MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THESE

It is very rarely that unknown people touch our lives. When we were in Bombay, Amritha used to play Venkatesa Suprabhatam in the morning and Vishnu Sahasranamam in the evening on our record player. Once our servant maid who did not know M.S.Subbalakshmi, said, 'Inki awaaz kitna acha hai?' (how nice is this singer's voice?). I am sure that MS's voice will remain centuries after she is gone.

I had mentioned about Harish joining HP in October. The big news of the last two months is his visit to USA. He came a number of times to Chennai for shopping etc. He is now at Nashua, near Boston enjoying life at (-)15 degrees! He talks to us on alternate days and is fine. Aarthi is fine at Bangalore and will visit us after a long time from 23rd December.

Our life continues to be busy in Chennai. Now that December is here, Amritha and I are busy attending music and dance programmes. We have already attended over 20 music and dance performances. I shall be taking leave from 24th to 31st so that I can attend lec-dems and concerts in the mornings as well. Even this diary is brief as I haven't got much time before leaving for the concert.

Book
My book is doing reasonably well in the market. It is now available at Higginbothams also. Sale of another 100 copies will see me recovering my financial investment.I feel that the second edition will be required before one year of the first. I am already working on improvements to the book.

Carnatic Music
Before the season started, we attended three concerts- two by Unnikrishnan and one by Aruna Sayeeram. All were good. The first of Unnikrishnan was for the launch of Bru Malabar, a brand of filter coffee. In that function, we had somethig for the ears (Unnikrishnan), something for the stomach (good snacks) and something to carry (200gms of coffee powder). The period from December 2nd has seen us attending programmes of music and dance, about some of which you can read in my article. We are also very scientific this time and are keeping meticulous details of all concerts.

Divya Desams
Out of the 95 Divya Desam temples in the jurisdiction of Southern Railway, Amritha and I had visited 93. We could not visit Sholinghur and Tiruneermalai till my mother's first Shrardham, which was over in September. So we visite Tiruneermalai on 24th November and Sholinghur on 27th November. Tiruneermalai temple is on a hillock and about 200 steps take you to the temple. Sholinghur has two hillocks, the Anjaneya temple has 406 and Narasimha temple has 1305 steps. We were able to cover both in the same afternoon. We had dinner with my cousin, Usha who is in Sholinghur and spent the night with Radha and Vanaja in Ranipet which is about 20 kms away.

Other travels
Amritha and I visited Mangalore for two days on 27th and 28th October and could cover all the four famous religious places, viz., Udipi,Kollur,Subramanya and Dharmastala. While the first three have only temples, Dharmastala is an interesting place. Apart from the well-maintained temple, it has an antique car museum with a collection of over 30 old cars, a very good general museum and a Naturopathy Centre. The kitchen where they prepare the food for 2000 people at a time and the dining hall where about 2000 people were eating were very impressive. One of my officers in ICF for whom I was the guide for his post-graduate degree in IT from Roorkee is now in Mangalore and took good care of us. One of my ex-bosses who has retired is in Udipi. We called on him also. Overall it was a hectic but nice trip.
I went to Bangalore for a day on November 19th. I also went to Secunderabad for a day on 6th December and to Delhi for two days on 16th and 17th December. The Delhi visit was for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations of IRAS and the function as well as the seminars and Cultural programme (music by Shuba Mudgal) went off well.

Best Wishes For A Happy New Year, Happy Pongal and bye till 16th February 2005,


20th December 2004