Back to the start

I wondered briefly if I was disrespecting the significance of the event by talking about the biochemical aspects of it. Well, some may think so, but we are a collection of chemicals. Emotion is a biochemical process. Taste isn’t about what ingredients we eat. It is a legacy. Some aspects of taste predate the evolution of Homosapiens. Much of it actually predates the person tasting the food. Here is the summary of my learning in this journey.

Sensory Systems Involved in Taste Perception

Taste is not confined to the gustatory system. It is a multisensory experience. Gustation (Taste buds) detects basic tastes like sweet, sour, salty, bitter etc. Olfaction (Smell receptors) detects volatile compounds; responsible for 80–90% of perceived flavour. The trigeminal nerve detects texture, temperature, and chemical irritation (e.g., spiciness). Vision and Touch influence expectations and emotional priming. These inputs converge in the orbitofrontal cortex, where integrated flavour perception occurs.

Neural Pathways That Connect Taste and Emotion

The olfactory bulb (part of the forebrain responsible for smell) sends smell signals that bypass the thalamus and connect directly to the limbic system, giving them unmatched access to emotion (amygdala) and memory (hippocampus). The Vagus nerve transmits signals from the gut to the brain; it is strongly influenced by emotional and social stimuli like warm food, slow feeding, and being cared for. Stimulates parasympathetic calming and mood regulation. The insular cortex & orbitofrontal cortex integrate sensory, emotional, and social information to assign value and meaning to food experiences.

Parts of the brain involved

Amygdala links taste with emotional valence (e.g., comfort, fear, love). Hippocampus stores emotionally linked autobiographical food memories. The Olfactory bulb directs sensory input to the limbic system, especially potent for nostalgia. The Orbitofrontal cortex integrates multisensory data into subjective taste experience. The Insular cortex modulates conscious awareness of taste and interoception.

Hormones and Neurotransmitters

Dopamine rewards pleasurable food experiences. It creates reinforcement loops. Oxytocin, released during acts of care and social bonding, enhances perceived warmth and emotional safety. Serotonin regulates mood and satiety, linked to emotional well-being and appetite. Endorphins reduce pain, elevate mood, and contribute to emotional satisfaction during eating. On the other hand Cortisol increases stress and suppresses taste perception and appetite.

This journey enabled me to realise how a simple act of feeding your loved one does wonders to them.

Back to the start

Back to the start

The year was 1985. I was in Kindergarten. Going to school was not something I savoured a lot. In a generation were more than half my friend’s mothers were home makers, my mom was a self made, working woman. Forty years later, I am proud of her tenacity and achievements as a four year old, I yearned the attention that some of my friends were getting from their mothers during lunch time. My grandfather worked in the same school, I never carried my lunch. I just go to his office and collect it during lunch time. Then came that day. I walked to the office and was surprised to see my mother there. She was all smiles looking at me. I was brimming. She said, she will feed me lunch that day in school. She got yoghurt rice and roasted okra. I was brimming with joy. The smell of mustard seeds on yoghurt, combining with the texture of roasted okra and the occasional bite of roasted urad dhal gives me a feeling similar to when Wordsworth saw the golden Daffodils. The taste lingers in my mouth still and I salivate every time I reminisce that incident.

Fast forward twenty years, I went to Scotland to study. It has been barely six months but I learnt a lot on life, especially on the value of food. For the first time since my birth, my parents and sister had to celebrate festivals without me. I missed them but more importantly they were unable to enjoy it as much. I decided to visit them during the Easter break. We have two weeks of holidays. Little did I know that my father has asked my mom to pack all the festivals into those ten days. The day after I landed, I had the dishes from my favourite festival, Pongal. This isn’t new. My mom woke up early to make all the items she would on that day. We all sat together to eat. By this point, I have experience this at least 23 times in my life. However, this one was different. I believe it was different for them. It wasn’t just replaying the event and recreating the recipes, it was release of pent up joy and satisfaction. The smell of the roasted spices combining with the texture and taste of the nine different vegetables in the sambhar along with rice and vada gave happiness a taste.

In both these incidents what was I experiencing? Was it the taste of the food? Was it the taste of my mom’s affection? Was it the taste of my yearning for loved ones?

