About

This is a collection of Lakshmi Anand’s writings on music, human nature, and food, sometimes inextricably woven together. Many, particularly those on music and musicians, have been published in reputed journals including The Hindu, Sruti Magazine, The Times of India and others. On this site, they are supplemented, where available, with snippets from her interviews, photographs and other media.

Lakshmi Anand’s tryst with the pen began as a toddler with scrupulously detailed letters to cousins and friends, taking after her father who wrote copious epistles to kith and kin thousands of miles away. Mostly home-schooled, Lakshmi (known as Vidya at home) had an eclectic childhood, much of it in rural Africa, with frequent trips to visit family in Madras, New Delhi and Calcutta. She was educated in multiple streams and systems – Sierra Leonean, British, Indian and American.

It was only many years later, though, that she could take up writing again. At 17, she completed a BA in English Literature from Annamalai University (by correspondence) with distinction. Raised in a traditional brahmin family, she was married soon after. Moving to the USA, she set up a new home even as she worked on an MBA in Finance and Marketing from The Pennsylvania State University, graduating at the top of her class. Not wishing to stay apart from her husband, she confined her job search to the same college town they lived in and joined the local company, AccuWeather.com, the world’s largest private weather service, where she worked for a dozen years. It was a musically fruitful time too, being a part of Raaga, the small but active local group of Indian classical music aficionados. Raaga exposed her to practitioners and enthusiasts of different schools of Carnatic and Hindustani music.

After some years, she started travelling back and forth between the USA and Chennai to handle evolving familial circumstances. She acted on her passion for music and began writing on musicians and other music-related topics as a free-lancer for The Hindu. She has since written for other publications, including Sruti, The Times of India and others as well. Leading artistes such as Dr. N Rajam, RK Shriramkumar, N Vijay Siva, Kala Ramnath, Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Mohi Baha’ud-din Dagar, Dr. S Sowmya, Anupama Bhagwat, Vishakha Hari, Amritha Murali, Ramakrishnan Murthy, and many more, were kind enough to talk to her in detail, her own musical training helping in obtaining real insight.

Lakshmi had initial training in Carnatic music under Smt. Maragatham Ramaswamy (now in Chantilly VA, USA). Maragatham was an A Grade AIR artiste in both vocal and violin, a student of Thanjavur S. Kalyanaraman and Lalgudi G. Jayaraman, besides being a gold medalist at the Central College of Carnatic Music in its glory days under Musiri Subramania Iyer’s stewardship with Ramnad Krishnan, K.V. Narayanaswamy, T.N. Krishnan, Varaghur Muthuswamy Iyer etc. on the faculty.

The solid foundation Maragatham laid allowed Lakshmi to subsequently continue her training from renowned and award winning musician, Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee Sri. O. S. Thiagarajan, disciple of Sangeetha Bhooshanam Sri. O.V. Subramaniam and Sangita Kalanidhi Sri. T.M. Thiagarajan.

To ensure she did not lose ground in her musical training during their frequent and extended absences from India, Lakshmi’s mother would record all music lessons and play them throughout the day wherever they were. The collective efforts of her teachers, her family and friends, have ensured that her abiding love for music only magnifies with each passing moment.

Lakshmi brings in understanding, insight and illumination into her articles. She familiarises herself with her subjects by observing and listening for hours and talking to experts. She has received kudos for her work and interviewing style from leading musicians who find her knowledgeable and empathetic. By eliciting learning points through meaningful questions for thought provoking pieces, she attempts to educate readers and enthuse, motivate and excite aspirants. She finds that the achievements of most musicians, for example, are rarely due to unusual talent but almost always due to undistracted, brutally focused commitment, the ability to pick themselves up after multiple stumbles and a LOT of sacrifice. She tries to convey this tangibly in her pieces, with actual instances and examples, providing take-aways for the reader.

She was invited by Padma Sri awardee and noted Indologist and Economist, Dr. Bibek Debroy, to write the chapter on Tamil Nadu in the book Navaratri – When Devi Comes Home. Edited by Dr. Debroy and Anuradha Goyal, the book examines the similarities and differences in how Navaratri is celebrated in different states in India. Published by Rupa and Co. in October 2021, it is now widely available. Lakshmi was awarded the Kalpalata Fellowship for Classical Music Writing in 2022 and 2023 and the Ooruni Foundation’s Trend Setter Award for Media and Entertainment 2022. She is Associate Editor on the Editorial Board of the Indian Journal of Performing Arts Education and Research published by the Tamil Nadu Dr. J. Jayalalithaa Music and Fine Arts University.

Contemplative by nature, her observations of the world around her shared on social media received unprecedented response, even getting her stopped by strangers who said they struck a chord with them. These are here. Hers is straight talk, pragmatic, striving to present a balanced view and clearly distinguishing between opinion and fact. She firmly believes that, in most cases, there is a reason for each person feeling or acting a particular way – and that one should put oneself in those shoes and view them with understanding.

Her passionate posts on eggless, pure vegetarian food, frequently adapting dishes from across the world for these constraints, received immense response – besides tantalising descriptions, she gives exact proportions and measurements in her pieces on food. She explains the modus operandi clearly, assuming minimal cooking experience. This has resulted in newbies being enticed to attempt difficult dishes, and successfully, the very first time. Requests for recipes have become unmanageable and she hopes to use this site to share these too.

As the world gets increasingly fast paced, she looks back fondly to days past – spent in the company of her large family with uncles, aunts, cousins and friends galore – with a crackly old radio running in the background, family chattering continuously even as dosa batter was hand ground on stones, and play time involved only dirt. While she uses a headset now AND electric grinders for batters, music is a constant. She continues to cook practically everything at home from first principles ensuring the family gets good nutrition, sun and fresh air. She hopes her reflections and recipes offer a bridge between the then and the now.