"We feel that India's real strength lies in its civilisation; a civilisation that can contribute to a more humane and egalitarian world order. We have always felt that we failed to present our treasures in a very palatable manner. To put it bluntly, we are poor packaging experts. The world is ready to receive but we have failed to give."

The first effort from Tamil Maiyam was Thiruvasagam by Ilayaraja, the noted South Indian composer. Unfortunately, it failed to capture the imagination of the world though they had the 140-year old Budapest Symphony Orchestra playing the score and an Oscar-award winning lyricist and engineer, Richard King worked on the album.

Says Raj, "It ended up as a Tamil-centric product though we didn't want it to be that way. We had to leave it to the creator, Ilayaraja. Obviously it is a great piece of work and no other music album did as good as Thiruvasagam in Tamil Nadu. But it didn't take Indian music to a cross-over global audience, which was our ambition."

Earlier Slide Show: Indian in St Petersburg

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