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…..
It’s Manjula’s and Willian’s (who’s he?) birthdays this month. First however it’s the BIG goddess herself: Chamundeshwari.
Don’t ask her age.
Hence the crowds for the free bus to the top of the Hill.
Here one day, gone the next.
So we celebrate it calmly at home.
Blue for Ganesh. Yellow for Chamundeshwari. Other partygoers: Krishna and Shiva.
Farrell Factoid
Chamundeshwari, known as Durga in the north, lives at the Temple, on the hill behind our house. She famously killed the demon after which Mysore (Mysuru, if you insist) is named.