Family is fun & cranky!

This seems to be the season of family get togethers. I just attended 2 in 3 days.

Two conversations from either side of my family:

We were all gathered with my uncles, aunts and cousins from my mother’s family. The occasion was my grandfather’s 12^th death remembrance. One of my uncles expressed his desire that next April my 

 grandmother is turning 80 (i.e based on anecdotal evidence; even she doesn’t know which year according to the English calendar she was born), so we should have a grand celebration of her 80^th birthday.

Grandma: “Who knows, I may not be alive till then. No need to plan it now itself”

Uncle: Don’t worry, if you’re not alive we will celebrate it as your adiyanthiram (the 7^th day of death commemoration feast)!

Laughter all around as my grandma looks comforted.

                                ************

A get- together on my father’s side of the family. My cousins are spread out in various cities of the country, in US & UK. This made me remark to my niece,

Me:  “If you want to go anywhere in the world, just let anyone of us know, we will take care of everything”.

My niece (without blinking): I want to go to Africa

Me: Err…. Sorry, I’m not coming with you.

My sis: Don’t worry, we will drop you at the airport.

                             

                                  ***********

Three women at work

All in a day's work

I saw them on my way to the office; three women who also were on their way to work. They were selling these long brooms, as you can see, mounted on their petite shoulders. The lady in the sari (the middle one), also had a baby sleeping on her shoulder (not visible in the pic ) while she deftly balanced the brooms on her head.
These brooms are often around 6 feet long. If you are wondering what is the use of a broom 6 ft long, it has a unique purpose in India. It is used for removing cobwebs sitting pretty on unreacheably high corners of the roof in houses, offices etc. Trust me, they are more efficient and easy to use than you vacuum cleaner for roofs. I have tried using vacuum cleaners to gobble up the spider webs and suck the runaway spiders into the vacuum bag with a wicked glee. In the first place, the vacuum tube will not be long enough to reach high  roofs. Secondly I have to stare up with my head and hands pointing at the sky to aim the tube at the runaway spiders till my neck and arm muscles ache but to no avail.
With this broom, its so damn easy. First of all, they are so light weight and user friendly, esp. for lightly built people like me. Next, the bristles are arranged in a fan shape so that you can cover a lot of area in a single swipe unlike the vaccum tube opening of a few centimeters. The thickly arranged bristles also provide for more efficient squatting of the wannabe runaways.
Thus in ways more than one, these three women carry a very useful and totally indigenous device for keeping your homes clean.
Oh, and more pros are coming in now; this broom will cost you only a fraction of what a vaccum cleaner will cost (Rs 20 Vs Rs 2000); they are totally environment friendly; consumes no electricity/ fuel; they are totally plastic free; you can also use them to pluck mangoes (when its mango season) or guavas or some such fruits from trees. Thus its truly a multi-purpose , user friendly and environment friendly device.

PS: I almost sound like an online sales rep for these women, too bad they don't that I'm at it. :(

The Onam of 2012

So happy was I to be home for Onam this year. People in my office were asking all about it and I told them its a 'harvest festival'. Actually I just think its a harvest festival, not quite sure of it. Anyway, them Kannadigas don't know any better than me , so I managed to get away with it :)

And they are surprised that Onam is a state festival celebrated irrespective of religious affiliations. Again they stumped me by asking which god is worshipped for Onam. I explained the story of King Mahabali and Vamanan, they were familiar with some parts of it. Then they wanted to know what we did on Onam. The answer that came to my mind was that we watch movies on Surya TV, Asianet, Kairali TV etc. I din't tell them that ... Instead I that told we make Pookkalams and we have a grand feast on Thiruvonam day :)

Some images from Onam this year...

The Vazhakkula without which no Onam is complete, proudly photographed from my home garden....

The quintessential Pookkalam, the hallmark of Onam...

A closeup view of the smae,

The Thrikkarappan, made of mud, decorated with flowers

Up close,

Some flowers without which Onam cannot be...

Thumba poo, sadly so out of focus  :(

Mukkootti....the yellow bells,

Kakkappoo, it is actually violet or blue; the colour dint come out in my pic...

A Happy and prosperous Onam to one and all!

Hotels

Simply I thought I will make a list of hotels we have stayed in, not much anyways, but hope to keep updating.

Thrissur, Kerala - Joys Palace

Bangalore, Karnataka - Pai Viceroy, Anand Vihar, Prakash Cafe, The Libra, Golden Bell

Delhi  - oh I Forgot,

Jaipur - Arya Vilas (simply the best budget hotel)

Ooty - Sullivan Court() heavenly chicken cutlets)

Mysore - Hotel Sandesh

Goa - Hotel Nizmar, Calangute (ughh....)

