By Girija Madhavan Mysuru is hosting Dasara, its most important festival. Elephants are brought from jungle camps to lend their caparisoned presence to the procession. Parks display pots of salvias, zinnias and dahlias; flower beds of cockscomb, cosmos and chrysanthemums. Traditional sports like “Kusti” [wrestling] are a feature of Dasara. Local wrestlers participate in matches,…
The Shadow of Hiroshima
September 2, 2018By Girija Madhavan August 15 marks the joyful anniversary of India’s Independence in 1947 and the tragic one of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima on 6th August 1945 that changed modern warfare and its possible outcome forever. In 1945, I was seven-years-old and lived in a spacious colonial bungalow of the Mysore State Railways allotted…
The Temple of Eternal Peace: The Eihei-ji Monastery, Japan
July 30, 2018By Girija Madhavan High in the mountains above the Sea of Japan [the East Sea], amidst lofty cedars is the “Eihei-ji Monastery” or “Temple of Eternal Peace” in Japanese. It is in Fukui Prefecture. Under curving tiled roofs and in timbered halls, the “Soto” school of Zen Buddhism is practised by the monks who live…
A Mysurean Visits Buckingham Palace
July 9, 2018By Girija Madhavan There was detailed coverage on TV channels recently of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. I could identify Priyanka Chopra in a pale pink hat and dress, Amal Clooney, George Clooney and Sir Elton John among the guests. The formal dress code for this…
Mysore Memories: Endearing Pets
June 6, 2018By Girija Madhavan Star of Mysore recently carried two touching stories about pets. I recall an unusual one from my childhood. In the early 1940s, after an illness, I was kept at home. Our Railway bungalow had a large garden. A lonely child, I wanted a pet for company. Dogs were vetoed because the family…
A Mysurean’s Tribute to Boris Pasternak
May 13, 2018By Girija Madhavan To some of us “Russia” evokes the memory of its great writers: Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Turgenev, Chekov and others. Even in translation from the original Russian, they have an impact on their readers including some Indian thinkers. Later writers like Vladimir Nabokov and Boris Pasternak lived in the twentieth century. When…
A Tree in Malgudi
March 30, 2018By Girija Madhavan Spring in Mysuru brings jewel-like flowers to the leafless, stumpy branches of the Frangipani trees after the cold season. The flowers usually have five white petals around a heart of gold. Some blooms are pale yellow set off by a magenta centre, or white deepening to pink; all are lovely and delicately…
Perunkulam Picaresque: A. Madhaviah – A Family Portrait
February 18, 2018Author Girija Madhavan’s mother Mukta Venkatesh, painter and writer, who lived in Mysuru from the 1920s till her death in 2003 at the age of over 101, was the fourth daughter of A. Madhaviah, a social reformer-cum-writer. She was deeply influenced by his love of literature, both English and Tamil, and also his liberal views….
A brief sojourn in a Chinese Villa
February 4, 2018By Girija Madhavan I have lived in many houses abroad before returning to settle down in my hometown of Mysuru in 1995. Each was a temporary home, a haven, claiming a place in my memories and sentiment; some in alien land and others in friendlier ambiance. But the house that remains in my mind as…
A Musical Memory…
December 31, 2017By Girija Madhavan Concerts from the archives of Doordarshan can be evocatively nostalgic. One afternoon I chanced upon a “National Programme” of Hindustani music of 1981, the photography in black and white. It featured the late Pandit Amarnath, the foremost disciple of Ustad Amir Khan of the Indore Gharana. When I lived in Delhi for…
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