The institute founded in 1936 was formed to culturally revive the country at that time which was under the British Rule.

Check the details about the celebrations here at kalakshetra

But the books and the love for it will push most of us from Chennai to visit them in their 33rd edition or more to come after that too.

Seen here are the Photographers in action during the 12th (1st anniversary) Chennai Photowalk.

hmm.. what is this “Global Warming”

So what can we do as Chennaite? we cannot go to places or visit people to talk or explain about global warming. But, being at our home we can spread the message by turning off all our lights on August 8th at 8pm for 8 minutes. Similar practice was followed in Sydney, London, mumbai and now its our turn to create a awareness  that we spread the message on global warming.  I even signed for the “earth day” on Mar29th this year and supported the event by switch of my light’s for an hour. Next earth day is on March28th 2009 at 8.30PM.

There’s a clear and present danager out there and we must join our hands to support this “88888” by being a part of it.

The show was not the usual kinds, which we see in Chennai theatre, it was a dated spoof on Arabia, a la Alibaba, Aladdin types.

There is trouble in the ancient Arabian kingdom of Petra, where the main characters of the play, Ali (Ashwin) is the handsome peasant deeply in love with the voice of a song he heard in the palace and his brother Sinkbath (Bharath) the bumbling sailor who owns a ’ship of the desert’, a camel named Humpy and not a ship!

The Director Harish, performed a cameo which was a totally unexpected character, school boy genie, right after the interval. Imagine a genie dressed in school boy clothes, well all is fair in spoof’s and it was really a funny performance by him.

The play had a happy ending when the pairs find their match and all’s well ends well. Music was scored by SAE School, was a nice hear. Arabian backdrops, costumes and music makes a little complex play compared to their other ones. The show had it all, from skeleton dance to bumbling guard, arabian dance and lots more.

Err Im not advertising for them, even though I happen to be the PR of the group, but if you want to join Rebelz, check us at www.rebelz.in

This is the first time I am watching a live cricket match in the Chennai stadium and I am no sports reporter. So I hope the readers of this blog will be lenient should this fall short of an actual coverage.

The game was to start at 4pm today, but the ticket said that folks would be expected there a good two hours beforehand. Knowing how our folks have no sense of time these days – or are just enjoying an extra hour or so lazing on a saturday – we decided to play the first mover advantage and head to the stadium early. We reached there at around 2:45. The sun was still out. It was fairly hot, but a couple of folks – Mirchi Suchi, Benny Dayal etc were trying to keep a few people occupied and entertained with their live music.

At around, 3:30, the teams started coming in, and were going about their routine of stretches and excercises, and ten minutes before the game, the coin was tossed and Kolkata won it, preferring to bat.

As I said, I had no interest in this. IPL felt like this lavish noble of Rome buying and selling away gladiators to prove a point. I didn’t even know who all were having whom under their arsenal, except for the news-making Dhoni whose price-tag made headlines. For one, I was pleasantly surprised that there were quite a few new faces on the turf, and the Chennai team looked quite decent with a mix of batters and bowlers. I mean, do you need anyone else for bowling when you have Murali on the team? Sheesh. Nope, Me thinks.

So, skipping through the ball-by-ball acount, the Knight riders scored 147 losing all wickets, and it was upto the Super Kings to chase them. They won the match with Dhoni removing his helmet and blasting the last ball flying to the boundary when all we needed was one run to Win. Our man sure has style when it comes to granting the death knell I must say.

There were a couple of pretty interesting moments in the game. For one, the energy level of the audience was amazing.The audience was extremely engaged with the game. I mean, they managed to go on a few tides of the mexican wave and were absolutely interacting with the players. The game was very well organized that whenever the “noise level” went down, there was always a drum beat by Sivamani or a rajini track which would jolt the spectators to a rupture of support.

Some of the golden moments in the game was when Ponting got out. He walked in, took the batting end and gave a clean catch on the first ball. Walked out even before asking anyone. Gotta love players with a fabulous spirit of sportsmanship. On the other hand, the so-called Run-out of Shukla was quite interesting.

I guess there was a fair bit of expectations from the crowd hoping for Shah Rukh. The entire excitement would have been atleast a few times higher if he was there. It seems he didnt make it. Contrary to popular belief that the locals are totally backing their teams, there was more than a fair share of support for the knight riders and especially for Ganguly. He did walk out with with less than 20 runs and a lot of wasted balls, but I personally know of a few who lost their cheers post that.

I doubt a post on the IPL is barely complete without a comment on the so-called Cheerleaders. Well, I have to say that the Knight riders were pushing it a bit. They did have a wee bit over-excited and scantily dressed women going at it, but knowing Shah rukh, and the glitsy world that he comes from, its almost his signature on it – just as much the kingfisher airhostesses are Mallya’s signature.

The Chennai “Cheerleaders” are definitely on the conservative side, and i doubt that being on home town the crowd needed cheering. All said and done, and for the initial skeptism that I was brooding on, this match was one to remember!

Yet this match will be remembered for the highest test score by an Indian batsman. It was in this same stadium that Gavaskar scored his 236 n.o. against West Indies, which was the highest score by an Indian for a long time. It took a great effort from Laxman in 2001 to go past that and Sehwag upped it in Multan in 2004. After seven years, the record has come back to Chepauk.

Do you still think a result is possible in this match?

Describing the book as a personal journey set against the background of ideas, with what appears to be a great deal of experience and humour, Mirza worked on trying to make the `novel’ “as inclusive as possible without losing out on the integrity of thought or idea…”

Ram and members of the audience raised queries on the authors views on intolerance, religious extremism and like. Mirza’s responses pointed back to the book (in a sense, I guess we had no choice but to buy it :-P) However, two points were of interest – the filmmaker who walked away from filmmaking in 1995, ended his first literary work with a film script as an epilogue, with the exhiliration of having “discovered a path that he could travel for a long time.” The second that, the writer who responded to the arrogance of the statements supporting, what in many senses is a fundamentalist’s war, ends his book with an elation that the world has not given up on hope…

Geeta Doctor’s book, sharing the title of the exhibition, which welcomes visitors at the entrance of the gallery (located in the same compound as a gorgeous house) describes the collector, Sara Abraham as a variety of things, but we sorta hastily dropped the book at the mention of her “withering glance”!

Abraham, who started off as an artist (her sketches of her grand children and historical personages like Einstein and Nehru – who have also autographed the pictures are also on display) at the Madras School of Arts and Crafts, went on to become an art connoisseur, collector and promoter. She created Kalayatra, a travelling exhibition, aimed at exposing people from across the country to art from various parts of it based on a suggestion of M.F. Hussain, a friend.

Indeed there are two levels of awe involved with this exhibition – one, the expected awe and delight at being able to glimpse at the work of some of the finest contemporary Indian artistes, ranging from Hussain, to Tyeb Mehta, Gogi Saroj Pal, Laxma Goud, among many others. The other level of awe comes from the glimpses at letters written by artistes like Goud to her, with little illustrations on the side, with the velvet encased portrait of her done by Hussain especially for her 60th birthday, with the brand new paintings that have been sent over the past weekend as presents for her 80th birthday…

The lady at the gallery told us that Ms. Abraham is extremely possessive of her collection and was persuaded to reveal some of the treasures as part of a celebration of her 80th birthday. One is grateful to whoever succeeded in the persuading – personally I know little of art, but you don’t need to be Einstein to appreciate beauty. Drop by Samukha, where “Celebrating Sara” is on till Feb 23rd. It’s a rare treat worth the visit.