Thought Waves

Pineapple Chicken Cooking is a creative art. Many ingredients go into making a dish and many flavors add to it. To give an appetizing look, all it takes is to add colors, garnish with different greens and reds. With Foodstagrammers, Bloggers and Kitchen pages in social media art of making a dish is at our fingertips. Gone are the days when cook books and diaries occupied the kitchen shelves. Fusion foods are the in thing now, with all creativity to blend in the different cuisines. A decorated dish is like a bouquet of flower which brings happiness to the eye of the beholder. I am not sure if I am the right person to write this blog because I am not a big foodie. I eat to keep alive and not the live to eat type. Neither am I the bold type to try out the Vietnamese snake blood soup nor the alukap (Water beetle) fried of Rural Thailand. Since the world has turned out to be a travellers paradise we always get the food of our palate everywhere we go. But trying out the cuisine of a

I heard about Tholpavakoothu, a Shadow puppetry, from my father. In his childhood days this art was performed during the Temple festival in Palghat from 10 pm to day break. I never got a chance to see it in Kerala. It was an amazing moment to see it in Singapore as a part of Kalaa Utsavam 2014. Tholpavakoothu Tholpavakoothu is a unique shadow puppet theatre from Kerala which is preserved as a family tradition by the Pulavars community. Temples in India were places to impart knowledge and different art forms thrived in there in times. Tholpavakoothu is a ritualistic art form dedicated to Bhagavati, the mother Goddess and performed during the Temple Festivals, Utsavams. This puppetry is performed in Koothu Mandapam, a specially constructed theatre in front of the temple during the months of January to May. During the times when the entertainments were mainly by live performers many art forms thrived in Kerala. Tholpavakoothu was a way to narrate the epic stories using puppets. The