In that moment back in 1985, when yoghurt rice met the crispness of roasted okra, something deeper stirred. The smell of mustard seeds didn’t just signal lunch it unlocked something emotional. That smell didn’t travel to a logical center it went straight to my limbic system, bypassing detours. Straight to the amygdala, where emotions live. Straight to the hippocampus, where memories reside. And in that instant, the smile of my mother, the surprise of her presence, and the warmth of her hand feeding me all collapsed into one simple spoon of yoghurt rice.

With it came a surge of oxytocin, the bonding hormone sealing the moment as something safe, warm, and loved. Dopamine followed, rewarding the joy. Serotonin calmed my restless, four-year-old self. What I tasted wasn’t just food. It was love, surprise, and the comfort of being seen.

Two decades later, it happened again.

The sambar with nine vegetables wasn’t just a dish, it was memory made edible. Each spice roasted that morning didn’t just release aroma; it unlocked fragments in my mind. Emotionally charged memories of temple bells, new clothes, crowded kitchens, and laughter-filled lunches came rushing in through the olfactory bulb, that ancient sensory gateway with direct lines to emotion and identity.

My nervous system, trained through decades of Pongal mornings, knew what to do: it lit up with anticipation, flooded me with endorphins, and bathed me in the familiar warmth of family. That’s why the taste wasn’t just intense. It was emotional. Even though I’d eaten the same meal for over two decades, this one stood apart not because the ingredients had changed, but because I had changed. Because time and distance had carved a deeper hunger not for food, but for belonging.

The science will say I was tasting a neural cocktail of memory, bonding, and sensory feedback. A carefully orchestrated release of brain chemicals responding not just to what I ate, but who made it, why it was made, and what it meant.

Back to the start

Back to the start

Even grown-ups turn to children when they are sick. As much as we hate to admit it or cover it up, deep inside, it is a reality. There is something romantic about caring for your sick loved ones. It evokes Shelly and Keats in every one of us. This was the time when I tasted that.

It was 2009, and the Swine Flu was rampaging across the world. It was scary for many people, but the reality was it was no different from COVID, SARS or Influenza. I was newly married and was in Nottingham with my wife. I contracted Swine Flu from one of my colleagues. Those who showed symptoms were advised to stay indoors. The symptoms were bad. I felt like my lungs might explode at any minute. Breathing was hard at times. I didn’t feel like eating. Combining these with the fever and shivers, made me feel useless. My wife made pepper rasam (a very thin soup made from tomato, tamarind, crushed pepper and cumin). She fed me that rice with that rasam. The smell of coriander was mesmerising, the interplay of flavours woke the nerves of my tongue from their slumber and as the warmth hit my throat my sluggishness from flu started to melt. Such was my state after eating the first serve that I asked for more. I am licking my lips as I recount it 16 years later.

Fast forward to the present, weekday cooking in our house is a chore. We take turns depending on our schedule. Like any other working couple, we finish tasks quickly to focus our time and energy on our business. Eating is an even bigger chore. We grab our lunch and get in front of my computer. Over the last few weeks, I have been showing disrespect, which is the fuel that powers us to do the work we love. If we can’t spend a few more minutes caring for the food and enjoying it, what am I doing to myself? As with most such thoughts, I didn’t bother doing anything about it. A couple of days back, my wife said she wanted to cook something different that day. I didn’t show any interest in the menu. I started working. My meetings ran late into the lunch time. She was waiting for me. Once done, we took sometime to plate the food had made. Once I sat down to eat and even before I tasted the first spoonful, I felt a taste in my tongue. Every spoonful from that point was heavenly. I wasn’t even aware that I liked those items. So much so that I blurted, “mmm.. heavenly!!!” without even realising. My wife started laughing.

What was I tasting these times? Was it the nurture of the sick person? Was it the love and affection in preparing the food?

Lying on that bed, worn down by flu and fear, I wasn’t just being fed. I was being cared for. Deeply. Quietly. With a kind of attention that heals. That pepper rasam wasn’t just food. It was my wife’s love, distilled into a broth. And my body, which had rejected everything else, recognised it, not logically but biochemically. As I inhaled the scent of coriander and felt the sharpness of pepper on my tongue, it wasn’t just my senses waking up. It was my nervous system. The vagus nerve, often called the “care nerve,” was activated by the warmth, by the slowness of being fed, by the comfort of not having to do anything except receive. That alone begins to calm inflammation, reduce heart rate, lower cortisol levels. This is what nurturing does. It doesn’t just soothe the mind it repairs the body.

