Katcheri after nearly 4 years

Venue: Jamshedpur Madras Sammelan
Violin concert by Lalgudi G. J. Radhakrishnan and Vijayalakshmi
After a gap of nearly 4 years, I attended a live katcheri yesterday.. Live katcheri is a luxury these days.. it provided me the much-needed break from my 'Youtube-d' existence. The concert was unique in several aspects... To start with there was no Varnam which was surprising ..
Varnam is like the 'morning coffee' in a concert. It imparts the necessary freshness in the beginning.
Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar wrote
"Like my guru, I have never begun a concert without singing a varnam at the commencement. It imparts mellowness to the voice and a flavour to the subsequent rendering of kritis or ragas."
(http://www.narada.org/ariyakudi/tradition.html)
but the varnam was substituted well by the 'brisk' Kriti in Nattai raagam.
for those of you who are interested in knowing about varnams, check out the link below.
http://arvindsdad.blogspot.com/2009/10/varnams.html
and the other interesting thing was the announcement of the song, raagam etc before starting the song by the artists themselves.. may be that was because the concert happened in Jamshedpur. maybe in Chennai, it wouldnt have been necessary.. though i believe it would destroy the thrill of guessing the raagam during the raaga alaapanaais.. for a learner, that would be the real test... but thankfully, the artist announced the raagam etc only at the end of the raaga aalapanai for some songs.. so the fun of guessing the raagams was still there.. the guessing exercise normally brings to light lots of doubts and questions that one has in his/her mind. One such doubt/ confusion that came up yesterday was between sudhdha dhanyasi, abheri and bhimblas. from the aalapanai, i could not figure out which one it was. Though the raagam happened to be aabheri, i got satisfied only after referring to my new Carnatic music bible - 'wikipedia'. How did I miss the 'R2' in the abheri..
the arohanam-avrohanam for the 3 raagams are:
Abheri: S G2 M1 P N2 S - S N2 D2 P M1 G2 R2 S
Sudha dhanyasi: S G2 M1 P N2 S - S N2 P M1 G2 S
Bhimblas: N2 S G2 M1 P N2 S - N2 S G2 M1 P N2 S
It is all about permutation and combinations- the nCr and nPr concept.
(sudhadhanyasi raagam reminds me of 'Unnal Mudiyum thambi' movie.. and who can forget the famous dialogue of Gemini Ganesan after listening to Kamal's Filmy- adaption of the raagam in 'Punjai Undu' song.. " Ithu sudha dhanyasi a? illla asutha dhanyasi!!!")
"carnatic music" for K. Balachander is like "darkness and rain" for Maniratnam.. All K.B's movies will definitely have a bit of carnatic music somewhere in a corner..

forgot to tell u about the thukkada section of the katcheri.. with 2 bharathiyar songs and 2 'Lalgudi special' Thillanas, it was the perfect finish to the wonderful concert...