Ajji Mane (Grandma's house)

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That would be the response of most of my friends when encountered with the question of what they would do or where they would go for summer holidays. And mostly it meant one's mom's mom's house since it was almost always true that the dad's parents stayed with one.
This response was however never true for me. My ajji mane was right beside my other ajji's mane, even sharing a compound wall! So no one ever thought that we should go spend 2 months in the next house when we could as well have fun in both the houses without needing to pack. Every rule had an exception and there was one in our case too when during one holiday season in my 1st std, Shaani (mom's mom who we used to call with that name for short) invited me and my brother to stay over completely for a week. We were very excited. For me going to Shaani's house was always like going to wonderland. It was an old house with a high tiled roof and minimalistic interior but it was always a place I used to want to go to. The main reason was that it meant getting away from the mundane at our house and be pampered and not asked to do anything. Shaani was a wonderful loving person. Unfortunately I do not have too many memories of her except for the one week I stayed with her. Me and my brother did nothing and were treated like stars. Shaani used to cook yummy food and we would gorge on it. That was also the week when I learned to soap my own back while taking bath so it was productive despite laziness :). I also remember drying my hair over a jute basket under which glowered "Sambrani" an incense. One thing etched in my mind was my grandma's simple solution to constant bickering between me and my brother for the bath towel. We had the exact same looking towels and every morning there was an uproar of who had to use which. She simply stitched our initials into the towels using a running stitch and that drew the curtains on our sibling drama! I sat with her and observed how she stitched which actually became my inspiration to start embroidering five years later. Shaani was the most patient lady I have ever seen. I do remember being extremely shy with her and I cant fathom why. Cut to a few years later when Shaani was no more and her house was still the centre of all attention for us. I remember spending many dark and cloudy afternoons on my cousin's bed, sharing a rug with her as she narrated to me stories of Hindi movies complete with dialogues! I knew the stories of Kabhi Kabhi and some Rajesh Khanna movies much before I ever got to see them. Shaani's house has a long compound running all around it which became our activity center. A big team of guys could easily play cricket there and so they did. I stuck to playing badminton though. The way the compound was tunneled ensured that not much wind blew there making it ideal for good badminton matches. We even used to tie a jute string, from the old teak tree to a nail in the opposite wall, which served as the net. There were many occasions where the shuttlecock would end up on the roof and then we had to wait till a tall person could get it down for us. I learnt to cycle in that compound and in later years even learned to ride a two wheeler, neither of which I ever rode courageously outside that compound. Going to Shaani's house meant jumping over the wall for me. Very rarely till I reached engineering college did I ever take the gate to enter it. There was always a warmth and charisma to that place.
Today the house is lying forlorn and in shambles and not because nobody cares anymore. Time and life have overtaken what was once a very congenial peaceful existence. Change is always constant and in this hour of remorse and recollection, one should always look back at the character my ajji mane has given to each one of its occupants. Every person who has crossed its threshold has come on top of life with a positive attitude and a blessing for Shaani.

Ganesha Bandha Steamed Kadabu thinda

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This year's happenings were totally unexpected. I did not expect to get a long vacation. My in-laws did not expect to see USA. T did not expect to have enough moolah to show us around a lot. But a lot of it has and is coming true. And who to thank but Lord Ganesha for it. And this year something unexpected happened for him too. A grand puja in the States for Him! In our house, a quiet small place became a bee hive of activity and festivity as he adorned the center stage on Ganesha Habba day on Saturday. We decorated him this time not with the usual Maavele et al but with local leaves and flowers. We also managed to tie a Thorana for him with leaves which could pass as betel leaf in one angle for the kalasha and a shortened version of Maavele in another angle for the Thorana. Apples substituted Coconuts for the kalasha. After all its the significance thats important. Gowri got made from mud and tied in a cloth to form a Mannu Gowri taking us back in time when the painted idols of today were not available in the market and the married women had to make their own Gowri and worship Her. Nice cheerful flowers adorned the whole landscape and He sat radiant amidst all the greenery. Going with the adage "When in Rome, be a Roman" our Ganesha was also made of the finest white wood and he resembled, in colour, to any of the white American folk. A foreign Ganapathi joked our guests and we had quite a few of them. Friends and family came to partake the Prasada and share in our lunch. The lunch itself was a veritable feast and unexpected since we did not have the paraphernalia to make it. But my m-i-l and I managed to get the show on the road (rather on to the dining table) with the limited resources. Having to use one medium sized cooker for everything from making rice to mixing curries and chitranna and ofcourse to also make dough for the kadabu. We also pulled alll available man power (f-i-l and T) to make the Kadabu. As is the tradition in most Kannada homes the Kadabu is not fried but steamed. Its much healthier eaten this way as it has no fat content. But I secretely did crave for my mom's Kayi Kadabu, those scintillating reddish tinged fried sweet kadabu! It was indeed a very joyous occasion with everyone sitting around our living room, joking, talking and some of us even acting like 5 yr olds to impress the 1 yr old toddler we had for company. The calm which pervaded over the whole situation is something which would have been tough to accomplish in Bangalore. There, the festivities tend to become bigger than the God Himself somehow. All in all a fun time with also many prayers going up to the cute God. The morning calm led to a chatty evening and when night finally descended f-i-l, T and me in turns happened to see the Moon (Chandra) which is considered inauspicious on that day. So we all had to read the Shloka which will prevent anything bad from happening to us. And my worried m-i-l went back to her Panchanga and deduced that seeing the american moon might not have the same bad effect as seeing it in India because the direction was different. But the fear did prevail and we did read the Parihara Shloka which strangely has no reference to Chandra or Ganesha but to the incident Lord Krishna had with the Syamantaka Jem as is present in the Ganesha Kathe (Story) that we read on that day. Strange aye?

