‘Yakshagana’ is Karnataka’s folk theatre form with a long history of close to 400 years. It is a harmony of musical tradition, eye-catching costumes, authentic styles of dance and acting with its extemporaneous dialogue appealing to a wide range of the community. When you witness it in person, it is a vibrant and a vigorous form of theatre art. It is unique to the Malenadu or the coastal regions of Karnataka, India.

Costume: Male artists wear kireeTa while the female artists wear pagaDe (headgears) that are very unique and artistic.

Stage setup: The play has a narator who either narrates the story by singing or through character dialogues backed by musicians on the traditional music instruments.

Theme: More often than not, small stories from the Indian epics such as Mahabharata and Ramayana are enacted.

Here are some glimses from the concert.

Abhimanyu

Krishna & Subhadra

I was completely engrossed by the performance and got to learn more Mahabharata. Appears that the concerts take place all through the night and the audience are kept entertained throughout. I now know why my father in law likes Yakshagana so much

With Yakshagana’s gaining popularity, it has begun to be compared to the opera of the west!

Thanks a ton for the sketch! You made my day!!

If you were to ask me which is my favorite movie – its got to be unmistakably the musical of 1959 – The Sound of Music. The movie begins high in the misty Alps and is about a free spirited young Austrian woman, Maria (Julie Andrews – the main character in the movie).

Just to give you a perspective of how the song relates to the situation now – In the musical, the lyrics to the song are a reference to things Maria loves, such as ‘raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens’. These are the things she selects to fill her mind and are the things she loves.

Not only is this the movie I have watched the most, I vividly remember spending my entire early life in Libya imitating Maria and living in my own imaginative world.

Other than the daily chores of going to school and playing, I distinctly remember spending every waking minute of my childhood watching, singing and dancing to the tunes in the movie.. quite literally! I also used to fantasize that someday I was going to run up and down the slopes of the boundless green Alps. Maybe someday I shall..

Here are my favorite tracks from the movie… Enjoy!




So long, farewell!

We made candles!!

S has been very enthusiastic about candle making and has all the necessary tools. The most exciting thing about candle making is you get to experiment a lot with different colors, engineering techniques and art And to add to it, V loves experimentation.. be it his entrepreneurial journey, cooking or music! So he was as excited and all 3 of us got our creative minds at work..

I will write about the candle making techniques that S taught me in my upcoming posts, but here is a glimpse of the art work today!

This one is the highlight of the project..

Tricolor Gel Candle

Thank you for teaching me S, hope we get to do many more of these!

For a brief while now, I have been running 3, 4, at the max 5 miles. I was eager to touch the 10K mark soon. So I was determined to run my first 10K on this beautiful bright sunny saturday morning. V and I have been doing a lot of running on the roads and in various parks in the city lately. But I was keen on running this one in lalbagh for many reasons. I first started running with V in lalbagh when we met initially. Those were some special moments and so was today’s run.. so I wanted to run where it all begun And I digress..

Back to my run. I was so pumped up to run my first 10K that I woke up even before the alarm went off, had my playlist ready with my favorite songs – some carnatic, some mushy, and some power songs. I began my run slow and steady at a pace of 11. But strangely the first 2 miles was the most difficult, I broke into sweat early on and I was doing a 9 min run, 1 minute walk routine until my body got used to the run. From mile 2 onwards I was determined to stop only after I achieved my goal. At times, I ran slow alright, but I needed to recover and gain my pace back while on the run. My best pace was between 2 – 4 miles at 9.5. The sheer excitement of visualising the feeling of having achieved my first 10K took me through the last 2 miles relatively easily. I completed 6.33 miles in 1 hour 10 mins on the dot!

The most surprising part is I was not as tired as I had anticipated to be, which means there is potential to do more Not to mention the rest of the day went by in treating myself to guiltfree yummy masala dosa and chaat

And so today was my first training for long distance cycling. On an average, 60 – 80 kms or more is covered each day and I have always questioned if I have it in me to achieve the target.

