PB no. 2, Kottayam 1 June 26, 2021, 9:09 AM IST
The only service that is delayed in Bestotel is billing, so goes a popular saying among those who love the hotel-cumbakery. Neither the customers want to leave the hotel after food nor does the management wants to see them off in a hurry by presenting the bill.
For over 67 years, Bestotel, at the heart of Kottayam town, has been a witness to history. It was the place for film stars and famous writers. Legendary songwriters and novelists penned their masterpieces in its rooms and political leaders hobnobbed together in its lobbies.
Sadly, the pandemic has claimed this landmark hotel too. The shutters of the historic hotel will be downed permanently on August 31.
Our own pattammal
Beyond several firsts that marked her musical genius and the boundless affection the legendary gurus had showered on her, Carnatic vocalist Parassala B Ponnammal who passed away at the age of 97, early this week, was an amazingly contented human being and a bottomless repository of blissful classical music.
Perhaps, it was this higher order of classical refinement and her unobtrusive philosophical approach towards life that made a befitting appreciation of her music impossible for generations of musicians and music lovers in Kerala.
“Ponnammal got a new lease of life when she became the first woman to sing at the traditional Navarathri Mandapam of Padmanabha Swamy Temple in 2006. Since then, she started receiving invitations from far and wide. Finally, the country honoured her with Padma Shri in 2017. The purity of her music was unparalleled. I feel that her true potential was not tapped fully,” says Gouri Parvathy Bai of the Travancore royal family.
Rajathi, a tribeswoman from Melekandiyoor, was admitted to Tribal Speciality Hospital at Kottathara in Attappadi on June 4 but the doctors there referred her to Thrissur medical college. The next day, her baby was delivered.
In the lockdown of 2020, the Thrissur Vadakkunnathan temple, along with all other places of worship, was shut down completely, probably for the first time in its centuries’ old history. The ancient temple and the.
With his blood-smeared hands, he sticks a flower on the yam leaf in which the meat is wrapped. He hopes the flower would ward off the smell of the meat which the woman, his lover,.