And of course, dopamine did its job, rewarding the moment, preserving it in memory. So well, in fact, that sixteen years later, I still salivate when I think of it. That’s emotional memory in action, encoded in scent and flavour.

Years later, in a very different setting, it happened again. No sickness. No fear. Just a day like any other. Yet somehow, the food was extraordinary. It wasn’t the ingredients. It wasn’t hunger.

It was the unexpected pause in the rhythm of busyness a moment when my wife decided to bring intention to something that had become routine. And even though I wasn’t paying attention to what was being made, something in my brain picked up on the cues: the waiting, the plating, the care. And it reacted before I even took a bite. This is called anticipatory taste perception. Our brain, using context and past associations, generates flavour expectations before food even touches the tongue. When the context is rich in emotion like love, care, or even nostalgia our brain literally enhances taste perception, flooding the experience with dopamine and oxytocin, turning a simple meal into a sensory symphony.

That’s why I blurted “heavenly!” without knowing what I was eating. My body had already tasted the intention.

So no, I wasn’t just tasting rasam or lunch.

I was tasting nurture in its purest form when someone tends to us in our weakness. I was tasting love, made visible in the everyday. I was tasting the return of meaning to something we often take for granted.

Food is never just food. Sometimes, it’s medicine. Sometimes, it’s memory. But when it’s made with love, served with care, and received with presence it becomes a language of connection.

Back to the start

Back to the start

It was a regular Sunday evening. I was chatting with a very dear friend of mine. She shared a photo of snacks she had made on that day. A look at it made me feel like I was back in childhood, with comfort, safety, and pleasure. Growing up, visiting my aunt (mother’s elder sister) was a once-a-month affair. I used to look forward to it. Her face always had a smile when she looked at me. I felt safe there. She used to make me the same savoury dish. In fact, it may have been the last dish I tasted from her before she died. The item wasn’t even near me, but I felt it. I told this to my friend. She could have said nice and ignored it. It was a boring story. A few weeks later, I met her. She had made it for me and brought it. I was flushed with emotion. I had a few pieces. I considered myself as someone hard. I was melting. By this point my aunt had already died. I smelt my childhood. I felt comfort of safety. Along with it, I had a sense that I struggle to this day to express. The act of my friend brought more taste to it. I can’t to this day think about it without feeling nostalgia, gratitude and a strong sense of affection to my friend.

The following incident happened almost twenty years ago. I was studying in Scotland. Three of us friends went from Chennai to Glasgow to study. We had completed nearly 75% of our course. I was maturing from a boy who was taken care of all his life to a man within one year. Then we met someone with whom we did an assignment together. I wasn’t good at making new friends as my blunt nature puts most people off in the first interaction. This was an exception. One Friday, she called us for dinner. She kept insisting we come. Three of us went to her house. She was living with her boyfriend and a couple of other students from our university. She had made Chole, a gravy made from chick peas. Unlike my friends, I hadn’t tasted it before. She served it with freshly toasted Pitta bread. Each bite was one to relish. I shared my appreciation that made the rest of them think I was exaggerating. I was tasting something that others did feel. One said, it needed less salt. Another felt, it would be better with a bit more spice. For me, it was perfect. I had since had Chole over a hundred times. This taste still lingers. What was I tasting here?

What was I tasting here?

It wasn’t just the savoury snack my friend had made. It wasn’t just Chole paired with Pitta on a cold Friday night in Glasgow. It was something more. Something layered. Something human.

When my friend shared that photo of the snack on a regular Sunday evening, I didn’t just see it. I felt it. A lifetime away, that one image unlocked a vault of warmth buried somewhere deep inside. In a second, I was back in my aunt’s home. A monthly ritual. Her smile. That kitchen. That familiar plate. That unmistakable smell.

Olfactory memory is the memory of smell and is the most emotionally charged of all. Because smell is processed through the olfactory bulb, a structure with direct connections to the amygdala and hippocampus, the brain’s emotion and memory centres. It doesn’t pass through the thalamus like sight or sound. There is no filtration or delay. That’s why a smell can make you feel something before you know what it is.

That memory, long asleep, was jolted awake. I remembered not just the taste of the snack but the feeling of being cared for. The feeling of being seen. The feeling of being a child—safe, protected, uncomplicated. And then came the moment, a few weeks later, when my friend made it for me. That changed everything. She didn’t have to. Most wouldn’t. But she did. And just like that, a social act of care layered itself on top of a private reservoir of memory, deepening the taste into something sacred.

