MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THESE

Our life continues to be busy in Chennai. Of course, Feb.-Mar was less hectic than the previous two months. We visited only about 30 temples, 5 concerts, 2 films, attended my father-in-law's Srardham, a few dinners and had Raghu with us for a week. Now the details.

Aarthi
Aarthi has been having a hectic time. Since film-making is one of her electives, she and her friends went to Hampi thrice for shooting. Unfortunately the camera was stolen and had to be replaced. She was down for sometime, but soon her natural enthusiasm resurfaced (I hope).


Amritha
Amritha continued to sing in Women's Organisation functions. The first two functions in January were off-limits to men. But I was lucky to hear her singing 'maalai pozhudhin mayakkathile' along with Mrs. Kamala Ramesh (my colleague's wife) at the Husbands' Day (Night!) function of Southern Railway Women's Organisation in February.

Carnatic Music
We continue to enjoy concerts. we attended 5 concerts in this period. This included one in the IRAS get-together where we asked Mr. Kasturirangan, an employee of ICF and a disciple of T.N.Seshagopalan to sing. Though all , except Maharajapuram Ramachandran, were newcomers, their performance was excellent. I have been working on my book on appreciating Carnatic music. I hope to publish it before end of May.

Cricket
India's tour of Pakistan has been a phenomenal success. The disciplined crowds, the quality of cricket, the fielding of Kaif, Sehwag's triple century and the way Inzamam conducts himself were all terrific.
I have been saddened by the great fall of the once-mighty W. Indies. So I was happy when Brian Lara claimed back his world record. I was keeping track of it on the net as we in Chennai have not acquired set-top boxes and are watching only the free channels on TV.
I also played three matches, one with cricket ball and two with tennis balls. The first was an exhibition match between S.Railway Officers' Club and ICF Officers' Club. Although I work in S.Railway, I am President of ICF Club and so I played for it. The other two were part of the Accounts Staff sports that I started, as I believe that people who play together work better together. There was a tremendous enthusiasm among the officers and staff and we had 10 teams of 15 each. My team lost in the final. I also played shuttle as part of the Accounts Sports.

Divya Desams
We are quite far ahead in the Divya Desam race. I'm keeping a tally only from 2003 after I made the web site and by 15th April 2004 we've covered 78 (out of 106, with 2 being in the other world). February/April saw us visiting Villupuram, Tiruvarur and Nagappattinam for the first time and re-visited Kanchipuram and Srirangam.

Drama
We used to see one or two English/Hindi plays every month in Mumbai in NCPA where we were members. But we did not see any dramas in Chennai in the last two years. So I was happy when I got passes for the English play 'Adolf'. Pip Utton, an English actor was the only one in that play and his acting was fantastic. The first half hour when he depicted the last days of Hitler was fantastic. But I didn't enjoy the next half hour when he became a comedian with a lot of one-liners. He was good, but I felt it did not belong there. Maybe I'd have accepted it if they had advertised it as 'Adolf & Laugh' instead of 'Adolf'..

Films
We saw 2 films in these two months. (I count only the films that we see in theatres). On successive days, we saw Munnabhai MBBS in Hindi (Good timepass) and Autograph (excellent). Autograph, a Tamil movie by Cheran is a clean film and has scenes that everyone can identify with. It has become a big hit and the hall was full when we went even though it was a working day.

Harish
Harish is busy with his work and could not visit us. This is the first time in the last two years that he has not come here in more than three months.

Mother-in-law
My mother-in-law was with us till the first week of March after which she went to T.Nagar. She is fine now and used to finish all magazines that come here and also listen to music. She also saw a couple of movies including Autograph on CD. She came back again for 10 days when Raghu stayed with us.

Mother's masyam
We continued to perform our mother's monthly rites regularly. Upto December, we did it in Triplicane while the last two have been performed in Besant Nagar, which is a nice, clean and well-maintained place.


Other Temples
Apart from Divya Desam, we have been visiting a number of temples. The most impressive of the temples that we visited in Feb./Apr. were Tiruvannamalai, Tiruvarur and Chidambaram. I was also happy to visit Kapali temple in Mylapore (with Raghu) after a long time.

Other travels
Amritha and I visited Hyderabad in March. She was visiting Hyderabad for the first time after I was transferred from there in 1976. It is a nice place and we were impressed by the changes in the city. We went to places that we had not visited. NTR Gardens on the banks of Hussain Sagar has an excellent collection of Bonsai plants, the boat ride in the lake was enjoyble and so were the few temples that we visited. But the highlight of the trip was our visit to Ramoji Film City, which is a must-visit place. Some people who came with us said the Cowboy show there was better than even the one in Universal Studio of Hollywood. Hopefully Amritha will write about our Hyderabad visit in the next Newsletter. I also went to Delhi for a day on 5th April. Since I don't like visiting Delhi, I went by the morning flight and returned the same night.

Raghu
Raghu came to Chennai on 21st March, the day after Pushpa and her husband left for USA (We visited Pushpa and her husband on the day they left for USA. Amritha accompanied them to the airport and received Raghu the next day). He spent the first week in T.Nagar, where my father-in-law's Shrardham took place on 26th. He came here on 29th March along with my mother-inlaw. We had a nice time. He did a lot of shopping in Purasawalkam (with Amritha) and Mylapore (with both of us). We went to the beach once and ate out once. We went to Kanchipuram for a day. As I wanted Raghu to experience travel by a special Officer's Inspection carriage, we went by train to Chingleput and from there by road. We visited 10 temples and also visited Avalur (15 kms from Kanchipuram) which is the headquarters of the math that Raghu and Chandra visit in Sydney. We met the chief Swamiji also. Raghu left for Jakarta on the same day that I went to Delhi.

Weather
When we visited Hyderabad on 17th March, it was 40 ⁰C there while it was 34⁰C in Chennai. But within a week, Chennai became very hot. Thanks to Chandrababu Naidu, Chennai has got some water. The water position is still bad and we hope we'd have summer rains.

Bye till 15th June,


15th April 2004