Kutcheri in the Park’ creates record…& Mylapore also hosts an Art Mart

The monthly event – ‘Kutcheri in the Park’ – organised by Sundaram Finance on the first Sunday of every month at Nageswara Rao Park, Mylapore has entered the Limca Book of Records with a national record for the longest open air mike-less kutcheri for children.

‘Kutcheri in the Park’ completed 10 years with a kutcheri early in January TT Srinivasaraghavan, Managing Director, Sundaram Finance Ltd., received the certificate from the Limca Book of Records.

According to the Limca Book of Records, “Sundaram Finance has organised over 100 kutcheri-s during the 10-year period, with children from overseas, including the Middle East and the US, also having participated in the event. The event has given young children ample opportunities to showcase their musical talent to the world.”

TT Srinivasaraghavan, says, “It is gratifying that this event has been acknowledged as the longest running open air mike-less kutcheri in the country. When we launched ‘Kutcheri in the Park’ 10 years ago, the idea was for this to be a launch pad for young budding musicians. Over the last decade, it has served as a platform for over 1000 children to showcase their talent in an informal park setting. For many of them, this has been their first kutcheri, and a number of these young ‘unsung’ children have since moved on to perform in sabha-s and won laurels in the Carnatic music field.”

Sundaram Finance has been organising mike-less kutcheri-s since February 2006. The event is open for children aged 15 years and below. Every month, children, selected by an audition committee at Sundaram Finance, perform in the open environment at the Park. (Courtesy: Mylapore Times.)

At the fag end of the annual Mylapore Festival, two young artists get an idea as the last of the ‘mike-less’ concert series in Nageswara Rao Park got underway.

Can we use this park space to duplicate what Bangalore has been doing so well for many years – the Chithra Santhe?

A public display space on a busy, verdant Bangalore road (that is shut down for traffic one Sunday) for young artists and a space where people can interact, soak in and even buy a piece of art for a small sum of money. A project of Karnataka Chitrakala Parishanth.

These two artists had just got back from the Bangalore event – an event that is now huge in scale and visitorship. An entire roadside is marked out day-long, 8 am to 8 pm, for the Santhe and over 1000 artistes from all over Karnataka and outside exhibit their works and sell some of them.

We decided to try it out in our city.

And so, on February 7th the first Art Mart, or ‘Ovia-santhe’, was held at Nageswara Rao Park, in Luz. About 60 artists from Tamil Nadu set up their works at simple, make-shift spaces in one corner of this popular park and welcomed visitors to take a look at the paintings and buy them if they felt any work deserved a place in their drawing room.

The Art Mart was a community driven project. Not corporate-funded. Making it work well was the public’s support.

Vincent D’Souza of Mylapore Times was one of the organisers.

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