Month: April 2025

Experiencing Mysore

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Mysore is a connecting place, social entrepreneurs, community animateurs are forever initiating new ideas to bring us together.

Sriranjini Simha kindly invited me to experience mysore. Well I have been doing that for twenty years, initially on holidays and now as resident with our own business. But joking aside this was an invite to a new initiative that is actually called ‘Experience Mysuru’ and I’m so pleased I checked it out.

I’ve always thought that the Mysore city feels more like a village, by that I mean : it has an intimacy, interactivity, on a human scale. Well ‘Experience Mysuru’ reflects exactly that. Mysore has a well deserved reputation as a cultural capital that was fantastically represented last night..

The ‘showcase’ was curated to reveal through the senses of taste, hearing, smell, touch and sight and included: yoga and meditation, ancient board games, percussion, storytelling, dance, music and singing. To be more precise — Chande: the pulse of Karavali, Bharatanatyam, Carnatic music and Kamsale— come find out for yourselves what it is. 

I can’t say performers, yes they shared, their skills, they entertained but it went beyond that. Each person introduced their activity to ‘get beneath the skin’ they fitted all this in to just 120 minutes and it was not crammed. It was exactly right, the timing, the diversity, the interactive-ness, the rich content, their expertise, I’ve got to know Mysore a bit over the years but this brought me to so many new layers and levels.

Well done team, we’re rightly proud of our heritage and this was a great way to share with young and old, local and not so local, and I’ll be back..

Who is this guy, who pops up everywhere? An active entrepreneur who’s become a good friend.
Great to catch up with established and meet new friends.

Thank you Kim Kanchana Ganga, Tanushri SN, Shrimathi and her team, Pranav Athrey’s-Pranav Athreya, Suraksha Dixit, Tejashri Murphy, Pushpa and her team… plus the managers and organisers behind the scenes that put it all together and made it go so smoothly…..

More info 

http://www.experiencemysuru.in 

0091 8105318650

Info@experiencemysuru.in

@experiencemysuru.in

The venue was the amazing The Heritage House in Saraswathipuram  

…

I’ll write separately about Mysore – Mysuru, about the city’s name and history but this is not the place. 

Our annual trip

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Stomach
Churning
Hand
Weaving
Lighthouse
Right Next
To the beach
Chera Rocks
Fortress
En route

I’m away with Kaveri for a few days with Naveen and his mum Sowbaghya.

Manjula’s Mysore supports their education and now we’re on holiday together.

At Chera Rocks
Fab
New
Activity
Splashy Chera Rocks
Shabaz, our wonderful friend always on hand to make it a great success.
Time to go home
Who does the washing?
Where have you been?
This might become a new thing!
If we don’t get lost

Button Madness

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A new summer school holiday activity — Button Masala.

Incredible creativity and innovative design from cloth, button and rubber band!

A great addition to the swimming, summer camp, reading, storytelling, crafts, skating, seaside, badminton, cycling, TV and phone that’s become a staple of Kaveri’s school holiday

A really cool event presented by the creator of Button Masala —Amuj Sharma and supported by Sri Vidya MR of the Anubhuti Trust.

Love

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One of the first pictures Kaveri (aged eight) created after she came to the house and felt MAnjula’s love

Marginalian

Comes up trumps again with great literary, political and philosophical connections.

I like her quote from Simone de Beauvoir

What then is love? Not much, not much; I come back to this idea. Sensitivity, imagination, fatigue, and this effort to depend on another; the taste for the mystery of the other and the need to admire… What is worthwhile, is friendship… this profound mutual confidence between [two people], and this joy of knowing that the other exists.

“The ancient Greeks, in their pioneering effort to order the chaos of the cosmos, neatly taxonomized them into filial love (the kind we feel for siblings, children, parents, and friends), eros (the love of lovers), and agape(the deepest, purest, most impersonal and spiritual love).”

I decided that we would continue Manjula’s sunshine goodness, sharing her love, through events and activities for young people.

The most obvious example is our continuing support for Kaveri.

Kaveri’s most recent art from this weeks summer camp
She also leaves me little messages.

Hanging around

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As kids we were all embarrassed by the lounge wall used to feature family members through the ages.

Now I’ve created a family corner here in Mysore

How embarrassing!?

My sister Claire used to tease me — that the main picture was saved for me …

No thanks …

I’ll manage without it.

The great escape, Kittens blog

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Billet Doux, it’s hard, there’s no respite. Squeaking Kits, half the time biting instead of sucking, I keep nipping out for a break.

I’ve explained how it happened and to ensure it’ll not happen again she needs to stay home until the kittens are weaned and she can then have the op.

She’s managed wonderfully looking after the six

Instinct and what she learned from mum has worked. But she’s not got how it happened and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Am I expecting too much? My English not clear?

I’ve started restricting her so she can’t get out of the yard. Or so I thought. Today, second day running she’s legged it again. It must have taken her a nano second when my back was turned.

This is not good.

So new tack

Less of a prison ….

Next I’m going to change garage into a Palace for a Queen (within reason) and as the kits get older, only allow supervised access to the yard. Makes it sound like a prison?

Queer Eye

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Watching queer eye is helpful.

Step Father and teenage son are having a conversation. They’ve recently come together as the guy married his mum.

They’re bonding. Talking about how the father tries to manage challenges himself and not let them in to help.

He doesn’t want to feel a burden to them but it has the opposite effect as they then worry about him.

That’s a trigger for me.

That rings bells.

I’m too independent and realise I could have shared more with MAnjula, that in turn that helped me miss that she did want to be a burden through her illness and all it entailed.

I’m sorry MAnjula. You were never a burden. I love you and would manage anything for you.

I freaked out at you for not taking your tablets. That was about my worries, stress feeling powerless to not be able to help you from deterioration.

There’s so much I would and should have done differently.