Pallavi took me to an Odissi/Bharatanatyam show at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan at Mylapore, last Saturday. The performance was called Krishna leela and it was a depiction of specific incidents taken from lord Krishna’s life, starting from the celebrations upon the birth of lord Krishna, the slaying of Poothana, his playful childhood, his love for stolen butter, the taming of Kaliya, lifting of Govardhana giri, his mischiefs with the Gopis and ending with the divine love of Radha-Krishna.

It was the first classical dance performance that I’ve seen live, and it was done in such a grand scale by extremely powerful dancers, that I was totally moved. All dancers were female (even Krishna was played by 3 female artists, one young, and two older) artists except one male, who played the roles of Poothana/Kaliya.

Music was played live, the song was in Hindi, but I was able to pick up random words from here and there. I was anyways aware of the stories so didn’t have much trouble following it.

What better story can you get to watch than that of Krishna? These are stories that we’ve heard/read hundreds of times and they still bring infinite joy when we see it retold. The show inspired me to buy a copy of Srimad Bhagavatam today. Would start reading after finishing around 5 other books that are already in the queue. Had a great weekend all together.

This is the first time I’m staying away from home for Diwali. There were lots of awesome fireworks in the sky and I loved watching them. I went for a short walk in the evening to T-Nagar to get dinner. Although the smoke and pollution from the fire works almost knocked me out, I was happy to see that people were compensating for the pollution they were causing by not going any where. The roads were absolutely free, so less pollution from traffic.

I don’t understand how poor people without ACs could have slept that night, but to hell with them. We can’t compromise on the fun!! It was good entertainment to watch the cool fireworks on the sky – people were kinda competing with eachother – showing off.

They’re all liars who say the end of the world is near. We’ve been celebrating Diwali for thousands of years, after all. Nothing has happened yet. And even if the world is going to end, it isn’t going to end in the next 60 years, and that is long enough for me.

My parents and grand parents have taught me why we celebrate diwali, but I honestly don’t remember.But that’s ok, because I still remember the basics (lol), and I still remember that people do fireworks on Diwali. I love the idea of religious faith and I respect my religion, but just like every other good thing about religions that these foolish non-religious bastards have ruined, Diwali too, will just be a sad and depressing day for me. Yea, and noisy too.