Manoranjani!

Last Sunday, I went to a program called 'Manoranjani', organized by Austin Kannada Sangha as part of Rajyothsava/Deepavali celebrations. It is an entertainment program organized by Association of Kannada Kootas of America (named so that it makes a cute acronym - AKKA). This was a fund raiser program to help educate poor children in Karnataka. The artists (entertainer is a new way to describe the profession) were doing it without any renumeration. While Ramesh added star value to the show, Sudha Baragur stole the limelight with jokes, most of which were new to me. She got a standing ovation that she richly deserved. Shylaja Santhosh was the comperer and she is easily one of the best in that job. Ramprasad and B.R.Chaya did all the singing. I had not known much about Ramprasad earlier, so I was pleasantly surprised to listen to his very good singing. Chaya was good as always, but she kept on insisting to increase the volume of her microphone, making her voice too loud, dominating over the musical instruments and Ramprasad's voice! Her husband Pani (I am not very sure about the name), who was the musician, tried telling her this, but a husband asking his wife to reduce her volume is as likely to succeed as Azim Premji convincing Deve Gowda that the infrastructure in Bangalore is crumbling.

The other noticeable thing in the program was the dinner. God bless the person who made that Bisi Bele Bhath. Kudos to the organizers for bringing such a wonderful program to a small city like Austin. I have one nag, though. Call me a nitpick if you wish. The president of the Austin Kannada Sangha, Ravi Kumar, while he speaks decent Kannada while off-stage, ensures he speaks only English while on stage. Ironically he gave us a lot of good information about the Kannada Sangha and it's activities, all in English. I found this really strange.