Chennai - The Orchid (forgettable)
                The Crystal Palace (good food and room service)

Boston - Hampton Inn (cheese omelettes, pork patties :) )

Pittsburg - Quality Inn, The Hilton

Newyork - Holiday Inn, Apple hostel

Chicago - Holiday Inn

Abu Dhabi - The Sands hotel

A stopover at Tumkur

Last 3 days, I have been doing up and down to Tumkur on some work. One of the days, I went to a place called Bellavi. As we were driving in and around Bellavi suddenly it reminded me of home. There were hibiscus flowers in the hedges and in the front courtyard gardens of houses. I saw  a large pink-purple hibiscus which I had not seen in a long time and suddenly nostalgia came rushing back like waves crashing in on the sea shore.

While I was there in Ramanagara, I took a snap of a small plant in the garden. It resembled one of the plastic christmas trees we have at home. This one looked so cute though...

PTSD

Caught a glimpse of the TeeVee (the US pronunciation) when I was preparing a brief on the ISID NTD meeting. Just caught a wink of a scene showing an airport. Needless to say, it brought back the PTSD. (for the uninitiated- it is Post traumatic stress disorder). Just mention North statio/Lechmere, I;m ready to throw fits anytime. At the risk of sounding like a gas bag, I’ve to confess this trip has done me to death with regards to air and subway travel. As much as we enjoyed Boston, by the end of the week, we’ve had enough of the subway travel that I began to feel weary and nauseous at the thought of the shuttle bus from Lechmere to North station. Actually the subway is qyuite nice. But the problem was, we were making around 8-10 trips per day in a matter of, may be 12 hours. Now that isn’t so nice.

The same goes for airports. I’ve seen more airports and had more take-offs and landings in a week than I had in my entire short life. Actually when we missed the AI flight and had to stay over in Chicago, I was kind of secretly pleased; variations in barometric pressure 6 times in 24 ours had made my ear sick and me very nauseous on the inbound flight. This time atleast we had a break on the outbound ;-)

May be all this PTSD is gonna last just a few weeks and then I may be back to wishing for more of the fare. Hope that time is a long way off :-)

Traditional Kerala kitchen.... nostalgia

This post was inspired by two cookery shows I watched in the space of an hour!
The old traditional Kerala kitchen is far from the gleaming modular ones we see these days. It is dark and grubby and can cover you in sweat in no time. Yeah, exhaust fans were unheard of then. And they used firewood for fuel, so you can just imagine the heat and the smoke. Sure, there was a smoke outlet which helped just that li’l bit.
I remember my grandmother’s kitchen. It was always hot there. They had a small gas stove, the likes of which may not be seem today. In addition there were two hearths which had wood going into them. I liked pushing the wood inside the opening which of course I was not officially allowed to do. The embers used to sparkle even after the fire went out and it was a favourite pass time to stoke it with a long metallic pipe which made a whistling noise everytime you blew through it. I think we (me & sis) used to do it even when the oven dint need any fire, just for the heck of it! Then what I remember about the kitchen is a false ceiling, from which there used to hang a dark, grubby pot. It contained the ‘unakkameen’, the smoked fish. The salty smell from the pot used to make me salivate, still does.

Another thing is remember is the old ‘ammikkallu’. With the advent of technology it has been replaced by the ‘mixies’ or the food processors. But any curry with ground pastes from the old contraption still has a unique taste which the mixie quite can’t match. Even my mother stopped using it around 10 years back. And all my attempts at it have been unsuccessful. So that is equipment that is going into extinction along with the once ubiquitous “aattukallu”. Who has the time and energy for putting in gigantic efforts for using these when all you have to do is just switch on a device instead.

May be these are fragments of a culture dying a slow death, fading into oblivion. The helplessness at reviving them makes me sad. But maybe it has happened throughout the course of history of human civilization. May be that’s what progress is; moving onto better things. Today’s’ modern homemakers can no longer be tied to these age old equipments but at the same time as part of a cultural memory we need to preserve them. What a dilemma?!

The old timers

Yeah...we won, we won, we won!!! The cup is our's, we are the world champions after 28 long years of waiting. This team was superb, really deserved the cup. Congrats and hats off to Dhoni and his men in blue.

But then this post is not about them. I just finished watching the last 45 minutes of an old- old movie called "Falling in love". There's nothing remarkable in the story line; two married people falling in love with each other and the toll it takes on their families- is how to sum it up in a single sentence. What makes it remarkable is the acting by two highly remarkable people- a young, dashing Robert de Niro and a young, feisty looking Meryl Streep. I watched the whole thing just to see them act. It was a real treat... the subtleties they bring into ordinary roles... just like watching two real people in their situations. I would say they just took the story into a different plane with their performance. But for them I'd have flipped the channel in another 2 minutes. It was pure joy, to watch the two of them, so young and beautiful. so talented...just magnificent. So natural, so spontaneous.