The taste was real. The flavour was right. But it was the emotion behind the act that turned it into something unforgettable. Her gesture released a flood of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, making me feel connected, not just to her, but to every person and memory that snack had ever meant to me. Dopamine reinforced it with pleasure, and endorphins softened the edges of grief.

That’s why I melted. That’s why it lingers.

And then there was that Chole in Glasgow. It wasn’t the most perfect dish by technical standards. My friends noticed flaws. But for me, it was perfect. Not because of salt or spice. But because it came unexpectedly, through the window of new friendship, during a moment of becoming, when I was learning how to stand on my own, far from everything familiar.

I didn’t know it then, but first-time emotional connections, when paired with new tastes, get stored more deeply. The brain binds novel stimuli with heightened attentional focus and emotional salience. That Chole wasn’t just a chickpea curry. It was the first warmth of a friend I didn’t expect to have. And my brain decided: remember this. The combination of novelty, emotion, and social bonding led to a powerful encoding. So powerful that I can recall it with more clarity than the dishes I’ve had a hundred times since.

So again, what was I tasting?

I was tasting nostalgia served with the savoury. Friendship folded gently into Pitta bread. I was tasting how food carries not just flavour, but meaning, how what we eat becomes a vessel for the people we share it with, and the moments that surprise us. Food doesn’t just nourish the body. It archives the soul. And sometimes, the simplest dishes unlock the deepest parts of ourselves without a word being spoken.

Back to the start

Back to the start

My journey of understanding taste won’t be complete without these two incidents. It was a couple of years after my wedding. My wife and I had just returned from the UK. Post that, my wife fell sick for a month. Then my mother-in-law wasn’t keeping well. I was in Bangalore for my work, and my wife was in Chennai with her parents. I knew my mother-in-law wasn’t keeping well. My mother-in-law had asked my wife to ask me what I would like to eat. I was way too obnoxious to respond appropriately to that. I told her that I can eat anything. I sat down for lunch along with the rest of the family. There were more items on the menu than a typical wedding reception. I had a plate served with most of it. My mother-in-law had made brinjal curry. Brinjal curry is something I love but none of them like it. My wife won’t even touch it. She had made it just for me and the others had a portion of it. For a person who didn’t bother saying what he wanted, this was a surprise. I couldn’t express. It was brinjal. It was one of my favourites but it tasted very different. When my mother-in-law softly asked me how it tasted, I had to tell her it was absolutely amazing. She had taken the pain to make this for me with so much care. The taste and texture of that curry that I felt wasn’t the same that the rest did. What happened in me there?

Most people from India wouldn’t have experienced the love and affection that I did from an elderly Pakistani family. I was living in Reading, England, as a house guest with an elderly Pakistani family. The uncle was blind, and the aunt took care of him. I had a couple of other friends who stayed in the same place with me. One day, my friends asked me for help with an event they are organising for their company. Since 8 am in the morning, I was busy moving around, purchasing stuff, helping set up the place, organising, etc. I came home a few times to pick up items. The event started at 6 pm, and since it was their company event, I came back home. I was surprised to see the aunt there. They finish their work and go to bed by 5:30 pm. She told me in a soft voice, “Son, I have seen you extremely busy all day. I don’t think you had breakfast or lunch. I was waiting for you to come home.” I told her that it was fine. I was shocked she noticed I hadn’t had any meal. She said, “No, please sit down. I have made dough for you.” Saying that, she made four rotis with potato and okra gravy. She told me I have to finish it and then left to her room. I didn’t know what to say. Every bite of that was care, affection, love that I couldn’t taste the food itself. The ingredients almost didn’t matter to me. What was I tasting here?

It wasn’t just brinjal curry in a Chennai summer. It wasn’t just rotis on a quiet evening in Reading. It was care. Wrapped in silence. It was effort noticed too late, but never forgotten.

When my mother-in-law asked what I wanted to eat, I gave her an answer void of specificity. “Anything.” But what she heard was not the words. It was the gap behind them. And somehow, she knew. She made brinjal curry—a dish she didn’t even like, a dish no one else touched, but one that she knew I loved. I didn’t ask. And yet she gave.

The moment I took the first bite, it tasted different. Not different in seasoning. Different in depth. Because taste is not just detected by the tongue, it is decoded by the brain. The brinjal activated my taste buds, yes—but the act behind it, the unseen effort, the subtle noticing, lit up emotional circuits in my brain. The amygdala registered gratitude, the hypothalamus felt safe, and the dopamine pathways rewarded the warmth of being cared for.

