Vazhithunaye & Yedho Yedho Onru 

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The moment we drew up a rough itinerary of our upcoming Europe vacation & shared it with my sister, her immediate reply was that we were almost following the route of Vazhithunaye song from Dragon! We hadn’t seen that song till then and, to our surprise, we realized that except for the Tissot Peak Walk at Glacier 3000, we were indeed going to visit all the other places! 

With a very long gap between the initial planning days and the actual trip, we kept turning only to Vazhithunaye & PoovukkuL oLindhurukkum from Jeans & had forgotten the rest of the movie songs featuring the places. 

Now, back from the trip, I watched Yedho Yedho onru from Enakku 20 Unakku 18 and I realized that we have covered everything in that too! 

Haven’t movie songs always been our guide to finding some amazing places to see? 

But this post isn’t about the location, but about the changing times and the music. 

Take Enakku 20 Unakku 18, the heroine & hero meet each other by chance during a train journey, don’t share their contact details & then end up searching for each other. Even after they meet, they are hesitant to express their feelings and let the time pass by. That’s when yedho yedho onru is shown.  

Moving on to Dragon, a studious guy starts failing in all the subjects and becomes a rowdy simply because the girl chose a guy like that over him. He then goes on to become a fraud on top of this and even gets engaged to a girl without revealing the truth and that’s when the song vazhithunaye happens. I obviously couldn’t stand watching a movie like that beyond the first few minutes & only read the synopsis. 

Similar locations – two different songs – one a long, slow, romantic song full of longing, with the interludes matching the vibe (blame my kids for me using this word instead of something like atmosphere or ambience) of the place, another a short, peppy, fun-filled song with interludes matching the pace of life today full of thoughtless partying & selfies. Do you realize that the duration of the song itself shows how impatient we as a generation have become? 

Take the lyrics and the way they are sung. There is no way that nowadays someone is going to pause long enough to sing uyireyyyyyy idhayammmmm as it is sung in yedho yedho onru. It’s another fact that even 20 years ago, it was already too slow for the times. 

In Vazhithunaye, it’s a continuous stream of  words matching the pace with which they are travelling – oor paarkkum nalla nalla thaLangaLellaam unai kooTTikonDu kaikortthukkoNDu! 

Coming to the musical aspect, one might expect a core Carnatic-based music for the first theme & a western-kind of music for the other. Ironically, here’s where the surprise factor kicks in!  

Though yedho yedho onru has some Charukesi in it matching the melancholic aching feel of the song, it still has a lot of western touches. Oh that interlude! 

Would you imagine a Reetigowlai with fast beats for visuals featuring the lead pair strolling outside Moulin Rouge?! Well that’s Vazhithunaye for you! The joyous Reetiwgowlai matching the energy level of the young lovers happily exploring some of the beautiful sights of Europe! 

The contrasting moods created by the pathos of Charukesi and the verve of Reetigowlai showcasing two different kinds of love during two different periods of time but set in the same place! Isn’t that the power of music! Wow! 

P.S.: I came to know only today that Vazhithunaye is composed by the son of Noel James, whose name we used to see in the credits of so many of A R Rahman’s albums! 

Pre-prep for a trip to Europe 

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This wasn’t any vacation, this was THE vacation for which we had put in so many months of effort in planning every single aspect of the trip, right from food, logistics, accommodation, clothing, budgeting and, not to forget, the main itinerary in itself. But when a personal anxiety took over at the last minute, the trip suddenly no longer looked enticing. I hadn’t started packing at all even on the morning of the day of the trip. Even as I started packing on auto pilot mode during the last few hours before leaving for the airport, I realized how much of a pro I had become in packing and how much all the pre-preparation was helping me. 

If travelling in India is a breeze given that we can hire a taxi for the entire duration of the trip and there will also be no dearth of good vegetarian food, travelling in South-east Asia is also quite comfortable, since we can still have a taxi at our disposal, even though getting good vegetarian food everywhere is not a possibility. Except for some places during some of the months in the northern part of India, the weather is also otherwise what we are generally used to, both in India & SE Asia. That’s why I had to spend quite a good chunk of time planning for the weather as well for this trip.  

Living in Singapore, there are three things which we are used to, which we might otherwise not have gotten adjusted to in India:

  • Since it frequently rains in short bursts in Singapore, rain is no longer a deterrent for us in stepping out.  
  • We are still stuck in the days of pre-Instamart/BlinkIt/etc. So, we step out to buy everything from bulk monthly groceries to a single packet of bread. 
  • Given that we extensively use only public transport for which long walks to and from the MRT station / bus stop is a given, commuting while hauling our bags is also not a big hassle for us. 

So, rain or shine and with or without the convenience of taxis, we planned to cover as many places as possible within Italy & Paris.   

With all these in mind, I started making several checklists. I scouted around the ongoing offers in different shops and websites to find the best deals for everything from disposable plates and cutlery to body butter and winter jackets. After drawing up a rough itinerary, we frequently kept checking the availability of tickets for all the attractions until we found the best deals, which, by the way, was only through the respective official websites. Then there were all the inter-city trains for which we had to keep monitoring the prices. 

