A life, sketched

in red & black ink

The spokesperson, off the podium — drawn in vignettes rather than verdicts. Drop sketches, snapshots or scans into the frames; the annotations are already inked.

The route so far —

Salem

born, 1989

Chennai

SBOA schooldays

Bhopal

the engineer

Paris · Oxford

the scholar

Chennai, again

home & party

Salem, where it starts — 1989

A Salem boy first: born in the steel-and-mango city in 1989, carried its name into public life — the way Tamil politics likes its introductions.

Schooldays, then NIT Bhopal — loads & spans

The SBOA class photograph, before civil engineering at NIT Bhopal — precision, structure, integrity. He still argues the way engineers draw: foundations first.

Paris, then Oxford — the question years

Public affairs at Sciences Po, an MBA in finance at Oxford — and the habit, picked up in seminar rooms, of standing to ask the awkward question.

The party man — red & black

Home again: the DMK's IT Wing, then the spokesperson's chair — flowers on the dais, cadre in the crowd, a microphone that is rarely off.

Off hours — where columns happen

Between broadcasts, the columnist works from the couch: op-eds drafted for The Hindu, the Express, The Wire — data first, adjectives later, the household critic unimpressed.

Open water — off the record

Off duty means open water when the schedule allows — though, based in Chennai, he stays reachable by half the newsrooms in India.

Back to Oxford — the Goodman Library

The scholar's return ticket: with the Oxford Policy Advisory Group, staging Dravidian-model conversations in the Oxford Union's Goodman Library — October 2025.

The rowing years — eight oars, one rhythm

A habit from the Europe years: crew on grey mornings — the original tutorial in pulling together, and in who sets the stroke.

The old circle — no titles here

Friends from before the podiums — the circle that still calls him by name, not designation.

margin note —

This page keeps to the public record: the hometown, the degrees, the desk, the party. The frames are filled from his own albums; the rest of the sketchbook — family, festivals, the occasional holiday — belongs to its subject.