All posts in the ‘ India ’ Category

In our family, it was taken for granted that you would dance. Here’s my mom at about age six, in Newton, Massachusetts, about to be the bride in a show called “A Kewpie Wedding.” My sister Lee at a performance in Delhi. Of all of us kids, she got the furthest in ballet, advancing from flat shoes to point. I didn’t escape participating in Woodstock School talent shows. In addition to classical dance, we learned ballroom dancing-—box step, …Read More

A few quick fashion notes about the color coordination you see in Indian women’s dress. These ladies are impeccably pulled together: A mom in elegant monochrome: The sandstone-colored outfits on the tourists at the gate of the Taj Mahal look custom-made for the scene: Thanks to my friend Donna Greenberg for the use of the photos.

Hello, all. Here are some more Travancore Sisters pics from my parents’ photo albums. A formal portrait of Ragini and Padmini: A couple more of Ragini: The three informal snaps below are faded and scratched, but I can’t resist posting them anyway. All were taken in Chennai, c. 1954. Ragini with her brother, Chandran: Ragini with my little sister, Jane: Aren’t Ragini’s braids fantastic! Finally, Padmini with Woodmans: Padmini’s got me, and I’ve got Jane. Lee’s on the …Read More

We were the new kids on the block in 1953, the block being Edward Elliot Rd (now Dr. Radhakrishnan Salai) and the city being Madras (now Chennai.) It could have been a difficult adjustment–but instead, it was like falling into a warm bath. This was largely because of the kindess of our hospitable next-door neighbors–the mom, Saraswati Amma, her three daughters, Lalitha, Padmini, and Ragini, their brother, Chandran, and their cousins, Ambika and Sukumari. We were still learning …Read More

I’m just back from New York City, where I had a great visit with my childhood friend, Deborah Keehn. Debby and I were friends in Delhi, where we took Bharatanatyam dance lessons together. Later, we were Woodstock School roommates. Here we are on a typical Saturday morning, busily cleaning our dorm room. We had to pass room inspection before we could go to “the buzz,” as we called the bazaar in Mussoorie. See? All cleaned up! I had …Read More

Some of the traffic to my blog comes from people searching online for pictures of the three Travancore sisters, my family’s movie star neighbors in Chennai. Queries come from India, but also from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, Sri Lanka, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and the Netherlands. Perhaps the sight of these three beautiful ladies has been a remedy for homesickness for people spread over the globe by …Read More

Greetings for the Big Day–in other words, Merry Christmas! Christmas Eve in India, we hung stockings in preparation for Santa’s coming, as in this 1958 photo. My sisters Deborah and Jane are standing on three-legged stools that tended to be tippy, but somehow we escaped mishaps. The Nataraj on the mantelpiece (Lord Siva as cosmic dancer) witnessed many such ceremonies. The suitcase-y thing on the right was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, playing “White Christmas” and “let it snow, …Read More

One of the nicest parts of having a book published has been hearing from complete strangers and immediately feeling a sort of kinship with them. What more colorful thing could I find in my mailbox than this air letter from Malaysia? It was from a lady in Kuala Lumpur (British, I think), who apologized for being a “dinosaur” and not using a computer. Apologized? Good grief, she made my day! She had lived in Chennai (then Madras) during …Read More

Our house in New Delhi got flooded, in 1958. It was during the monsoon season, and a drainage ditch near our house overflowed its embankments, leaving a foot or so of water on the ground floor of the houses in our neighborhood. I hate to think of what was floating around in that water, but I ended up wading in it as my dad took pictures. You can see the high water mark on the living room wall. …Read More

I was about to throw out a shoebox of cassette tapes the other day, but instead, popped one into a portable cassette player (also retrieved from the dark corners of a closet) and had a listen. The tape was of my sister Lee interviewing my dad in 2002. Most of the lore had been ingrained in our heads, but I’d forgotten exactly how my dad, Everett Woodman, had met his retired schoolteacher friend, P. A. Thiruvenkatachari, “Mr. Patch,” …Read More