Samanth Subramanian

In Mint today, a Raagtime column on the famed “Airport Concert” of Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer:

As it turned out, the concert occurred not in an airport but near one; the mridangam player in the concert, Trichy Sankaran, once confirmed that it was held, sometime in the 1960s, in a hall in Tambaram, a Chennai suburb that abuts the international airport. And indeed, the drone of low-flying jets routinely cut through the music. Once, out of exasperation, Semmangudi remarked in wry Tamil: “The asura is back!”; on another occasion, after an aircraft had passed, he observed: “My ears are still returning to normal”.

More here. (And the headline within the piece, I assure you, is not mine. )