My Musings

Wish you all a wonderful, happy and prosperous Vinayaka Chaturthi. Some Prasadam for Puliyaar(i love this name of vinayaka a lot) at our home. Oh! I miss home so much today. Called up home with tears in my eyes, missing amma's kozhakattai (why can't mine come as nice as hers ! ), appa's poojai, the whole atmosphere at home.. I would help appa make the poonal and dress for the mann puliyar that appa would rush to buy first thing in the morning. Amma would hurry through making neividyam, while continously prodding appa to get ready and do the pooja. After giving one final "bark", he would go to bath, come out fresh - viboothi, veshti and all and settle down for a full one hour pooja. In the evenings, we would visit one or two pandals where they kept huge huge vinayaka statues, end the day by visiting a couple of relatives and exchanging kozhakattai.... Oh! I miss home.

In conversation with my in-laws today morning, Amma gave us the ‘Disgusting’ piece of news – that J’s (J is the son of their family friend) wife is 2 months pregnant. Well, I am not the hard-hearted kind of person to hate kids and such “good” news – but why do I call this disgusting? Listen to J’s tale. J came for vacation from the eternal mallu paradise “Gelf” (one of those Middle Eastern countries – any place in the Middle East is called “Gelf” in Mallu land) for about 45 days. Our wedding happened to fall in those 45 days. Exactly 20 days after our wedding, we got the news that J’s wedding was to be held in 2 days time – we were pleasantly surprised! Chat mangni Pat byah – we were not even aware that J was looking out for a bride. Ah! Well – all’s well that end’s well. He got married, stayed with his wife for what – 2 weeks and then flew back to his land of freedom! Another 2 weeks later comes the news – she is Pregnant! Oh! Well – the boy ‘did his job’ right! Now there wo...

Never ever try to cut this nasty piece of thing and remove the seeds inside with your hand. I don't even think i would have touched a couple of seeds yesterday while trying to make the "Mirchi ka Salan", but the damn thing burned my entire hand - the whole night! Uff so much for trying new recipes ... !