29.12.1968 Amma on Broadway!!

 

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As you can see it is not just Amma on Broadway but decades later myself, Kala, and my daughter too were caught on camera, posing for a click! 

A family of theatrical personalities, my daughter and her group of dance performers recently made people turn their head to catch a glimpse or click a photo of their very symbolic Mohiniattam garbs – symbolic as it embodies the female figures in Kathakali performance, a dance form of Kerala that followed the matrilineal system till the seventies of last century. Amma would be proud watching from beyond the clouds. Always a connoisseur of art, she never lost an opportunity to sing, dance or act in plays. In our neighbourhood it was well-known that if they performed around the lamp that my mother placed at the centre of the circle of dancers on Thiruvatthira day, celebrated on the longest night of the year to worship Lord Shiva, one will get a husband of one’s choice. I remember a collection of my sister’s friends enjoying dancing and then piling into a car to go have a mid-night bath at the swimming pool as there was a dearth of ponds in the city!

Coming back to Amma’s delightful and distinctive stance on 86^th Floor Observatory on the EMB, there was a secret agenda for Achan. He had wanted us to learn about the possibility of getting nearby views of distant things with the telescopes fixed on the terrace. Possibly the view of Kowdiar palace
from the terrace at home where he often spent his evenings must have prompted this. So on both sides of Amma there are telescopes.  Chandrika says that she had not missed explaining them in a flamboyant way when she used to show off the album !

                                                      

Binoculars on the Empire State Building observation deck in Manhattan, New York, USA photo by Giuliano Del More

 

Achan had taken photos in a 360^o circle too, a few of which are still in our collection. Here is one with a hazy view of the Chrysler building, a runner up of the skyscraper building competitions. Yet it remains unmatched even today in its renowned Art Deco Style architecture and its embellishment.  It is so well researched and described in “The little book of New York” by Christine Barrely from where I have attached this photo along with Achan’s.       

Achan had not forgotten to get Amma to take his own photo. It seems that the effort had not been too successful. The Chrysler building puts out its proud head behind him! It means also that Achan had posed deliberately in that spot. 

Juxtaposing is Kala, as she poses atop ESB fifty years later, with the Hudson river behind her

He had not forgotten to let us be informed of the extraordinary number of elevators to the 102^ndfloor observation platform.  He did it by taking a picture of Amma on the steps leading onto the concourse.  

 All research work courtesy Chandrika