Music, Memories, Books: An Ode to My Mother

Some memories are stored in photographs. Some live in old letters, familiar places, or the voices of people we have loved. For me, some of mine live in songs.

Music has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. Before I understood what music could do, I knew what it felt like to hear my mother sing.

My mother, Mrs. Rajalakshmi Kannan, was trained in Carnatic music and had a beautiful, melodic, pitch-perfect voice. I grew up listening to compositions that I now know are extraordinarily difficult. At the time, they simply belonged to my world because they belonged to hers.

She was also the person who introduced me to far more than music. She taught me to notice subtlety, beauty and the finer things in life. Every one of my books carries a quiet dedication to her, because so much of what I create begins there.

Today, my listening moves freely through Hindustani classical, Carnatic, operatic pop, jazz, country, fusion, film music and instrumentals. Genre has never mattered as much as what the music makes me feel. If a piece of music evokes something deep within me, it finds a place in my playlist.

Whenever I write fiction, songs find their way into the story, and before long, each novel has its own playlist.

Music is not something that one listens just for relaxation. It gives memories a place to live. Certain songs belong to people, others to seasons of life, and some become inseparable from characters who exist only on a page.

So I began creating playlists for my novels.

Taste of Fate has songs that became intertwined with Maya and Arjun’s journey. Work-Love Balance has Vikram’s Setlist because Vikram is a singer and music is woven into his story.

With Wings of Love, I wanted to do something a little different.

There are two Spotify playlists this time.

🎧 Reading Companion: instrumental music to accompany the novel and create the mood while you read.

🎼 The Soundtrack to Wings of Love: songs that remind me of Shalini, Vishal and the emotions that shape their story.

Perhaps this is why making a playlist for every novel has become such a natural part of writing for me. It began with a mother who filled our home with music and taught me to notice the beautiful things. Rajalakshmi Kannan will always be part of whatever I do. Anything good in me has been imbibed from her. Whatever is flawed is entirely my own.

This playlist tradition, like so much else in my life, is dedicated to her.

If you’re a music lover like me and would like the Spotify links, comment PLAYLIST and I’ll DM them to you.

#WingsofLove #Soundtrack #ReadingCompanion #Love #Friendship

Why Advice Isn’t Always Helpful: A Psychologist’s Perspective.

In my work, I have often seen people who are already struggling receive plenty of advice.

What they should have done.

What they should do now.

What they should have known better.

Sometimes, the advice is perfectly sensible. Sometimes, it merely states what the person already knows.

“Take it one step at a time.”

“Think positively.”

“You know what you need to do.”

“Try to stay calm.”

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these statements. In another moment, they may even be useful.

But timing matters.

Knowing what to do and being able to do it while overwhelmed are two very different things.

A person experiencing intense stress, fear, grief or emotional overload does not suddenly lose all knowledge of what is sensible. Often, the difficulty is elsewhere. They may know exactly what they need to do and still feel unable to do it. Emotional overwhelm can narrow attention, cloud thinking and make even simple decisions feel difficult.

This is something I have observed repeatedly in my work.

Sometimes people do not need another explanation of their situation. They have already analysed it themselves, often repeatedly. They know where things went wrong. They know what they should probably do next.

What they may need first is to feel heard.

Sometimes they need someone to stay with the discomfort rather than immediately trying to fix it.

Sometimes they need practical help.

And sometimes, they simply need a hand.

Advice is not the problem. Advice has its place. Perspective has its place too.

The question is whether we have understood the person’s state before deciding what they need.

One of the important things I have learnt through my work is that when people are overwhelmed, more information is not always more helpful. Before deciding what someone needs to hear, perhaps it is worth pausing long enough to understand what they are actually experiencing.

Because helping is not always about having the right thing to say.

Sometimes, it begins with understanding where the other person is before deciding how to help them from there.

Janani Srikanth is an author, psychologist and human behaviour specialist whose work explores the mind, emotions, relationships and the patterns that shape everyday human behaviour.

She is also a mental health advocate whose work contributes to creating more open, informed conversations around psychological well-being and challenging the silence and stigma surrounding mental health.

She is the author of several books across psychology, personal growth and fiction.

