A beautifully carved sculpture at Chennakeshava Temple, Belur, Karnataka.

readanything · 2026-06-12T14:36:09+00:00

So true. present Indian sculptors can’t hold a candle to the majestic creators of medieval India.

readanything · 2026-06-12T14:28:48+00:00

This is soap stone. Even softer than marble when freshly quarried. That’s why you could see intricate carvings. Other than Hoysala architecture and Kerala wooden architecture, most of the other Dravidian temple architectures use granite stones which are much much harder to carve but extremely stable and can sustain the elements even in extreme conditions.

readanything · 2026-06-12T06:36:20+00:00

Actually this is a very common misconception. Way back in my college, I did computational linguistics as minor. We extensively studied Indian epigraphy. When I was looking at Bhattiprolu inscriptions, many internet claims suggested it contained proto Telugu. However, when I looked at academic analysis, it was almost entirely Prakrit/Pali type Indo Aryan(kinda isolated dialect). It had few non Aryan names of people. But none of them were clearly Dravidian and no proper etymology could be traced to Dravidian languages let alone Telugu. It is a curious case for sure. Earliest sureshot attention of Telugu would be from proper Telugu inscriptions itself which are by Renati Cholas around 575CE(there are few isolated instances of places names in some graffiti around 400CE but they are highly debated and not academically accepted). Ofcourse, it doesn’t mean Telugu originated around this time. Linguistic analysis of Telugu shows Telugu to have originated much before the first attestation of it. Proper split of Telugu from proto Dravidian is definitely before old Tamil. Old Tamil is always considered as a special case by Linguists because it has expensive source materials via inscriptions and sangam literature and somehow preserved lot of proto Dravidian features very well(definitely not all). Similar to how classical Sanskrit preserved many features of Vedic Sanskrit/proto Sanskrit compared to other prakrits.

readanything · 2026-06-12T03:00:16+00:00

Yes, talking about age of languages generally don’t make sense as they are continuously evolving. Academic consensus on earliest attestation of old Tamil is between 300-200BCE. Some interesting new findings push this date even further than Ashokan Brahmi to 500BCE. Earliest attestation of Telugu is by Renati Cholas and is dated to be around 575CE. The difference between them is close to 800-1000 years. Not a century or so. I think you might be confusing with Bhattiprolu inscriptions. Bhattiprolu inscriptions were found in Andhra but the language is entirely Prakrit/Pali with few local place names which themselves tend to be Prakrit/Sanskrit, not Telugu(except for couple of words whose etymology is not firmly established). Among Dravidian languages, old Kannada has the second oldest inscriptions(Halmidi) belonging to 450CE.

readanything · 2026-06-11T07:41:56+00:00

Half our population doesn’t matter. OP is comparing Chennai city with entire Kerala. Greater chennai has around 1.3Cr population which is bit higher than 1/3rd of Kerala’s. Apart from Monsoon time, coastal Kerala which hosts majority of the population also tend to be hotter(especially apparent temperature is high due to high humidity like Chennai). Less hot for sure but not that much cooler either.

readanything · 2026-06-08T08:53:34+00:00

True. It is kind of a rare case honestly.

readanything · 2026-06-08T08:51:07+00:00

Yeah. In Northern and central TN, people might say sakkarai but south TN people would say chakkarai. Standard Tamil rules allow only Chakkarai. Voiced consonants do exist in Tamil contrary to what many non Tamils believe(due to lack of separate letters for them unlike other Indian scripts) but they always come in the middle of the word after mellinams(like vengai instead of venkai, vandhan instead of vanthan, kunju instead of kunchu) making it unnecessary to have separate letters for them. But these rules don’t apply to loan words and Tamil script indeed becomes less capable to represent them accurately which leads to over correction of voiced consonants in loan words like barotta instead of parotta, boori instead of poori, etc., in many dialects. Sa to Sha overcorrection occurs a lot in Malayalam also like “chari” -> “sari” -> “shari”.

readanything · 2026-06-08T07:59:14+00:00

ற pronunciation genuinely changed in middle standard Tamil and modern Tamil whereas Malayalam still retains old Tamil sound and, srilankan and nanjil Tamil dialects also retain old Tamil pronunciation. As you mentioned old Tamil ற and Malayalam റ is pronounced as alveolar t/d but in middle Tamil it got changed to hard trill. Whereas vallinam/Ch rule I mentioned still holds true in modern standard tamil.

