George Floyd’s killing prompted Indian-American musician Asha Ramesh to write a few lines about her pain. She shared them with her son, vocalist and composer Rohith Jayaraman, and the pair developed that private writing into Manam, a five-track album released in June 2021. In a 2022 interview with Scroll, the artists described a project shaped by grief, questions about race and caste privilege, and a collaborative process moving between English and Tamil.
How Floyd’s killing became the starting point
Ramesh told Scroll that she was deeply affected by George Floyd’s killing and began writing to express what she felt. “I was deeply affected by George Floyd’s killing. I wrote a few lines expressing the pain that I was experiencing.” She called Jayaraman and shared the words with him. He liked them, and they decided to explore the material further.
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At first, the writing was not intended for public release. As the two continued, Jayaraman said, “The songs were never really meant to be released but as we wrote more and more, we felt as though they all shared the same spirit.” What began as a response to a particular moment gradually took shape as an album.
The other killings and questions behind Manam
The artists also situated the project amid other killings: Breonna Taylor in the United States, and Jayaraj and Bennix in Tamil Nadu. They did not present these cases as identical. Rather, the interview connected their names to the wider context in which the mother and son were thinking about violence, grief, and social position.
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Jayaraman described reflecting on his own experience of racism alongside the caste privilege he recognized in himself: “My experience with racism juxtaposed against my immense caste privilege made me realise there is so much left to learn and unlearn.” He called the album an opening, not a final answer: “Manam feels like the first step in that journey.”
Ramesh connected the decision to speak publicly with her own experiences of being judged by skin colour. “I have been judged due to my skin colour on multiple occasions. This felt like the right time to talk about it.” These are the artists’ personal accounts, as reported in the 2022 interview.
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How mother and son made the album
Manam was Ramesh’s first original album collaboration with her son. Jayaraman wrote lyrics in English; the two then worked to carry their meaning into Tamil. The process involved more than translation: they described an additional round of filtering, removing material that felt extraneous as they shaped the songs together.
Jayaraman said the words held several emotions at once: “They were full of hope, disappointment, affection, frustration, and love.” That range helps explain why the album was not simply a record of grief. The artists’ account places pain alongside affection and hope, without claiming one universal meaning for the music.
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Why the album is called Manam
Ramesh chose the title Manam, which the interview translates from Tamizh as “from the heart.” She also noted that the word’s English spelling is a palindrome. For her, that circular quality suggested a feeling that returns to its source, fitting a work that grew from personal words shared between mother and son.
The song that affected Jayaraman most
Jayaraman singled out “Vidudhalai” as especially meaningful. He recalled needing breaks during recording because the song overwhelmed him emotionally. Its arrangement, developed with Aleif Hamdan, took almost a year. Artist Bhavya Kumar designed the album cover and later worked with the duo on a lyric video for “Vidudhalai.”
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What the interview establishes
Scroll’s interview, published November 26, 2022, identifies Manam as a five-track album released in June 2021 and records the artists’ account of its origin, themes, and bilingual making. It is a source for what Ramesh and Jayaraman said about their experiences and intentions, not independent verification of those subjective reflections or an update on the album’s current distribution.
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