The "Parvathi" Invitation

The earliest photo that we selected for our Blog goes back to 1939. Since then a great many decades have passed (indeed we are closing in on three quarters of a century). We have often stood transfixed in trying to understand the number of concerts that might have taken place in this particular house, not counting any of the impromptu ones. We have been often left wondering how any single 'private' home, anywhere, could have functioned at such a level, not only in arranging so much free music from such great masters, but in handling such large crowds, and in doing this for such a long period of time, year after year.

We produce below a sample (from 1973) of the type of invitations that went out from "Parvathi" and we leave it up to you to conjure the rest.....

(click on the invitation below to obtain a magnified image)

A Blueprint of "Parvathi"

From the pictures that we originally selected for display, we tried to obtain an idea of how big architecturally, “Parvathi” might have been. Where was the quadrangle for the in-house concerts that we sometimes saw? Where was the stage that was sometimes raised on the outside?... How big was the driveway? ...Where were such large crowds accomodated?... Was the large portrait of Rama being worshipped really under a ‘Parijata’ tree?

In answer to our questions we discovered a huge blueprint, which we show below in a reduced form and which can be clicked back to its original to obtain some magnificent
details.

(click on the invitation below to obtain a magnified image)