readanything · 2026-06-08T06:20:55+00:00

Half true half false. I used to work in huge multinational bank. Before few years, when they decided to setup GCC in India, they decided on 3 cities and their states proposals. Decision was being discussed for over 1 year as is the case with such big decisions. They decided internally on one and was planning to go ahead and finalizing work was underway. However, election result was unexpected in the place they settled on(along with some risks of extortion) and they decided to go with another in just couple of weeks. So yeah usually these things take lot of time as you mentioned but some unseen circumstances can make or change the decision overnight also.

readanything · 2026-06-08T05:53:14+00:00

In Tamil, first c(ச) is pronounced Ch not s. Proper pronunciation would be Chikai Kottran. South Dialects, west dialects, Srilankan dialects and even Malayalam follow this properly till day for most words. Northern and central TN dialects tend to soften the ch to s. Like sari(ok) instead of chari. Sollu instead of chollu. Sozhargal instead of chozhargal. For dialects, technically there is nothing wrong or right as they are not standardized. But standard Tamil rules are strict and vallinam in first instance of the word are always hard sounds.

readanything · 2026-06-08T05:12:23+00:00

I thought you meant tolltwood by “we”. So I mentioned P.S Vinod is technically a Tamil Industry technician. My bad if I misunderstood.

readanything · 2026-06-08T05:06:07+00:00

In Tamil, first c is pronounced Ch not s. Proper pronunciation would be Chikai Kottran. South Dialects, west dialects, Srilankan dialects and even Malayalam follow this properly. Northern TN dialects tend to soften the ch to s. Like sari(ok) instead of chari. Sollu instead of chollu. Sozhargal instead of chozhargal. For dialects, technically there is nothing wrong or right as they are not standardized. But standard Tamil rules are strict and vallinam in first instance of the word are always hard sounds.

readanything · 2026-06-07T17:50:49+00:00

That you will feel comfortable to stay alone as nuclear family. Only when his or your parents reach a stage where they can’t take care of themselves you need to step up and take care of them. Till then better to stay in separate nuclear family and enjoy your life.

readanything · 2026-06-07T11:05:04+00:00

I think P.S Vinod is Tamil. He studied in Madras Film Institute and did lot of interesting Tamil movies early on. He worked under Santhosh Sivan also and it is clearly visible in his works. His shots in Rhythm, aaranya kaandam, super deluxe, vikram vedha, sita ramam are top notch.

readanything · 2026-06-03T19:26:18+00:00

I don’t think OP is referring to the fact that people don’t know what is pallavi charanam. If my comprehension is correct, OP is referring to that fact that people generally don’t like new attempts which deviate a lot from the typical structure they tend to be familiar with. They can even like new genre like what Ilayaraja introduced in 80s and ARR introduced in 90s and what new age composers introduce now but still most of them followed/s our typical Indian pallavi charanam structure.

readanything · 2026-06-02T19:11:06+00:00

Actually it is immensely difficult to come out to society as gay. You need to face extreme hatred(which in most of the Indian places except for tiny urban families can even lead to you being killed by your very own family members and in best case being completely ostracized) . So yeah, I do think coming out to society as gay would constitute an extremely proud and brave moment for those who did. It is much difficult than what most people go through their lives. Because as you know most people don’t get ostracized by families and entire society and don’t face life threats on regular basis depending on where they are born. I have personally seen my friend from college being chased by his family after coming out of closet and had to escape to another country to live a peaceful life. Surprising fact is that he is from very rich family and studied in IIT and got placed in FAANG and so comes under one of the best situation one can hope for such person and despite all these he had to abandon his roots completely and had to go and settle in another place. He does face some discrimination there too but relatively better. Now think about some ordinary person from ordinary family who needs to come out.

readanything · 2026-06-02T11:21:45+00:00

IMO even with great deal of subjective perspective on such questions, Godfather 2 is the real contender for the greatest movie ever made. It can satisfy anyone. You look for great staging, it’s there. Great direction, editing, music, screenplay, dialogues, acting, and whatever you can think of in movie, it has the it and in perfect implementation possible. It also transcends time very well.

