Dance, folk arts, crafts and food
By Our Staff Reporter / Thiruvananthapuram
The south Indian state of Kerala gets into celebration mode twice a year. The bigger party is at Onam. Vishu though also brings the community together.
 This year, summer was well into its peak season. Daytime temperatures were at 34 degree Centigrade and above. So, the diehard shoppers of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city which leads a rather laidback life, came out only in the evenings.
Evening showers, well before monsoon, which sets in by June 1, are commonplace here. They cool the place and do good for the greenery that makes this a pleasant city.
The showers did good for the lush campus of the well known Kanakakkunnu Palace (once a royal repose) in a quiet end of the city. Proud of its success in promoting Kerala as God's Own Country, the Tourism Department now actively promotes Kerala's performing arts.
 The Nishagandhi festival is an annual event which features the state's senior artistes. For some time now, the venues and the dates have kept changing, so it has not found a place in the tourism calendar.
This year, Nishagandhi was held on the eve of Vishu, and for the first time, handled by an event management company, Great India Events.
The hosts though made many other changes. They invited dancers from other states to also perform on stage. And since Rajasthan, the western Indian state that is also a great tourist destination, is now a partner state of Kerala, folk artistes were also given some time on a stage that had a gigantic mould of the dancing god, Lord Nataraja, as its backdrop.
The open air amphitheatre at Kanakakkunnu Palace grounds is a nice venue for recitals. It can accommodate over one thousand people and though it was not full house, the other attractions billed as part of Nishagandhi brought in a steady stream of visitors.
 Nishagandhi is well advertised. Credit goes to the promo-savvy teams of the Tourism Department of this state. This year, Air India was the lead sponsor and parted with a couple of lakhs of rupees. With a huge population of Keralites in the Gulf, Air India saw reason in backing such an event.
Dancers Jayaprabha Menon, Sheeja Raj and P. Parvathi (Mohiniattam) and Vinayachandran and party (Kerala Nadanam) and Bharatanatyam dancers Boby Krishna, Devi Chandana and dancers of the Regatta Dance Academy run by Girija Chandran, performed.
To attract a bigger audience, the hosts roped in actress Divya Unni to perform Bharatanatyam. The purists though didn't approve of the idea.
Mid-April is well past the tourist season which fades in late January but the Vishu weekend attracted the residents of the city. The bigger attraction though was the food court where the best hotels and restaurants of Thiruvananthapuram served delicious food for low prices.
Families could dine at tables and watch side shows performed by folk artistes.
The row of crafts shops displaying crafts from different parts of the country was a feast for diehard shoppers, and closeby, the city's nurseries displayed a variety of potted plants and saplings at the flower show.
The larger spread of the festival seems to have clicked. It was extended for a day. For families on a day out, an hour of classical dance, some window shopping and a dinner in the open Sooryakanthi ground must have been a nice experience.
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