Kerala Art and Literary Association

Yesterday went to the KALA (Kerala Art and Literary Association) annual get-together. It always feels nice to be at KALA. The main reason being its different from the usual malayali get-together.

This association is the Brain child of Dr Sukumaran Nair, started in 1996. As its website says KALA is an ever growing network of like-minded friends and families based across the length and breadth of United Kingdom committed to promoting Kerala's rich and varied artistic, literary and cultural heritage among international community, particularly younger British Malayalees.

The annual day celebrations have been held for the last few years at Parmiters school hall in Watford, usually on a Saturday evening in October. I still remember the first time I went to the KALA garden party in 1999 with Balumaman and Susha aunty. It was like a 'small kerala' recreated in this part of the world. Since then I have tried to attend the annual celebrations every year, but have not been successful a few years due to various commitments. I think Balumaman has been to almost every KALA function since 1999.

Every year there will be a couple of invited chief guests who are eminent malayalees from the socio-cultural-literary world. Over the last decade the chief guests have included Sri Madhusudhanan Nair, Sri ONV Kurup, Sri Nedumudi Venu, Singer Sri Venugopal, Sri Vishnu Narayanan Namboothiri etc. 'KALA evenings' reminds me to some extend of the 'Surya' cultural society celebrations or other cultural evenings at Kanakakunnu palace, Trivandrum.

The performances at KALA are usually a class of its own ; but probably the the best part of this evening is catching up with our old friends, meeting new ones and sometimes surprise meeting with a person whom you have not met for many years (how just a casual comment by Unnikrishnan snowballed into a big circle of new friends for me is a long story...will write on that later....)

The dinner is in traditional kerala style..but I like the 'vada' and snacks more, that are served at the start of the meeting. This year I was particularly impressed with the performance of KALA Youth; the skit was excellent. Another unique feature of KALA is the in-house magazine PALMLEAF that has a rich mix of articles written by the malayali talents in UK. All in all it was a superb evening with wonderful performances, great crowd, delicious food and colourful atmosphere. ....like a real 'malabar dream' come true.....