Venue: Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium

To commemorate Christmas, the Marthomma Church had organized a concert in one of the auditoriums of Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. While 10 / 10 for spirit, we have little to say in terms of the quality of the presentation.

This was meant to be a choir by transgenders followed by a performance  by Usha Uthup. However, the program began on a slow note and was fraught with long speeches (in English and Malayalam) by religious preachers as well as other members of the community. While having the transgenders rise up to a choir performance is a novel and laudable initiative, the other performances were amateurish and half-hearted.

The programme started at 5.30 pm and till 8.15 pm there was no sign of singer Usha Uthup, the star attraction of the night.

Further, given that the program was in Delhi, the probability of non Malayalam speaking people attending the show is also higher, a little more linguistic sensitivity would have been welcome.

Nonetheless, yummy fruit cake slices were circulated among the audience and that, we thought, was a “sweet” gesture.