A decision was made to enter into the realm of the unreal, to experience the variety, color and warmth of social intercourse.

 And thus he set out to experience life...as he jokingly said, to dive into and swim around in the mortal mud-pool called life.

Music

His first introduction to music was from the great violinist Henry Abia of Calicut. Mr. Henry lived in the memories of the British Empire where he held a powerful post of a "Registrar". People respectfully used to call him "registrar" long after the British left the country. He was a great admirer of Lord Louis Mountbatten. His living room walls were adorned with photographs of "Prince of Wales", "Queen Victoria", "Queen Elizabeth" etc, the remnants of a past glory.

Henry Abia introduced him to western musical notations and the violin. He spent his childhood days with Mr. Henry learning a lot other than music. Mr. Henry had a rich collection of books and periodicals. Mr. Henry was an ardent crossword solver and used to solve crosswords that appeared in the english dailies. He used to watch all these activities of Mr. Henry curiously and learned a lot of things about a different lifestyle that was alien to him.

After Mr. Henry passed away, he got interested in Indian Music. Mr. Henry always used to praise the English saying that they took just one raga from Indian Music, the Shankaraabharanam and developed it to such and extent to form the entire Western Music. It was then that he learned that Indian Music was much deep and vast than Western Music. He decided that he should learn Indian Music.

His father took him to Sashikant who was an expert flautist. Sashikant taught him the basics of Hindustani Music and he learned the first lessons in playing flute.

Later, he was introduced to Masterjee Sharatchandra Marathe known as the Bhishmacharya of Hindustani Music in South India. From Masterjee he started learning Hindustani.

Meanwhile, he moved on to Palakkad, a place renowned for Karnatic Music and musicians. Here he found another guru in Shree Muralikrishnan, from whom he started learning Karnatic Music.

Years passed by and Shree Muralikrishnan moved on to Chennai and he completed his B.Tech to come back to Calicut again.


Lighter Side of Life

Popular music

Was an Ilaiyaraja fan while in College. Enjoys popular melodies, any language...
Has a vast collection of Yesudas songs. Considers Yesudas as a phenomenon of his era.
Gazals of Jagjit Singh...the reason he had a passion for them was a personal mystery he never revealed to anyone!

Reading

He used to read Leon Uris early in his life and studied the Jewish History closely...Steinbeck, Milan Kundera, S.K. Pottekkat, O.V. Vijayan...Jung, Freud, Fromm, Beauvoir


Later his reading shifted to politics and philosophy. The reductionist approach to philosophy of the west did not hold his interest for long and he started delving deeper into the Indian Philosophy...

Being a rebel basically and at that age of his life when everybody is a rebel, he could not accept any school of thought as perfect or absolute and rolled on to more and more viewpoints and gurus...

Vivekananda, Aurobindo, Nitya Chaithanya Yati, Sree Narayana Guru, Rajneesh, Jithu...

Movies

Enjoys movies of all sorts...

A few favourites:

Pushpaka Vimanam, Forrest Gump, Bharatham, Thoovaanathumbikal, When Harry Met Sally, Milk Money, A Fish Called Wanda, The French Kiss, Notting Hill, The American Pie, The Last Temptation of Christ, The Bachelor, Coming to America, The Braveheart, Tin Cup...