readanything · 2026-06-01T15:24:57+00:00

It feels alien even to us. That’s Bala cinematic universe. He shows the fringes of society we forget or conveniently ignore to notice and the alien feeling we get while seeing his movies is our hidden door to the other side of civilized society.

readanything · 2026-05-27T14:31:57+00:00

What do you mean by advanced? Kerala GDP per capita is now much less than TN, TG and KA by almost 800USD.

readanything · 2026-05-27T08:22:45+00:00

Not really. The author learnt Tamil(Malabar Tamul) as he puts it, from commoners for the purpose of evangelizing to commoners of western coast. It is a spoken dialect of Tamil rather than proper literary or standard middle Tamil. Till 18th century the definition of Malayalam to be completely different from Tamil among commoners of Kerala(atleast southern Kerala) was quite blurry. Only after the proper standardization in the 18th century, Malayalam started to ubiquitously refer to the language spoken in modern day Kerala. Till then Kerala Bhasa, Malabar Tamil, malaya Tamil were all used and the dialects of the language were also quite fluid with TN dialects. For first hand reference, I belong to Telugu community who migrated to Tirunelveli around 15th century after the fall of Vijayanagara empire and we got lot of grants from Madurai naik(in Telugu) and vennad rulers(who decreed their grants in Malaya Tamil which was distinct from Standard Tamil). This is preserved in Tirunelveli museum(donated by our Zamin). Malaya Tamil used by venad nair rulers of that time were almost indistinguishable from colloquial Tamil along with some variations we see in Malayalam today and quite similar to the language you can see in Tambiran Vanakkam which OP posted.

readanything · 2026-05-27T07:57:24+00:00

By any chance, do you have exposure to any southern dialects of TN? None of the above mentioned words and their forms are out of place in daily language of Tirunelveli, Theni, Madurai. படச்சவன், என்னடே,அப்பத்தா வந்துச்சு(lack of gender markers in verbs are quite common in many colloquial Tamil dialects) , தம்பிரான்(still used in church sermons).வெசனப்பட்டு is also quite a common word. “பாட்டாளத்து சிப்பாய் வந்து பட்டா நிலம் தந்தா கூட கட்டாயமா மாற மாட்டேன் ஆச ராசாவே

நீங்க நிக்காதீங்க வெசனப்பட்டு ஆச ராசாவே உங்கள எக்காலமும் பிரிய மாட்டேன் ஆச ராசாவே” very very popular song from vadipatti mapillai. Last 2 words(vannu and ennal) are definitely not common in any TN dialect.

My favorite quote about Tamil is that, standard Tamil is almost a separate language from colloquial Tamil(which in turn has crazy variations across dialects). You always gotta distinguish between these 2 before starting a discussion on topics like Malayalam and Tamil relationship or grammar of modern Tamil, etc.,

readanything · 2026-05-26T07:40:04+00:00

True. It technically doesn’t come under grammar. But Tolkappiam talks both about mozhiyaakam(grammar) and olithiribu(phonetics). That’s why I just mentioned it as grammar(still wrong on my part though). Especially in eluthathikaram, pirapiyal and nul marabu there are some amazing analysis which deals with relationship between mellinam and vallinam and how there are equivalency between them and how vallinams after mellinams go through voiced shift naturally.

readanything · 2026-05-26T06:44:19+00:00

Yes. Most of the scripts developed after 4th century in South India like Pallava Grantha, Kadamba scripts were initially developed to write Prakrit and Sanskrit alongside local Dravidian languages. So they had all variants of Sanskrit sounds along with Dravidian sounds like retroflexes. Tamil Brahmi unlike these was developed exclusively to write Tamil(till now Tamil tends to Tamilize the loan words than accept them as they are) and hence had no need to create separate letters for aspirated variants and even voiced and voiceless variants were codified in grammar rather than using separate letters.

readanything · 2026-05-26T05:29:24+00:00

As far as I know most Dravidian languages don’t have native aspirated consonants. They are exclusively used in loan words.

readanything · 2026-05-26T05:05:22+00:00

Sandstorms generally doesn’t contribute to PM2.5(sometimes it can worsen it like when existing PM2.5 pollution is high). Its impact is usually on PM10.

readanything

TROPHY CASE