And it’s now time to enjoy the yellow of the Copper Pod flowers and the pink of the Rain Tree flowers!

(Photo of rain tree/thoongumoonji poo taken from the terrace of my house)

Concert on 27th February at Hanuman Temple, Alamelumangapuram, Mylapore

The last thing on my mind was going for a kutcheri, but when I came to know that Sanjay’s concert was to happen at a venue which is just a 5-minute drive from home, I thought I would try listening to it for 15-20 minutes at least.

But, nowadays, Sahana is keeping all of us at home so busy and she is the only one who has got all our attention, that all of us totally forgot about the concert! I suddenly remembered about it at 7:45 pm and rushed to the temple where the concert was happening. The concert was to start at 6:15 pm and it is only a 2-hour concert there generally. So I knew that I would be there just in time for tani Avartanam. And that was exactly what happened. Sanjay was finishing Mohanam swarams and Tanjavur Murugabhoopathy started the tani.

Post tani, the concert lasted for 20 minutes and the 20 minutes turned out to be a surprise. Sanjay started singing the viruttam ‘jAnAti rAma’ in blissful Kedaragowlai. Kedaragowlai was followed by Varunapriya and another rAgam having rain in its name – Amritavarshini. You generally don’t get to hear lovely sketches of these rAgAs in the tukkada section. Trust Sanjay to make even the last part of a concert special! Jonpuri was the last rAgam of the viruttam. As he included the tune of eppo varuvAro in the Jonpuri part, the audience’s enjoyment was evident. He followed it up with the song Dasharata suta, which I don’t think I have heard before. Varadarajan’s playing matched Sanjay’s singing throughout, as always.

Sanjay then sang mAvalla kAda in Maand and concluded the concert with Mangalam.

20 min or 3 hrs, duration doesn’t matter. Sanjay’s concerts are always satisfying even if you listen to it only for a few minutes!

P.S.: Can someone who attended the concert give me the full song list? Thanks in advance!

This was the first trip in the journey of this new chapter of my life that I began with my husband.

Day 1 (March 28th, 2011):

Flight to Delhi from Madras – Technically speaking, though this was the second time I was travelling by flight, since the first time was when I was just six months old (!!!), I can call this my first flight, can’t I? It so happened that in the last year and a half I had to frequently visit the airport for send-offs and receiving. That only made me wish all the more that I should go to the airport as a passenger sometime soon. So it was an excited-me who woke up early in the morning and got ready to catch the flight that was scheduled to leave at 8:30 am. My first flight experience doesn’t have anything extra special to write about except that I got the first aerial glimpse of my city and the capital city.
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Being married is about being yourself, only with someone else.

– From the movie ‘The Princess Diaries 2 – Royal Engagement’.

I was watching the movie yesterday and came across this dialogue to which I could relate to. Be it marriage, friendship or any other relationship, being myself, the real-me has always been my approach and that is what I expect from others too. I absolutely hate false pretences.

Call it resolution or whatever, I am now making a serious attempt at resuming blogging. Some of the things that I am going to write right now are going to be one of those cryptic posts along the lines of what I used to write earlier and will definitely not make any sense to you. But I am posting it here nevertheless, simply because I want to.

Sometime last year, as I went through some not-so-happy phases, when some things didn’t work out the way I wanted to, the way I dreamt it would, there were two things which gave me immense relief, which gave me solace – Music and Writing.
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I visited this temple in July 2011.

During random browsing, I came across this post on dharsanam.com about Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple at Semmenchery. I was surprised that I had never heard of such an ancient temple being right here on OMR despite coming to OMR everyday for the past few years, though the moment I read the name I remembered seeing the temple somewhere. So off I went in search of this temple.
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December, my favourite month – the month of music, has now gone on to become THE most special month, for it was on December 23rd that a baby girl was born to me.

As I was told that it’s a baby girl, the first thought that came to my mind was that she should be named Sahana.

Sahana – the raagam that has always been synonymous with bliss, happiness and joy unlimited, the raagam that has given me innumerable moments of ecstasy, the raagam that has made express the joy it induces, through a smile on my face irrespective of the mood I am in.

December being the month that is synonymous with music, melody, rhythm, raagam, swaram, sabha-hopping and indescribable blissfulness of music, besides the fact that till the previous day, I was busy going for the Season kutcheris, it only seemed natural that the name Sahana came to my mind, for I know that she is going to be the Sahana of my life!

As I saw the date on the calendar on 16th November, it struck me that I was completing 5 years of blogging on that day and I should definitely write a post to at least celebrate the day. But the combination of laziness + tiredness + lack of motivation which I have been plagued with for the past several months won over once again and thus I let the day pass by quietly only to be weighed down by worries of where on earth the passion for writing/blogging has got lost! Will I be able to bring back the good old days of yore? As I now see these lines filling up the page without me thinking for even a moment as to what exactly should I write about, I heave a sigh of relief that all is not lost and someday, hopefully maybe right away, I will be able to resume regular blogging.

I finally listened to the songs of Rockstar today! After listening to all the songs once, I can’t stop listening to ‘The Dichotomy of Fame’ now. It starts as a kind of joyous tune and then goes on to evoke a whole gamut of emotions! Blissfully melancholic and bittersweet with a haunting aura to it, it is surely a sheer beauty! Am totally moved by the musical magic created by the guitar and Shehnai! Am moved by it so much that I couldn’t stop myself from coming out of the hibernation and writing about it here. It has been more than half an hour since I started listening to it on repeat mode and I still can’t get myself to move onto the next song!

“Lesser Known Temples of Chennai – Some More” – A lecture by Dr. Chithra Madhavan on 23rd August, 2011 at Gallery Sri Parvati held as part of Madras Day celebrations.

It was a nostalgic-me who attended this lecture since it was during the Madras Day celebrations in 2008 that I first attended Dr. Chithra Madhavan’s lecture little knowing that after that lecture, my visits to old temples would never be the same anymore and that I would go on to attend many more lectures of hers in the coming years. The topic of that lecture was ‘Lesser Known Temples of Chennai’ and this year’s too was again ‘Lesser Known Temples of Chennai – Some More’.

As usual, this lecture too was filled with a wealth of information. The photos of almost all the sculptures, vimanams and gopurams that were mentioned about were shown.
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