All roads lead home

Actor Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and singersongwriter Priya Ragu reflect on their shared Eelam Tamil heritage and its influence on their respective disciplines as creatives of colour.

- SAMANTHA HARAN

It would not be an understatement to say that Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Priya Ragu are well on their way to stardom. In 2020, aged 17 and fresh out of high school, Ramakrishnan landed the lead role in Netflix's hit series Never Have I Ever. In the same year, Priya Ragu, at age 34, took a leap of faith and quit her full-time job to pursue her R&B dreams, subsequently dropping her phenomenal debut single 'Good Love 2.0'.

Since then, both women have continued to scale new heights. Ragu released and toured her acclaimed first album damnshestamil (2021), which fused R&B and classical Tamil music influences. Meanwhile, Ramakrishnan landed a role voicing an Indo-Canadian character, incidentally called Priya, in Pixar's first-ever female-directed film, Turning Red (2022). The wildly popular show Never Have I Ever, in which she played protagonist Devi Vishwakumar, was renewed several times.

Now, both women are once again approaching exciting new chapters. The final season of Never Have I Ever dropped in June, marking the end of the show that kick-started Ramakrishnan's career, and she now stands anticipatedly on the precipice of the future. For Ragu, following a year of touring her debut album while releasing teaser singles like 'Illuminous' and 'Adalam Va!', new music is certainly to come.

But breakout fame is not the only phenomenon these two creatives share. Both women, like myself, are of Eelam Tamil heritage our roots lie in Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka, where our people have faced not only a violent history of genocide but also ongoing oppression to this day. Below, Ramakrishnan and Ragu speak to their Eelam Tamil identity and how it plays out in their art.