Karthik Fine Arts, one leisurely Saturday, dragged the best month of Chennai — Margazhi — by its ears into Narada Gana Sabha.
Now fans of music, culture and the arts in the city, can sit up and check the kutchery schedule in different sabhas, buy their season tickets, figure out what free concerts they can troop in to, and of course, mark the evening tiffen at sabha canteens, iron the pattu sarees, and veshtis.
As for fans living abroad, if you have not already booked your tickets, there just might be a bigger price to pay.
While technically the month of Margazhi rolls in about 15 days later, as far as the music season goes, it is already in. For 38 years, Karthik Fine Arts has ushered in Margazhi, giving Chennai the hint that music and dance have come calling, all over again.
On Saturday, V.Ramasubramanian, High Court judge, inaugurated the festival in which L.Sabaretnam, Director, India Cements group companies, presided over. The Judge conferred titles on young performers Sikkil C. Gurucharan (Isai Peroli) and Jyotsna Jagannathan (Nadanamamani), performing the first act of many this coming season. As Preetha Reddy of Apollo Hospitals, said, this time wearing her patron of the arts hat, “the city seems like the stronghold of culture, and the month of December is a flowering beauty.” She did go on to say that it held within itself a great treasure that is our responsibility to safeguard.
The hall is lit up, but not brimming over just yet. The sounds of music do not yet have a competitor in the familiar rustling scratch of silk sarees, the heavenly fragrance of mallipoo is not yet wafting over from the maami sitting next to you, but the mama sitting next to you is already frowning severely at the little girl jumping up and down in the front seat; the aroma of crisp, hot bondas is rising up from the vats of oil in the canteen, a foreigner dressed in a kurta and a white Stetson is furiously marking kutcheri dates on his iPad.
Over the coming days, this activity is sure to build up, swirling itself into a cultural frenzy that only the Margazhi season can feed. If this is your cup of filter coffee, sit back in the Sabha chair and get ready to enjoy.