It was a gorgeous morning and V, C (V’s enthusiastic cousin) and I headed out at 7 AM. The loop that we set out to complete is Bangalore –> Harohalli (on Kanakapura road) –> Bidadi and back. I have been on an absolute high after I saw our route on the map

Here are the stats from today’s cycling

Total distance covered: 68.7 kms
Total time taken: 04 hours 06 minutes 03 seconds
Calories burnt: 2344 (my fav part
Elevation chart:

Yep, since Bangalore is at a higher altitude, unfortunately the journey on the return was completely up slopes.

A little beyond Harohalli, we had our nice little picnic next to a farm.

The road connecting Harohalli and Bidadi is spectacular and very unique to India. The lush green farms on either sides of the road, the hay laid on the middle of the road for drying, the bullock carts making their way through, the look on the little village children when they see us riding a cycle – priceless!

As we bid good bye to summer, I hope we do more such long distance cycle touring.

Click here to view more pics from the trip

Although I have been running for a while, I have not been able to cross my 8 mile threshold. Although my mind wants to do more, my body starts to give up and my thighs start to feel like big logs of wood. Learnt recently that setting a target is very helpful in pushing the body to run more, so I have set a moderate target of 30 miles for the month of June to get started with. Hopefully I achieve it and set bigger targets. More on how that went in the upcoming posts.

Ofcourse needless to say since V has run quite a few marathons till date, his stamina is so good that I can just shake him up from his sleep and ask him to do a half marathon … quite literally! I hope to get to his level someday.

The motto was simple – a road trip for the entire weekend to a destination that had a good approach road. The options were a hands-full, and we picked to head to Pondicherry!

The 3 of us – V’s cousin, V and I started at the wee hours on Saturday morning. The never ending long, wide, spotless road was comparable to any freeway in the west. Proud to see such infrastructure in India, our discussions gradually spanned across everything between life, earth and universe and there was a sudden fall of silence as all of us appreciated the break of dawn by the green country side paddy fields.

The lack of research and preparedness showed when we took a wrong turn and headed towards Salem as against Tiruvannamalai. Felt like we were jinxed when we hit craters on the road bigger than the ones on the moon! But just as the GPS helped to get us on track, we spotted a beautiful, unexplored fort – The Gingee fort.

Awed that the entry ticket costed us only Rs 5, we climbed up the fort and the experience was completely worth the bad stretch of road that led us here. The view from the fort was breathtaking.

After having taken a couple of breaks, we reached Pondicherry a little past noon and I immediately realized how inappropriate I was packed for the conservative religious little beach town.. well, I had a mini Goa in mind!!

The weather was welcoming and we headed towards the beach. Pondicherry has an interesting mix of people, food and beaches and we were able to explore all of them. Here is how..

Food: As we jumped into water and played on the beach, we started to get hungry and headed to a nice little Italian restaurant called Don Giovanni, close to the beach. It is run by a very enterprising Italian who is settled in Pondicherry and the food is authentic Italian! A bite of the pizza took me all the way back to my times in Europe.

The following morning was breakfast at a French breakfast place called baker’s street. Baker’s street is a concept-store hosting a 1001 delicacies : bread, pastries, chocolates, homemade icecreams, cooked dishes, fresh juices…a must visit if you are especially a croissant fan!

Beach: Pondicherry has a nice mix of rocky beaches – where we sat by the rocks and had long mindless talks and sand beaches where we jumped into water and built castles in the sand.

People: The last stop was the Auroville – which is a universal city in the making. From the brief overview we got from a resident there, Auroville is a highly technology oriented place where people from various nationalities live there for a brief time or for a substantial amount of time and work towards building a city. We were quite moved to see the innovations and the quality of life people lead.

Here are the statistics from the trip:

Car: 1
Days: 2
People: 3
Distance Covered: approx 1000 kms
Fun: Unlimited
Mind: Completely recharged!

Click here to view the pictures from the trip