Soul satisfying

As the days go by and the kids are growing up, we find that each and every moment where we are able to completely focus on spending time with them and exposing them to the good things in life are becoming more and more special. This year, without making any grand resolutions about the same, I thought it's high time we began taking advantage of living in a vibrant metro full of culture.

Last weekend, I took them to art galleries around the city which had different types of exhibits. The ones in habitat center had new artists, experimenting with shapes and forms and dabbling in both painting and sculpture. The kids were fascinated by some bronze sculptures which depicted slices of Indian life - one showed a typical tea stall, with the stall owner busy straining tea from a large vessel, while some of his patrons sat sipping tea from kullads. some others were engrossed in debating the news from a newspaper...Another sculpture showed a wall with a hole in it, and a crowd had gathered around it, the way crowds do in India. Some of the people carried implements - spades, iron rods...some were trying to peer through the hole. The sculptures were beautifully detailed in miniature - none of the figures was over a foot tall - and captured the moment in such intricacy, one almost felt one was there. There were some lovely paintings too, of a range of subjects ranging from the figurative to landscapes. Chubbocks fell in love with a gouache landscape of a city gate - I have noticed this about him before that he tends to love gouaches. His favourite painting at home is a JMS Mani of a small little temple - he says it looks 3D, as if he were there.

We then went on to the Krishan Khanna retrospective, which was fabulous. It captured snippets of his entire oeuvre and many of the titles referenced the classic poets. This was followed up by tea at Triveni, where the kids got to work off some of their pent-up energy by running up and down the aisles of the amphitheatre while I caught up with an old friend. Sunday morning was spent having lunch with family friends at the club while being entertained with live western music. The club usually has live Indian film music, and all the old favourites by Rafi, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar are sung with great gusto.

This weekend we decided to head for our annual winter treat of fondue at Diva. A used to laugh at my liking for fondue earlier, but became a fan when we lived in France, so now it's on our must-dos. The only thing is Delhi's span of really cold winter is so brief that it becomes a challenge, but somehow we manage to make it happen. The cheese fondue was as divine as ever, preceded with some wonderful fresh-baked Italian bread and by a starter of shaved parmesan and roast asparagus served on grilled polenta - simple and awesome. We then tried out a new dessert place called Whipped (read my review on food and laughter) and headed home. The evening was spent playing with the kids and managing the time for a quiet walk for just A and me, and topped off with a flavourful, wholesome dinner of Zuni Stew. After the kids went off to bed, A and I also managed to head out and watch the Sherlock Holmes movie.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the winter carnival held in our colony. Various residents had done tremendous work in putting this together, and several of them were hosting food stalls which had simply delicious things to eat. Sunday evening, we decided to head for the Bonjour India celebration at Select City Walk Mall. This was a mix of opera, burlesque and circus and was part of a Festival of France organised by the French Embassy. The traffic was murderous and we almost had thoughts of heading back but somehow managed to park and get out.

As soon as we entered the Mall grounds, we beheld the spectacle of 7 or 8 crimson giraffes constructed of vibrant red cloth stretch out over hoops. Each giraffe was operated by two people - one sat in front and managed the head movements and the front legs while the other one sort of lay in the stomach cavity of the giraffe and managed the back legs. The gait of these giraffes was pretty true to nature, and they swayed as gracefully as their natural cousins as they ambled across the grounds. Then the celebration started.

A diva dressed in a white costume rose high up on a craned platform and sang her heart out in an operatic aria, while the giraffes moved close to her and formed an arch overhead.

The music mingled with the poignant light of sunset and the colours of the spectacle to create the sort of divine moment when your soul is moved and lifted. Then the clown who had been lying at the diva's feet on a high charpoy began his act, singing and dancing in a frenzy...

The parade continued throughout the grounds of the mall complex so that people in any of the four malls could see it properly. We carried on for dinner at the Spaghetti Kitchen which was superb. It's been a while since we really relished Italian food, since we have by now had it so often, but the SK surprised us with the quality of food and the service. We headed to the Haagen Dazs for icecream and by sheer serendipity, caught the tail-end of the parade.

The troupe played an assortment of songs - french, tamil, Hindi, Bollywood, fusion and the like, foot-stomping beats which had us dancing right there in the grounds of the mall and then culminated in fireworks...Thus ended a weekend which combined family time, culture and great food…my kind of weekend!