It wasn’t just food. It was a reminder that someone had thought about me—even when I didn’t think to speak up for myself. And then, there was that evening in Reading.

An elderly woman, with tired eyes and a quiet presence, had watched me rush in and out all day. I hadn’t said a word about being hungry. I hadn’t expected anyone to notice. But she had. She saw what I couldn’t say, and responded not with words, but with something more ancient: nurture through food.

When she said, “I’ve made dough for you,” what she meant was, “I saw you.” And when I sat down to eat those warm rotis with potato and okra, I didn’t taste the ingredients I tasted attunement. I tasted a kind of maternal attention that is so rare and so pure, it bypasses the mouth entirely and goes straight to the soul.

In both moments, the neurobiology of taste was hijacked by the biology of emotion. These meals didn’t just travel from mouth to stomach they travelled through limbic pathways, releasing oxytocin with every bite, quieting the nervous system, slowing the heart rate, calming the mind.

Science calls it contextual modulation of taste where emotional context amplifies or alters taste perception. But I call it something simpler. I was tasting care made tangible. Effort made edible. Affection cooked into form. That’s why I couldn’t taste the food itself. Because the feeling was stronger than the flavour.

What began as a journey of taste, ends as a journey of connection. Across memories, across distances, across acts both spoken and silent. I’ve come to see that food is never just food.

It is how we give, how we notice and how we remember. It is how we say: you matter to me without ever needing to say a word.

Back to the start

I walked into the house bereft of energy, emotionally drained with little to nil inclination to do anything. My wife brought me rice and potato fry. I have had that combo for at least 500 times in my life. She handed me over the bowl and sat next to me. The first spoonful filled me with pleasure. The smell was heavenly and the taste was delightful. The tiredness vanished. She said that she knew I would come home hungry. I told her it was one of the best food I had tasted. She laughed in disbelief. Was I tasting an emotion or was I feeling the emotion of taste?

Taste has a very unique connection to the hormones that makes one feel love, nostalgia, pleasure and even in some cases euphoria. In retrospect, I am thinking of the following questions.

1. Same food prepared by the same person and with the exact same ingredients taste completely different on different occasions.
2. A food you are nostalgic about, when prepared by a completely different person, results in you developing the same bond with the person
3. Same food, tastes totally different for two people, evoking completely different reactions.

I will explore this in the episodes

1. Taste of yearning and affection
2. Taste of nurture and love
3. Taste of friendship and nostalgia
4. Taste of effort and care
5. The biochemical aspects of taste

Each episode has my personal story along with my retrospect learning in the subject. In this series, I want to explore the deeply human scenarios that highlight the interplay of memory, neuroscience, psychology, endocrinology, and sensory perception. I want to highlight the nuances of these interactions through my experiences.

“Do you really want me to be a husband like Rama?”

That was my question to my mother-in-law when she wished that my marriage with my wife would turn out like the one between Rama and Sita.

This has to be controversial. If I write 5 blogs and haven’t said anything controversial, I am not true to myself. For the moment, I want to ignore all real-life examples I have seen and only concentrate on stories. For every relationship, I have stories of someone who epitomised purity. As a husband, I could never find someone trusting, faithful, loving, protective and honest. People tend to create personality cult on someone who excels in one area, giving them free pass with others. So, for a change I want to take the opportunity to finish off this series with set of stories from which I learnt how not to be as a husband.

Rama, the husband

The story of Rama in Valmiki’s Ramayana was one where he was dutiful as a monarch, but never once as a husband. As a crown prince, it was his duty to obey the king and move out of the kingdom for 14 years. He abdicated the responsibility as a husband. I don’t doubt from the stories that he loved Sita a lot. However, asking her to prove chastity and fidelity by walking into a burning pyre was an act of cowardice. I would have respected the story more if he had walked with her. Then he couldn’t resist his sycophancy towards pleasing his people. He forces his pregnant wife to move away or prove her chastity again to the entire kingdom. This results in him losing his wife, who walks away to the jungle. Finally, when he decides to go get her back, he poses the same request again. At this point, Sita has it enough and decides to end it. The only credit I can give Rama, as a husband is that he was consistent. This story if anything proves the loyalty of Sita in the midst of a terrible marriage.

