Selective Amnesia There was a point to this. But I forgot.

Whew! (And a few more !!!!!)

(wipes sweat off brow)
7 days.
Intense days. Days of rushing from home to office to clients’ place to office to poetry readings to lecture halls to focus groups. 7 Days of sins and cities and photowalks.
Photowalks.
3 photowalks. 3 in a span of 7 days. 3!
Saidapet and Anna Nagar and Triplicane. On hot sweaty mornings and sulky, woolly-sweater-on-summer-day evenings.

Madras Week draws to a close. A city couldn’t have asked for a better birthday party.
If I haven’t replied to your comments and mails and requests for help, I am very sorry. I just haven’t had the time to. My inbox is at a staggering 101 unread items and for the first time in my life I am marking mails as read without at least skimming through them.

To top it all, I am going to be in Punjab over the next week. Where, I hope, I shall un-coil and un-work myself.

Happy Madras Day everyone

And come for the readings, come and look at the photos.

On adjectives that are plain weird

Hello internet people,

Please, please don’t say ‘hive mind’ to address members of a mailing list. Or members of a BBS or the chat room or any group. It makes me think of an ugly brain-like creature with bees flying in and out of the grey matter.

Also, please do not use Latin phrases without fully understanding its meaning.

C

Madras Week updates

PlaneMad has a great map up that shows you the different events happening around Madras as part of the Madras Week celebrations. Great work mate.

And. Tomorrow is the first of the three special Madras Day Chennai Photowalks. It begins at 7 AM at Saidapet Karneeswarar temple and goes all the way to Little Mount via Marmalong Bridge. See you all there.

And oh, for a sneak peak of the exhibition, come to Vanilla Place at 5 PM tomorrow.

Walking with a Camera in Madras

As part of Chennai Heritage – Madras Musings Lecture series, which is in turn a part of the Madras Week celebrations, I will be talking and showing photos of Madras taken during the 9 Chennai Photowalks at the Goethe Institut – Max Mueller Bhavan, Nungambakkam.
I hope to touch upon a few points in this talk/presentation – the most important of which is the hostility and indifference that people in power have for photographers. I will also be talking about Madras and Chennai and the name change and things people brush under the carpet. And I hope to ruffle a few old feathers.
If you don’t mind a young-ish dude talking crap through his hat, and aren’t doing anything more interesting, please come.

Quick recap, then:
Walking with a camera in Madras – An event to celebrate Madras Week
Presentation by Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan
19.08.2008, at 7.00 p.m., at the Goethe-Institut, Chennai

One talk you definitely should attend is “Lesser known temples of Madras” by Chithra Madhavan. Again a part of the Chennai Heritage – Madras Musings lecture series, this one is, IMO, the best of the lot purely because of the presenter. A month ago, I first went to a lecture on Pallava architecture by Chithra Madhavan, in which I learnt more about Tamil Nadu and Pallava history than 3 years of chasing ruined temples.

Her lecture is on the 18th August, 2008 – a Monday. It’s at Anokhi/Chamiers, so you can get good coffee too. What better way to spend an evening?

For a full list of Madras Week events, check this calendar out.