The whirlwind 3-week trip trip to India was filled with fun, food, frolic not to mention music mania, rustling silks, jostling crowds and sizzling brownies! I'm going to try and give a summary of our activities while we were in Chennai last month. We stayed at serviced apts Nakshatra, a bed and breakfast joint which was clean and adequate. The cook made excellent food and madras filter coffee!
Cutcheris and artists
Some outstanding musicians that we were able to catch were Malladi brothers at Narada gana Sabha, Bombay Jayashree and Sreevalsan menon at Music Academy, Ganesh-Kumaresh violin duo, Salem Sriram, Visakha Hari's Gajendra moksham, a lec-dem on "Music and Lyrics" by Neyveli Santhanagopalan and many more.
Solo/duet Dancers that enthralled audiences - Priyadarshini Govind, Mythili Prakash, Meenakshi Srinivasan, Sheejith and Parvathi Nambiar, Rama Vaidyanathan, Janaki Rangarajan and Nalini-Vijay's Samhita. Why is everyone copying Shobana in costumes and choreography?
Group productions and dance dramas that we watched are Radhika Shurajit & group, Dhananjayanas all-male ensemble, Anita Guha's awesome professional kids, Kalakshetra's Panchali sapatham and Mallika Sarabhai's Darpana. It's very difficult to say which was the best because of the variety in the presentations and high quality in every production.
Restaurants and food - yummy!
One prime attraction in visiting India is the food that we get to eat - home cooked and restaurant food. We ate at Pizza corner, Cream centre, Saravanabhavan, Chaat corner (Mumbai) Tanjerine, Little Italy, Rajdhani in Express mall, Ananda bhavan. Except Tangerine and ananda bhavan, everything else was blissful. It's a different matter that some of us got sick eating street side food, but that's part of the immunity-building-skill for the body.
New Year's Eve party
On dec. 31st night a family get-together brought 35 near and dear ones (aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, kids, parents, grandparents) together for an enjoyable few hours. Entertainment was provided by the 4 youngsters Anjna, Rajna, Ashwin and Aishu who jointly presented the Sabha Awards - a humorous parody of glamorous glittering award functions. Very funny! The dinner was followed by more entertainment in the form of Antakshari and other party games. Unforgettable times!
Other highlights of the trip included a one-day trip to the shore-side rock temples at Mahabalipuram with Saumya and kids (who were visiting from the US), shopping for saris, salwars and dance costumes at shops like Pothys, Naidoo Hall, Tulsi Silks, Srishti, Kumaran, Rasi etc. Visits to various tailors, shopping malls like Express avenue and multiplex movie theatres (we saw Guzarish, Band Baja Baraat, Manmadan Ambu) pretty much completes the picture of our memorable India trip.
If one is prepared to overlook the congestion, traffic, and chaos everywhere, and compromise on efficiency and quality, we can have the time of our life in India. Things are much cheaper than the US or Africa. And abundance in everything.
Oh, one last thing. The issue of toilets. Yeah. Didn't really expect dry bathrooms everywhere, but the scarcity of public restrooms is an issue the authorities must really look into - especially on highways. The movie halls and malls are equipped with good bathrooms but not necessarily kept clean always. Few things that bothered me - no bathrooms tissue, no hook on door to hang your purse (how on earth do we balance our handbag and do our job?), nonworking dryer and no paper towels to wipe hands.....aghhhh! Hopefully these things will get better one day in India.
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