Tracy Hills Xmas 2024

In the middle of the night, heavy rain pouring, a woman walked towards the house. She had draped a cloth over her head . She was holding something with both her hands. Suddenly there was a flash of lightning, and heavy thunder... the temple bells rang wildly..  Divya opened the door and kept the arabian bread pudding that Ramshi had brought into the fridge.

How are you going to hang stars in the middle of a hall with a vaulted ceiling? There is no way you are going to reach the roof even if you were a circus athlete who could balance on two ladders. You just tie two twines diagonally from the walls and hang the stars and snowflakes on it. Once done, some things are just so perfect that they fail to impress. 

The decor team had started the work at 10:00 AM with the plan that everything would be done by lunch, and we can all come back in the evening.  Against the original plan, we decided to keep the stage to align with the hall design.  The stage back drop work was reasonably straight forward. I had to do the laptop setup for the event tracks so I left early.  Came back in a few hours with Gafoor's blue tooth speakers. Banerji, Vipin, Vijesh, Mahesh, Jithin, Vipin Vasudevan, Manu,Gafoor, Arun were all still in full swing with the decor work. 

I had the work of playing the accompanying tracks for the dance and song events for the night. Easy you would think. I did do some preparatory work and with Gafoor's help, had paired the blue tooth speakers, and had ensured that the sound from the laptop is coming from both the speakers. First event was kids' carols. Kids are on the stage. I am about to play the music, and I see that the speaker is no longer connected. After some scramble, got it connected and played. Vipin Vasudevan, who was our MC for the night would give me a ready signal once the performers are ready, and I would play the songs. Some of the events were smooth like that. 

Rejy chettan's daughter Sneha's performance did not have an accompanying track. She sang with all her heart and wowed the audience with her talent. Rejy chettan and Suma chechi had taken the role of sharing christmas stories and had presented a christmas based key note.

For the last week, almost on a daily basis, Divya had been going for the ladies's dance practice. All that effort had paid off for an interesting and fun reel based dance performance.  I noted Leiba in the kids' dance performance. She was doing reasonably complex dance moves as were the rest of the kids. That is when I saw Dana. She was directing the kids from the audience, and the kids were imitating for a very good dance performance. Chris had captained the big kids performance, and it was great to see the children get an opportunity to come out and perform. 

Next up was adults' group song. I was all exhausted in the challenge of hitting the play button at the right point. For our practice sessions, the first section was the easier part, and second portion is where the harder songs come in. The D-Day was here. I started the medley a movement earlier. But after that, we pretty much sang fine. The harder portions came out at least as good as our practice sessions. This time, Anjali and the rest of the ladies did not shy away and sang openly for a more balanced performance.

Vipin was MCing like a pro. He called me on for the adult solo song.  I had recently watched Badlapur and the songs in it were impressive.  Some notes were strained, and my hands were shaking wildly. When the music was playing, I dared to look at the audience, and received encouraging smiles and gestures, which helped. Arun noted the hand shaking, he had set up an impressive "pulkoodu", even has Kef speakers connected to his TV.

Snacks section on one corner of the hall, dinner section on the other corner of the hall. Nimmy had prepared some very tasty plum cake, while Priya had prepared parippu vada for ethnic touch. I was sitting on a chair with the laptop close enough to the blue tooth speakers. Vijesh/Vipin/Manu would bring in these savories as to not interrupt the event music in any way. Once all the files were played, Vijesh came over and untied me from the chair and I went to the car and left the laptop there. 

It was dinner time, and the buffet looked really impressive. Porotta and beef stole the show for me. I had taken more in my plate than I could eat. And I was not going to miss out on the home made desserts. Felt pretty delirious after all that food and settled on the back bench to chill out while the white elephant game kicked in. Anju Mahesh organized the kids' gifts distribution. 

Then, Bharathi and Gafoor came in. A table with twenty cups upside down on each side. Roll the dice and based on the roll, that many cups can be turned over. The team who gets all the cups up first wins. There was pin drop silence. We are all mature adults - a dice is rolled, these are all plastic cups - you could hear the sound of the plastic crumble slightly as they were turned around.  The picture of discipline - in your dreams. Shouting and fighting for nothing. Even Mahesh was fighting. Whole lot of fun.  "Thilakkam" team shone and won, dimming out the enthusiasm of the "Avesham" team. 

This time, my parents were also there. They made friends with Swathi's parents, and had good time as well. Soon it was clean up time. I decided to drop my parents back in the hope that by the time I drop them and come back, all the clean up would be done, and it would be time for some post event fun. It was a long fun day. 

This event had defined the last several weeks with all the practices, and the discussions. Now it had all come to an end, leaving a void in the wake.