colourful, beautiful statues like that of Hanuman, Vishnu, Lakshmi, Shiva, Amman and Nataraja.
This temple is open from 7 am till 12 noon and 7 am till 10 pm . It’s located about 10 minutes walk away from J B Sentral, Johor Bahru. Even on a Saturday morning, there were no visitors to this temple and it had a calm atmosphere.
Back when there was no YouTube or social media and no one uploaded anything anywhere and you had to wait for the right commercial break on TV just to catch the trailer of the movie featuring the dashing lead pair of Madhavan & Shalini, the trailer of Alaipayuthey itself made one want to watch it again and again! The music, the visuals, the dialogues, Shalini and her casual way of conversing and, of course, Madhavan! Even the font in which Alaipayuthey was written was stylish too!
It wasn’t just the trailer that made you go gaga over it. The official website of the movie had such great content too with a writeup on the lead characters and some amazing photos. Waiting for the Shockwave content to load and browsing through the website became a regular activity too, despite downloading all the images from the website.
Oh and the songs! But for evano oruvan which screamed of longing with a tinge of pain, all other songs were so joyful, celebrating life in itself! Back then, not a single day went by without listening to the audio cassette. Pacchai Nirame had to be listened to on a repeat mode every day. It didn’t matter if one had to patiently press the rewind button of the music system to listen to a song again and again.
Pacchai Nirame became an instant favourite and today, 25 years later, continues to remain my most favourite song of A R Rahman and the best song ever portraying such beautiful colours! It’s to Pacchai Nirame that I turn to even today for some colours to cheer me up on a random dull day. 🙂
Then the movie itself – such relatable characters looking even more relatable in their simple costumes and talking such casual dialogues, here was a story set in my very own Madras with each and every scene having some lovely colours and music that added more to every scene.There was a time when watching the entire movie itself was a regular pastime!
Today I don’t really watch the scenes of Alaipayuthey or listen to the songs of Alaipayuthey as frequently as I used to back then, but I continue to watch all the interviews of Madhavan waiting to hear some new tidbit about Alaipayuthey, I continue to turn to some scene of the movie when I want to take a pause and refocus or just plain relax, I continue to watch Pacchai Nirame first every time we buy a new mobile or a TV or a monitor, I continue to get reminded of the beautiful wedding scene of Alaipayuthey every time I visit Kapaleeswarar Kovil!
Every April when I see some content on YouTube mentioning about the number of years it has been since Alaipayuthey got released, my craze for all things Alaipayuthey does get rekindled.
Neighbourhood landlines or common telephones in offices might now have become outdated, searching for a girl by hunting down the stations or medical colleges instead of simply looking up on social media platforms might sound a roundabout way, youngsters having their own start-up might have become much more common now than it was back then, but the love story of Shakthi and Karthik continues to remain a timeless classic!
It was the nostalgia factor and some stunning visuals that struck a chord with me as far as 96 was concerned. Though I wouldn’t call myself a big fan of the entire movie, it’s just for that nostalgic factor that I keep going back to a few scenes from that.
Watching the trailer & some scenes from Meiyazhagan and some interviews with Arvind Swamy & Karthi, I was looking forward to experiencing yet another wave of nostalgia. Meiyazhagan more than fulfilled that wish, since there was so much that I could personally relate to!
Just like how Karthi keeps going back to the summer of ‘94, you will often hear me referring to every single summer vacation of mine during my school days! If my attachment to Madras is one thing, my attachment to my grandmother’s place is quite another! The summer vacations, synonymous with the affection from the extended family back there and the carefree, happy days spent with cousins, is something that I keep craving for, during not just the chaotic, but also the quiet moments of my daily life. Oh and not to forget that pollution-free, lush green, beautiful atmosphere totally in contrast to the city life. You have to visit a village to know what darkness during the night time and a sky full of stars even mean.
As years pass by, we change and so do the people around us. The more you grow older, the more the difficult facets of, not just life in itself, but also the people themselves, that you see. Yet when you go back to that time in life when you were just a child and you saw only goodness around you, the attachment that you felt for people and places was just so pure, wasn’t it? It’s that pure attachment that Meiyazhagan seems to have for Arulmozhi Varman in the movie. To him it doesn’t matter that Arul might have changed over the years and he continues to adore him just like how he did when he was a child, even claiming that he is all that he is today only because of Arul.
For someone like Arul who just doesn’t let himself go back to the memories of those good, old times and keeps holding on to the anger and frustration at having to let go of his life at his ancestral house, listening to Meiyazhagan constantly reminisce about the time he spent with Arul back then, does bring back to him an old slice of himself.
It could be the simple act of placing the mobile on the clothes stand while on a call by Hema (Devadrashini) or the feeling of comfort experienced by Arul when being back in his native – there were several ‘been-there-did-that’ moments in the movie – the morning train from Madras to Thanjavur, the scenes of the pacchaipasel vayal (the lush green paddy fields) around Thanjavur, the huge temples, graamatthu veeDu (the grand village home), the bus journey through fields and villages, it’s-a-small-world moment when the bus conductor turns out to be Arul’s father’s student, the joyous summer vacations, the skepticism that Arul feels, the relationship with relatives and, finally, believe it or not, the hesitation to ask one’s name after having such deep conversations with them!
There are many such beautiful moments like the one where the temple elephant passes by Arul while he is on a conversation with his wife on the mobile. He doesn’t even tell his wife about this. Such is his nature preferring to process the experience of this moment in solitude.
Of course, I didn’t enjoy all the aspects of the movie. For instance, that meeting with his cousin where Arul puts golusu didn’t really gel well. The songs praised by almost everyone were not to my liking at all. I would have preferred it if the entire conversation between Arul & Meiyazhagan happened without drinks in the picture.
Despite all these, Meiyazhagan succeeds in evoking nostalgia in a much more relatable way to me than 96 and that’s why I keep going back to several scenes in this too.
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Watching Meiyazhagan, I kept telling myself that, had it been the good, old days when Sudhish Kamath wrote for ‘The Hindu’, this would have been the kind of movie that he would have enjoyed and given a great rating. That’s when I remembered his Twitter page, scrolled through the posts and found a write-up about Meiyazhagan! There were also comments from a few of them saying how they used to read his reviews in Metro Plus. Yet another nostalgia brought on by Meiyazhagan! 🙂