MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THESE

Our life continues to be busy in Chennai. June-August was again hectic. We visited about 10 temples, 6 concerts, 3 films, attended a few lunches and dinners outside, had a holiday in Kerala and visited Tirunelveli, Kutralam and Secunderabad and I spent a day in Delhi. Now the details.

Aarthi
Aarthi spent about a month in Mumbai attending a couple of workshops and was in Ahmedabad at National Institute of Design for four days. She came to Kollam in Kerala with Harish. (Read my article) The documentary films made by Aarthi and her classmates (which Rahul also saw) were very good.

Amritha
Amritha continues to be busy with various activities in Women's Organisations (both ICF and Southern Railway). She sang a song (in chorus) at the farewerll of Mrs.Anand, wife of GM who retired on 31st July. In the house, she spends a lot of time in the garden which has resulted in a good crop of jack-fruits (8 nos.) and coconuts. Of course she also travels a lot with me. Rahul, Chandra and a few of my friends had come home and were as usual bowled over by Amritha's hospitality.

Carnatic Music
My book on appreciating Carnatic music titled '108 Divya Desams' is almost ready. I have been able to get the introduction written by Dr. Pramila, Head of the Department of Music, Madras University and the Foreword by Madurai T.N.Seshagopalan. Aarthi has done the cover design, page formatting etc. I shall be giving the book for printing on 20th August. The book is planned to be released on 11th September at an austere function. Though the book and our outings leave me with little time, we enjoyed 6 concerts in this period by Trichy Gurunathan, S.P.Ramh, Gayatri Girish, Ranjani Hariharan, Sangeetha Sivakumar and Subhashini Parthasarathy. All were good.

Divya Desams
We are quite far ahead in the Divya Desam race. June-August saw us visiting the temples near Ernakulam and we have now visited 93 out of 95 in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

Films
We saw 3 films in these two months. (I count only the films that we see in theatres). Lakshya (with Aarthi, *ing Amitabh, Hrithik Roshan- Good), Ghilli(with Harish & Hema, *ing Vijay- OK) and Azhagiya Theeye (with Chandra, *ing new actors, Very good).

Harish
Harish and Aarthi joined us in Kerala on two days' holidays from where we came by road to Tirunelveli via Aryankavu (an excellent waterfalls in Kerala) where we had bath and Kutralam (waterfalls in Tamil Nadu) which we just saw. Harish went to Bangalore for 2 days in between on official work. As usual he was very busy during his stay.

Mother's masyam and Father's Annual Ceremony
We continued to perform our mother's monthly rites regularly. All the monthly ceremonies are now over and the annual ceremony will be for 3 days in September. My father's annual ceremony was on 24th June. It is 6 years since my father passed away and one year since my mother passed away. Time seems to fly.

Mother-in-law
My mother-in-law came to our house on 22nd July after attending the naming function of Namitha. She is coming to our place after more than two months. She is busy with magazines which we get in plenty (almost one every day).

New Arrivals
Vaishnavi, my brother Raghu's grand-daughter is yet to acquire normal weight. Namitha, Kannan's(Adyar) granddaughter celebrated the naming ceremony on 22nd July which was a family get-together. But since it was a working day, Santhanam, Kausalya and I left early.

Other Temples
Apart from Divya Desam, we have been visiting a number of temples. During this period we visited Guruvayoor, Choottanikkarai and Krishnapuram (with Harish & Aarthi and which has excellent sculptures).

Other travels
Our major visit was to Kerala. For two days We visited Divya Desam and other temples between Ernakulam and Kollam. Harish and Aarthi reached Kollam by midnight on 27th and the next two days saw us having a wonderful time at Ashtamudi Resorts. For 48 hours we waited to eat, ate, roamed around, slept and played cards to our hearts' content. (Of course we also had a massage, about which you can read in my article) We returned via a waterfalls (where we had bath) and Tirunelveli. Amritha and I visited Secunderabad on 19th and 20th July. I had a meeting there. We found time to visit Salar Jung Museum after nearly 30 years. It has been renovated nicely and is very good. I went to Delhi for a day on 28th July.

Weather
Though there were also intermittent rains Chennai is having a serious water shortage as all reservoirs have dried up. The weather which was good in summer is now very hot.

Bye till 16th October,


16th August2004