As and when we shopped for something, I made sure that I kept those in the suitcase and not in some cupboard. That way, half the things were already packed. A few weeks before the trip, we stocked up on all the biscuits, candies, Haldiram’s snacks and puLiyodharai, vatthakuzhambu mixes from Grand Sweets that we needed for the trip and those too went right into the suitcase. Despite all these, still there were lots to be packed till the last minute – rice, rice cooker, dresses, general medicines, toiletries, dishwashing liquid, etc. The winterwear had to be segregated into hand and check-in luggages. Everything had to also be repacked to fit it all compactly into 2 small and 2 medium luggages – that was the max that I felt we could haul and walk 700-800m from the railway stations to our accommodations. 

A month later, here I am, sitting and typing this, even as I am processing through all the wonderful memories made and also all the anxious moments dealt with. In retrospection, I realize that the trip itself was therapeutic, though the anxiety still persists. Life is but a mixed bag of feelings, emotions and experiences.           

Blogger

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Recently, my son said that they were being taught in school about websites, domain, blogging and there was a mention of GoDaddy website. Then the teacher asked if any of their parents were bloggers and that’s when my son said he raised his hand happily. Ever since he told me about this, I have been trying hard to revive my identity as a blogger.

There is something so very satisfying about being able to turn your thoughts into words. Oh and in times of crisis or confusions, it’s therapeutic too when you write it all down.

Talking about words, recently I started playing with my children some word unscrambling/forming game on the mobile and I can’t tell you how much I have been enjoying turning random letters into words.

Coming to the blog itself, the first thing that I did was to sort every single uncategorized post of mine into the correct categories. Everything had gotten marked as ‘uncategorized’ a few years back when I was migrating the site from one hosting provider to another and I never got around to completely recategorizing it all. It was a time consuming task to actually sort hundreds of posts. But it also helped me to reconnect with all that I enjoyed and also reminded me of some of my preferences and the reasoning behind some of my choices.

In this age where everything is considered to be aided by AI even if one puts in the time and effort to actually create something, I am yet to explore the AI aspect for designing templates for posts or managing the layout of the website. I continue to have a basic, old theme. This is where my next focus will be.

In this age of shorts and reels, the questions I ask myself is who will have the patience to read someone else’s thoughts & experiences when they can actually watch and hear others. Would you prefer to a watch a GRWM vlog or read a 500+ words post on my prep for a trip?

I also tell myself that this blog has continued to exist during the last decade despite no one reading it, only because I wanted my writings to exist in its own space.

Let’s see if I post here regularly or whether like the umpteen times I keep repeating here, this will also turn out to be a one-off post.

New York Nagaram

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You know how sometimes you start listening to some favourite song which you haven’t listened to for a while and then you just can’t stop listening to it? That’s what happened with New York Nagaram today.

What starts off with some simple guitar chords and humming transitions to some poetic yet so simple words describing the longing of a man for his wife, sung with so much feel by A R Rahman! Those interludes between each stanza, the varied humming by chorus singers and ARR himself and, above all, that climax go on to make this one of the best songs which conveys so much feeling with and without words!

The Dwindling Attention Span

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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.

Minimalism – Is it ever for me?

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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.

2025

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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!

The City Travels 

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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! 

Phnom Penh National Museum

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! 

Kandawgyi Lake, Yangon

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.  

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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.    

Bai Harir Vav, Ahmedabad

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. 

Some building in Kolkata

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. 

A street in Penang

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! 🙂 

48 hrs in Penang, Malaysia – Itinerary 

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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: 

  • Thanneer Malai / Waterfall Hill Sri Bala Thandayuthapani Temple (Situated on a hill which can be reached by climbing 500 steps) 
  • Sri Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple 
  • Nattukottai Chettiar Temple – dedicated to Lord Muruga 

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. 

  • Take the Funicular Train to Penang Hill from its base
  • Sri AruLoLi Thirumurugan Temple   
  • Masjid Bukit Bendera 
  • 32-pounder Canon
  • Viewpoints 
  • The Habitat 
  • Langur Way Canopy Walk 
  • Curtis Crest Tree Top Walk

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) 

  • Little India 
  • Goddess of Mercy Temple
  • St. George’s Anglican Church 
  • Kapitan Keling Mosque 
  • Yap Khongsi Taoist Temple
  • Hock Teik Cheng Sin Temple 
  • Cathedral of the Assumption
  • Armenian Street – Best place for souvenir shopping  
  • Street Art of Georgetown
  • Chew Jetty 
  • Queen Victoria Memorial Clock Tower 
  • Fort Cornwallis 

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 

  • Bengali Mosque
  • Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion 
  • Han Jiang Ancestral Temple / Teochew Temple 
  • Pinang Peranakan Mansion 
  • Sri Mariamman Temple

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 

  • Reclining Buddha Wat Chaiyamangalaram 
  • Dhammikarama Burmese Temple 

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 – Some General Impressions 

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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. 🙂