It was freezing cold there.

I would have loved to sleep for a longer time, but my Mom would remind me that we would have no breakfast left in the inn where we stayed for sometime. That experience was great.

All the musicians would meet for breakfast and we would talk about the previous day's activities and then go blah, blah, blah . . .At Cleveland, we had group Pancharatna singing where the local artistes musicians would sing, followed by individual singing. I must say that they are very talented.

I must now tell you about a German lady we made friends with on the flight from Chennai to Brussels.

She was keen to discuss Carnatic music with me. She could not believe that our music is improvised. And I find that many others do express the same surprise. We had such an animated discussion on that flight and lost count of time that when we were about to land, she gave me some Belgium currency, saying we would need it to use in the airport. That was really thoughtful of her; otherwise i would have had to bother about changing currency and may have skipped my lunch.

The Cleveland Tyagaraja festival is really a fest worth attending. It attracts people from all over the USA and almost all the best musicians from India have been to it. And it is very well organised. And the hosts serve excellent food - with all this music, food and fun you don't feel you are in a foreign land. I find that the student community which comes to kutcheris is very knowledgeable in those parts. They even take down notes during the concert and further, clear their doubts, by discussing with us.

In Buffalo, there is a temple where college students apart from playing mridangam and violin at concerts, recite vishnu sahasranamam and other slokas during abhisekams in the temple. They also help around in cleaning pooja vessels and doing other jobs. I found student rasikas are very interested in buying CDs and downloading Carnatic music from the Internet.

In Sacramento, there were Chinese students who were very enthusiastic about taking down notes. I found other Indian students very interested in the Divya Prabandam. They are curious to know the details about the name of the alwar and the deity that was adored and so on.

In San Deigo, we were immensely happy to perform for the local Gujarat Earthquake Relief fund effort. What a gathering it was - Americans, north Indians and people from Orissa . . . Bengalis, Kannadigas, Tamils and Telugus.

Our Los Angeles programme was a big hit. We were supposed to sing in the temple auditorium at 2.30 in the afternoon. . they had a kumbhabishekam in the Malibu temple in the morning. Things got delayed and the local dance programmes began only at 1 p.m. and so, we were offered an alternate venue to perform... a place before Lord Srinivasa. The kalyana utsavam was to begin at 5-30 in the evening. And we had a little over an hour to sing. There was a big crowd and even the three archakas ( priests) seemed so excited that they started singing with us.

We had a lec-dem on padams and javalis for the Chicago Thyagaraja utsavam--- 25th anniversary celebrations. It was a big hit - the audience thoroughly enjoyed our programme. I explained the evolution of the padam and javali form, musical and lyrical aspects and other details. My mother and i sang about 7 padams and 8 javalis

Memories I will bring back to Madras.