Yatheesan's flute arangetram

Last week at DB, the workload started to pile up. Thursday and Friday were the worst. Carla asked me to help her, so I did. I had to call a lot of managers as they didn’t reply to our e mails. Then Su (my manager) called me, telling me to send some spreadsheets that I hadn’t even started. So it was quite a stressful end to the week.

A few live cash games at Gutshot helped on Friday evening. There’s a great atmosphere there and a lot of friendly people. Though some of them got annoyed with me. Especially on the £25-£50PL table, where I put 4 players all in with my 8s-5s, got trip 8’s and took down a £200 pot.

On Saturday I had to help with decorations at Beck Theatre. It was Yatheesan’s flute arangetram. For those of you who don’t know, an Arangetram is a traditional South-Asian graduation ceremony where the teacher (Guru) acknowledges that the student is ready to perform. I did mine back in 2001, also at Beck Theatre.

There are certain variations of songs that are played. The 1st piece is called the Varnam. The more common Keerthanams follow with a Pancharathinam. The most important piece, however, is the Ragam Thanam Pallavi. This demonstrates the student’s ability in all aspects.

Yatheesan played this part so well. What really impressed me was that he combined 2 ragams in 1 line for most of the piece. There was no interval, so we went straight on from the RTP to the lighter devotional songs that are traditionally played in the 2nd half of the concert. It concluded with a Thillana, Thirrupugal and finally, the Mangalam. WELL DONE YAZ!!

It was nice to catch up with old friends from Tamil school. I hadn’t seen some of them for several years. Back then we used to be naïve, clueless teenagers, preparing for 4th yr/GCSE’s or what have you. Now, we’re naïve, even more clueless adults, about to start another year at university.