Adhavan and an annual day...

I've completed reading Adhavan's 'Iravukku mun varuvathu Maalai' and Ambai's 'Veetin Moolaiyil oru samayalarai'. I.M.V.M is a collection of kuru Novels. Is there a genre of kuru Novels in English?. Remember reading a novelette by Charlotte Bronte ('The green Dwarf') sometime back. Think the Russians had also experimented with this (Dostoyevsky (Double), Pushkin (Captain's daughter) etc). But cannot think of a genre per se existing in English. Anyway, Adhavan's heroes/heroines are all people who have high aspirations who were met brutally with the reality of time and brought down to Earth. In 'siragugal' it is the girl who after finishing college tries to come out of the mould of getting married and tries to find a job. She finally succumbs to the pressure and get married taking solace in the fact that she went to a cinema with her would-be before marriage. Or 'meetchiyai thedi' where the hero longs to go back to his roots after living in Delhi for a long time. It resonates with the displacement loneliness I've felt while living in the states. Its a longing to attain something that is not there anymore. But what makes Adhavan different from others is his fantastic narrative style. Its more Marquez but at times better than him. The writing is more like a flow of thoughts than like 'writing'. I have always loved his stories from the day I read them first in 1996. But I think it is a sad thing that he has to die so young. I think its a curse if you are going to write in Tamil.

Sibi had his school annual day last weekend and for a change it was different from the normal school days I have known. The programme started with a one hour program on the life of Krishna (dances/skits based on 'Panchali sabatham' etc). All songs were written/composed/choreographed by the students and that was a great change from hearing the cinema songs. It was followed by a light music performance (one 60's song, one Bryan adams, one recent movie song) and some innovative dances like the 'searching lights' which I think is the highlight of the show with the students spread across the auditorium and the lights are off and the torch lights are used for the dances (choreographed by Ishwarya Dhanush). It was done very well. And the last part is about environmental awareness program with the five elements as leads. Entire program is interwoven with prize giving and honoring some veterens. And also, Rajni was there as a guest and that added some glitter but the show was completely done by Mrs. Rajni who did a wonderful job organizing and compereing the entire show.