Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

Finally the long awaited monsoon has hit the city. Although I expected a bigger bang, the rain nevertheless has subdued the heat. Now with the levels of moisture in the air reaching sky high clothes will take ages to dry and I will sweat even under a fan. Sadly the coming of the rains will soon end the wonderful mango season we had this year.

Anyway, as the monsoon was coming in, I had the pleasure of being at the premier of a new Adoor Gopalakrishnan film. It was a documentary on Kalamandalam Ramankutty Nair - the greatest living exponent of Kathakali. This film was made to commemorate the 80 years of the master.

I knew nothing of AG or KRN or even Kathakali. Just went there without expecting much. The movie was good but not spectacular. The interaction session with the director after the movie was great. All this was at the one of the screens inside Satyam cinema complex, under a monthly programme called ‘Lights On’. Yesterday, who’s who of the culture world attended the show. I could identify only a few. It seems that during this year’s music season, Satyam cinema will have a festival of movies that were made on performing artists of this country.

The movie took me back to that magical land: Kerala. I was there in April and it was such a pleasant experience for me. The food, the land, the scenes, the sounds were all so different from what I had experienced thus far. I am sure I will have more of that land in future. I certainly want to write a seperate blog about my visit there before I forget the experiences.

As I write this blog, I am eating a sweet called AJJ’s ‘Cashewnut halwa’. My wife purchased this along with Thiruvenveli halwa from a brightly lit van in Mylapore, as I was backing the car in that North Mada lane. That too in the evening! Thiruvenveli hawla, which we ate for the first time, was good. This CN halwa, encrusted with caramelised sugar, that comes from some place called Mudalur from Tuticorin District, is much better. Perhaps it is popular in this parts of the world, I don’t know but then it tastes real great. With 20 secs of nuking it in the microwave, the taste is enhanced a million times. Digging into sizzling halwa, with the aroma of caramelised sugars wafting into the air is heavenly. Now I need to keep a lookout for a bightly lit van for replenishing the stock.

Man, the food diversity in this country is simply amazing. It was a similar thought that first popped up as we ate a meal under the tamarind tree in the tourism restaurant in Secundrabad and later in a bar in Amsterdam that made a friend of mine and I carve out a tour. We want to take a group of Dutch people on a South Indian Culture cum veg cuisine tour: Starting in Kerala, through TN to Andhra; making and sampling food along with visiting interesting places. I would like to emphasise veg because no where in the world has the veg food evolved to the levels that it has in this country. While I am getting excited about this tour, wife thinks I have too much time on hand and am deviating from what I am doing. Heck if I can actually get to organise more tours and at the same time pursue my academic interests, it will be quite nice.