Tami-nglish

      
      This is what happens now in our household. The story time for kids has been transferred from bed-time to commuting time to school. After I finished Ramayana, Mahabharata (the great Indian epics) and Sri Krishna stories, Vikramaditya stories are going on now (in Hindi, it's Vikram aur Betal). 

      One such story starts off like this. Vikram comes to know about udankattai (which is Sati practice in Tamil) of a queen from a kingdom nearby. Jani, the little one stopped me and asked about udankattai, as she had never heard of it. I explained that Udankattai was an ancient practice in India where the wife, after her husband's death, climbs his funeral pyre, immolates herself and dies. I added that this was abolished during the British rule with drive from great leaders like Rajaram Mohan Roy (Oh man! I'm quoting this name after a loooong time, may be after my 8th history lesson. Guess it's time we glorify people like him).

     I continued with the story as to how Vikram helped save the queen. While I was halfway through it, Adi asked, "Stop Amma, but what is this udankattai". Jani and Kavi, who didn't like the interruption because of a repeat question, got annoyed and started scolding him. Actually they were terrified of me restarting the story of spine-chilling practice. He didn't bother to reply his siblings, but asked me in a curious tone, "How come the name is in English when this practice was there even before British came here". I blinked. Where did English come in? Udankattai is a flawless Tamil word. 

     As the question popped out, the answer dawned on me at exactly the same moment. OMG..all this while he thought it was "wooden"-kattai. Hence, the English component. So sweet. It took whole five minutes for the laughter to die down

Crow chronicle 2

Well..this is the sequel to Crow chronicle. You may read it first before proceeding here.

The place remains the same.
The characters - the crow, my Amma, myself and a new sparrow family.

Recently, a new sparrow family moved in to our garden. They are a cute lot and visit the water bowl often. But these species also take bath in the bowl, apart from drinking. We didn't notice when the sparrows come and go and when the crows come and go..They were happily co-existing.

But on one fine day, the crow started calling again. My Amma and I went and checked the bowl. It was in its place and we returned to the room. The crow kept cawing. We decided to take a look at the bowl. Oh! It was so dirty with few small feathers (you know the culprits 😁) and a piece of biscuit (we are not sure about the culprits - could be the sparrows or crows).  But the point is made by the crow. It didn't want to drink the dirty water. We emptied the bowl and kept clean water. It drank the water, called upon its friends, drank and went away.

Call it co-incidence..on the same day as this happened, I watched a video on crow's intelligence. Pretty interesting.  The story about how a crow brings water up by adding stones to the pot, doesn't look like just a story anymore..Please watch the video to know more

No wonder in India, we treat crows with reverence and give them food on Amavasya, believing that they are our ancestors. Believe in ancestors or not, but they definitely seem to be close to humans in the process of evolution

No Plastic tales - Tale 1

Rewind 2 weeks:

On Jun 5, World Environment Day, our family decided on this: Say-no-to-one-time-use-plastic. We took selfies, groupfies with the posters & posted in facebook, whatsapp etc. So what comes next. It takes time to eliminate one-time-plastic use. We decided to go in phases. I discussed with my kids on the first step that we would take. Yes, it's not to use carry bags or plastic covers. We decided to take our own bags to the shops. This is where my memory was severely tested. Read on.

Memory slip 1:

Half the time I would know that I have to buy something when I go to pickup or drop kids at school. There would be a call from my sister-in-law or Amma to buy something. Most probably I won't have a bag with me at that moment. Once, I received such a call while returning from school with kids. We didn't have a bag. We searched our car to find anything that looks like a carry bag and finally found one plastic cover, decided to reuse it and went to the shop. We got tomatoes and onions, went to the billing counter and when the guy was about to pull out a cover, we proudly gave ours. He dropped the tomatoes inside the bag and oh no..the cover had a hole which we didn't notice and the tomatoes started rolling royally on the floor. Some of them broke and it was an embarrassing sight. We apologized and took their carry bags. Bad!!