Explore her books: https://www.amazon.in/stores/Janani-Srikanth/author/B0BTX2G413
Explore her mental health advocacy work: https://jananisrikanth.com/break-the-taboo

The Double Exclusion: How difficult times can quietly change our place in other people's lives

There is a particular kind of loneliness that can happen when you are going through a difficult phase in life.

The first exclusion is often obvious. 

Your circumstances themselves may already have pushed you to the edges of life. Stress, loss, uncertainty, disappointment, financial difficulties, grief, or simply a period when nothing seems to be working can change how much you participate in the world around you. 

You may withdraw. 

You may have less energy. 

You may no longer feel able to show up in the same carefree way.

Then comes a second, quieter exclusion.

People around you begin to edit what they share with you. They hesitate before telling you good news. They leave out stories about celebrations, achievements, holidays, relationships, plans, or other happy developments. They may assume that the contrast between your difficult time and their good time will be too much.

The intention is often consideration. The impact, however, can be isolation.

You are already excluded by what life is putting you through. Then you are gradually excluded from the good things happening in other people's lives.

That is the double exclusion.

When someone is struggling, people often become careful around them. They wonder whether talking about their own happiness would seem insensitive. They may feel guilty sharing something positive while the other person is dealing with something painful. So they filter themselves. They share less. They stop mentioning certain things. Sometimes they stop inviting the person altogether, assuming that participation might be uncomfortable.

This leads to something subtle. The struggling person is still present in everyone's life, but they are no longer fully included in the whole of those lives. 

They may still be asked how they are coping. People may know their problems and try to support them. Yet the celebrations happen somewhere else. The happy news is shared with others first. The plans are discussed in circles they are no longer part of.

No one necessarily intended to push them away. Yet they are still standing outside something.

One of the assumptions behind this kind of exclusion is that someone going through a bad time cannot fully participate in someone else's happiness. But it is important to remember that people are capable of holding more than one emotion at once.

One can be worried about their future but genuinely celebrate a friend's success. 

One can be lonely and happy that someone they love has found companionship. 

One can be grieving and still laugh. 

One can wish their life were different and still want good things for others.

Someone's happiness may occasionally touch a sore point. That is part of being human. But that is often more about the reality of their own circumstances than a reaction to your happiness.

Sometimes being included in another person's joy is exactly what makes them feel connected. It reminds them that you are still part of their life. That their difficult chapter has not turned them into a person who must only be approached through sadness, caution, or concern.

Going through a bad time is something happening in their life. It is not the entirety of who they are.

And then there is another side to this dynamic.

When people do share their difficulties with us, especially when we have been through hard times ourselves, we often feel an immediate need to say, “I understand. I went through something similar.”

Sometimes this is genuine. We are trying to build a bridge between their experience and ours. We do not want them to feel alone, so we reach into our own memories and look for something that resembles what they are going through.

But occasionally, we stretch that resemblance too far.

Deep down, we may even know that what we experienced was not really the same. The circumstances were different. The scale was different. The consequences were different. Yet we still try to make the comparison work.

“I know exactly how you feel. When this happened to me…”

And suddenly, their experience begins to disappear behind our own story.

This is not always selfishness. Often, it comes from the human need to relate through familiarity. Someone else's pain can make us uncomfortable because we cannot fully enter an experience we have never had. So we search for the closest thing we know: ourselves.

We may overstate our struggles because we desperately want to establish a point of connection.

Sometimes the most honest response could be, “What you're going through isn't the same as what I went through, and I may not fully understand it. But I'm here, and I want to understand.”

There is a difference between finding shades of ourselves in another person's experience and forcing their experience to fit our own.

Perhaps that is where these two behaviours meet.

When someone is going through a bad time, we may assume we know what hearing our good news will do to them. So we decide not to share it.

When someone tells us about a struggle, we may assume we need to understand it immediately. So we search for our own version of it and try to make the comparison fit.

In both cases, the intention is often connection.

Yet both begin with an assumption about another person's experience.

Someone can be going through a terrible chapter and still want to remain part of everyone else's story. And when someone else's pain does not resemble our own, we do not have to force a resemblance in order to care.

Perhaps, in trying so hard to connect, we sometimes leave too little room for the other person's experience to remain their own.

Their own pain.

Their own happiness.

Their own version of what they are going through.

And perhaps a deeper understanding and a stronger connection sometimes begin with allowing that.