And this is how he was seated that day :

Back-game-on

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For the past three days I have been at home doing nothing. The reason for my laid-back-edness is a twisted back muscle.
It all began on last Saturday morning. I got the josh to clean the house and T went “Gosh!” I wanted to usher the New Year to a squeaky clean house. So we spent most of the Christmas weekend fighting with cobwebs and reaching up to the fans with brooms, pieces of cloth, washing all the upholstery et al. Everyone at home thought I had gone clean crazy and were quite relieved when the whole exercise was over. But I only had to enter the room when I saw the missing tile of the clean puzzle – the attic! Though I did not share it with anyone a burning desire developed in me to clean this messy appendage of our room. Attics are a necessary evil I tell you. By Wednesday I couldn’t put off the cleaning another day and taking advantage of the fact that there was nothing much for me to do at office I called it a day off. With broom in hand and excitement in heart I started to unload all the junk which had gotten stored over many years. Most of the “junk” was books. I have to tell you that I really enjoy going through boxes of old books. I like making exciting discoveries among those old brown dusty pages. And this time no part of the junk was mine! I love to stumble upon books I would have never read. Bookmarks with doodles on them left wherever the reader got bored with the book forever. Hilarious comments in the margins written hurriedly in class and passed along. You can well imagine how long I would have taken to sort of the books to be kept back and the ones which had to go to a general book dump place (yes we have that too for wont of deciding what to do with them). The variety was amazing. I found books ranging from kids fairy tales to children’s knowledge banks to mechanical guides to quaint books which nobody would have ever read. It was like tracking through the growing years of T :). The best of them all was finding a book about the German Democratic Republic completely in german. I wonder who read that! I also happened to find at least 10 (yes you are seeing it right) dictionaries. If anyone wants to buy a new one just let me know! I found T’s college autograph book and chuckled through most of the entries. Sometimes old autograph books help in finding out what others think about a person :). I figured T was quite a popular joker even then as he is now! And so the story went on till I had put back essentials back up neatly. Then ofcourse I had to wash all the bed linen. During that I happened to have a nasty bout of cough while bending over. And immediately a muscle in my back got twisted badly! So bad that I couldn’t straighten for a whole minute, wasn’t able to walk easily, found it impossible sit and it was torture to sleep. That’s how I ended up for three days doing nothing but screaming in pain whenever I tried to get up after lying down or cough and praying that I don’t get a sneeze (am a pretty “sneezy” person. Walk me into any new room, shop, give me a new perfume or make me smell food (or a new person)and the first thing I do is Accchoooo!). It hasn’t been that bad because I was hooked on the Internet. One of my much younger cousins got me addicted to playing games and I have seen more cricket than ever before in my life.
But still when people ask me how I ended up with a muscle strain I actually find it sheepish to tell them that it was not due to any of the courageous heavy duty cleaning work I did at the beginning of the week!

Brain ka Noodle

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This week has been one big drag on me - well, workwise
I cant seem to concentrate.
I cant seem to use my 'intelligence'
I cant seem to do any research
I cant seem to give status updates
I cant seem to jot down meeting minutes
I cant seem to do anything


Everything seems to end in a blur of personal happiness.
Its weird how when one is happy, everything else seems to be irrelevant. Even though my paisa vasool happens coz of those irrelevant things!
My only hope and wish is that everyone including my boss understands this ebb in me!
As for me am fervently hoping for tomorrow evening to cast its holiday spell on me

Ich liebe es

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I've got blisters on the soles of my feet
I can't walk but am trying

Today is one of the happiest days of my life!
So what if I had to walk 2 kms in the hot sun
So what if I couldnt get a single bus to my destination for one and half hours
So what if they all whizzed past me later in quick succession
So what if they dint stop when I waved
So what if I couldn't get an auto on the long winding road
So what if I got bathed in mud
So what if i got tanned some more
So what if i got blisters on my feet
So what if i am limping now

(Not to mention all that hubby dear went through)

I and my hubby are proud owners of a house today.

An aashiana which we can call our very own.

Tra la la la

As they say in german "Ich liebe es"!