Memory slip 2:

Another day, same thing happened. We didn't have a bag and we again searched for a bag. Kavi gave me an idea. She offered her lunch bag which is made of cloth. She took out her lunch box and water bottle, emptied the bag and gave it to me. We went to the shop.  Now this was decent. We somehow succeeded.

Fast forward 2 weeks:

To overcome these slips, we are doing this now. Once a week, we keep 5-6 cloth bags in the car and use whenever needed.

Well...yet to test that memory part to reload the bags. I realized how much of this attitude "to go empty handed to a shop" is ingrained within us. I vaguely remember carrying bags in 80s. Gotta get back to that culture.

Well, this is the highlight, Jani - my little niece came today with a sad face. She had gone to a shop with her father to buy vegetables. I asked her the reason for such a sad face(she was actually looking cherubic even with that face). She said that she forgot to take a cloth bag. Hah! this is what is needed. The change started happening within the youngest one.

Tales to continue....

The alarming annoyance

      Being part of that population that gets annoyed with the tone of morning wake up alarm, I tried all methods to keep it pleasant:  used my favorite song, chirps of birds, lilting  sound of waterfall, raindrops on the roof, splashing waves, baby's laughs...never works. It could be the best music you love,  but when it becomes the alarm notification tone, you know what.. 😃

     And yeah, to avoid snoozing, (well I used to snooze 3-4 times which definitely increases the annoyance quotient), I kept the phone a lil far away...better, but still, getting up to go get the phone and snoozing again is another Himalayan task.

     My resolution is to get up early to do yoga, first thing in the morning. So what did I do...I woke up before my alarm went off..bingo! the tone is not that annoying now..😃
     
      Call it biological clock or whatever, but of late I get up exactly 6-7 minutes before the alarm goes off..and consistent at that.. Isn't that awesome?

So, what worked : I say,  my mind listens and my body obeys.. How? the answer is yoga. 😃

Pls read what worked again..😉

The crow chronicle

      One afternoon Amma n I had a good siesta. I was still snoozing, when Amma went to pick flowers for puja. That's when we heard a non-stop chirping. We saw that a crow was calling us. We ignored her first. But she was not flying away or hopping, but calling us.

     Amma immediately realized that our water bowl was not in it's place. It had fallen down during last night's rain. She took another bowl, filled water and kept on the wall. The crow happily drank. It started calling it's friends. It had water again n flew away.

      For the little soul, which regularly frequents our home, water means so much to it's life. I watched all this with absolute reverence to water, the elixir of life. Thank you dear crow, we will make sure the bowl is in it's place everyday with water and you are welcome home at anytime of the day.

The not-so-famous Chinnasamy

On our way to school, I was speaking to my children about how crores n crores of people have come to this world and gone, while only few are remembered. I asked them to name a few, say 25. Pat came the answer from the little one Jani - Chinnasamy. I was like, what? Chinnasamy?? Who is that?? But by the time I asked this question, the elder one answered Gandhi, Nehru n so on and the kids were churning out more names..we forgot abt Chinnasamy..

Adi wanted to buy a notebook and we stopped at a shop. Jani n Adi went to the shop while Kavi n I stayed back in the car. That's when Kavi noticed an obituary poster with an old man's photo with the name..u guessed it right..Chinnasamy..😃

For all of us, Chinnasamy will be remembered forever...😃

What's in a shape

My friend visited us after attending Grahapravesham at his village. He said that they were served idlis made in thin plastic cups to get that innovative(!) shape. OMG😱😱

Our humble idli has been taking varieties of avatars in the past one decade..Khusbhu idli, Masala idli, vegetable idli, fried idli,...and now this plastic idli..but why?
If we ask our mothers, they made idlis in brass moulds, slowly we moved to aluminium and stainless steel..but plastic??

In the name of being creative, are we digging our own graves. We have been told not to carry hot food in plastic covers, as it is hazardous to health. Just imagine what could happen if it's steamed in plastic cups. Scary right?

Dear chefs who cook for functions or restaurants..Pls Pls say no to plastic in any form, for cooking.

We are quite happy and in fact relish the original, cute, soft, round idli..