Shahjahan, the husband

Who cannot look at Taj Mahal and wonder about the symbol of love built by Mughal Emperor Shahjahan for his wife Mumtaj. A kind of love where Shahjahan was already married couple of years earlier with this first wife, Kandahari Begum. He also married another woman a couple of years after he married Mumtaj. That also didn’t stop him from marrying one more after she died. Her death was also imminent as she was pregnant with his 14th child by the time she was 38. This isn’t an act of love or devotion. This is just a typical emperor who wanted to show off his wealth. Every architectural marvel of the past was given for some reason but the truth is that it was built to show off one’s power and wealth. Taj Mahal is no different. When I see it I feel the cry of women. It didn’t need modern science to know that the process of child birth was painful or can be fatal. If I love my wife why I would I try something where the chance of her death is anything above zero. It was the fourteenth child. He already had enough by then.

Kovalan, the husband

In the previous blog, I mentioned the famous Tamil epic Silapathigaram. The entire epic glorifies Kannagi, the lady who fights for the truth when her husband was mistakenly executed by the Pandya king. She gets immortalised as a symbol of chastity. Kovalan, the husband of Kannagi, was a philanderer. He was a wealthy merchant who decided to spend all his wealth on his mistress Madhavi. Once he becomes penniless, he comes back to Kannagi, and she accepts him back in her life. She is being praised for this. I have never heard of a story where a woman commits adultery and the husband is glorified for taking her back. The reason is that it rarely happens if at all. The entire glorification of Kannagi as the Pathini (பத்தினி) meaning Chaste wife in the story is not a responsibility a wife alone should carry.

I am not in any way speaking ill of the literature here. The literary value of Ramayana or Silapathigaram is absolutely tremendous. Any literature lasting for a few thousand years is a showcase of its greatness. I am merely highlighting the mistakes the protagonists have made as husbands. Well, I certainly never wanted to be them. How I am and my mistakes are for people to judge.

As the saying goes “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity“

Of all the responsibilities that I have seen, the one of the brother endears me. That is also because I had my own sister and was practically a brother to a dozen more cousins who were born after me. An interesting aspect of evolution is that having one sister makes you careful. With so many sister like figures in my early life, it was confusing. Am I supposed to be nice? What does it mean? Should I fight? Am I losing? The confusion between competition and protection causes a yin-yang in our decision-making every time. As I grew older, I started looking at most people like I did my sister. There were plenty of stories where the brotherly responsibilities inspired me. There are three which come to my mind immediately.

1. Bharatha, the brother of Rama
2. Ilango Adigal, the brother of Cheran Chenguttuvan
3. Ravana, the brother of Surpanaka

While each of these stories are great in its own way, I want to focus on the one of Cheran Chenguttuvan and Ilango Adigal. Let me share the story as I remember it.

Imayavarampan Cheralatan was a Chera King who rules in the Chera Kingdom in the 6th – 7th Century BCE. Chera was a Tamil kingdom, though it is the area of modern Kerala. He had two sons, the eldest one was Chenguttuvan and the younger one was Illango. The princes grew up fond of each other. As legend has it, an astrologer tells Cheralatan that his younger son Illango would become the king and not Chenguttuvan. The prediction gets the king worried as he sees no good way this can happen. In their tradition the first born prince always becomes the king, unless he gets killed or his younger sibling pushes him aside in an act of war. Seeing his father worried about the prospect of him either dethroning Chenguttuvan or preventing him from ever becoming the king, Illango decided something extraordinary. He goes to a nearby Jain monastry and becomes a Jain monk. He renounces not just the throne but the entire life of royalty to ensure his brother can get his due. Prince Ilango becomes Ilango Adigal and goes on to write one of the 5 great epics in Tamil Literature, Silapathigraram. In his work, he goes on to praise his brother Chenguttuvan as a powerful and respected ruler who conquered the Kadambu tribe, and the Kongar people. He is also mentioned as a figure of importance in the introduction of the Pattini cult, which worships Kannagi, the virtuous wife in the epic.

People mostly resort to actions that favour them or put others down. It is relatively common to do the right thing when there is no upside. It is hard or next to impossible to do something when there is a downside, and by just staying quiet, you have a considerable upside. We all talk of sibling rivalry. For every sibling who supports each other, hundreds end up fighting each other or severing relationships. The sacrifice of Prince Ilango is beyond my comprehension. There is something deeply poetic about the story itself, which I am glad resulted in the epic we have today.