Birthday..

I don't get terribly excited about birthdays. But this year was special because, after a gap of nearly 8 years, my parents and my brother were all around in-person for my birthday. S baked a lovely upside-down pineapple cake which came out totally fluffy and yummy. And he gave me an exquisite, hand-carved gift that took him many hours to finish! This is the most creative gift yet that I've received from him. Thanks, S ! :)

Deepavali

For the first time in my five years in the US, I took the day of Deepavali off from work. This year, I was having we-are-not-celebrating-ANY-festivals-fatigue. I got tired of spending all festive occasions in my grey cube in drab jeans & an unironed T-shirt under the harsh glare of the computer screens and fluorescent lights. I desperately wanted to feel the festive season of my childhood -- making sweets at home, watching special programs on TV, visiting friends and family, wearing new clothes and bursting crackers. So we did what we could here. We lolled around home, called India, watched looooots of Sun TV and K TV and ate quite sumptuously.

S attempted cashew cake yesterday. It turned out like a gooey halwa instead of the perfect, mysore pa-like consistency he was hoping for. But the taste was just decadently rich and yummy!

The evening was spent at a potluck with about 20 people. And needless to say, we ate our fill, watched snatches of "Annamalai" and chatted away. Now, after being immersed in festive mood for more than 3 days, I am having trouble coming back to my "regular" life. Sigh.

I've never had much luck taking pictures in aquariums. My previous 4-year-old Kodak camera had very primitive settings that did not work out for an amateur photographer like me.

Recently, we bought a Canon SureShot 1100 and I've loved it so far. It has very sophisticated image stabilization and different pre-set modes to help in various environments. When we visited the Newport Aquarium yesterday, I thought I'd try out the "Aquarium" mode. The results were pretty good. I took some very random, point-and-shoot pictures and they turned out better than I could've ever expected!

I think Gunpun was my first "best friend". Whatever "best friend" means these days. Sometimes you find yourself confiding personal things to colleagues, neighbors or just acquaintances because they're available to listen! S, one of my closest friends, is in India and I hardly get to talk to her these days. So last week, my colleague poured out his kids' illness woes to me and I found myself telling him about my visa problems, green card etc...Anyways, but I do think that Gunpun & I would've grown up together as fast friends if we'd been in the same town.

He moved to Stuart school a few kilometers away from home since Bhagavanlu school was only a nursery school with classes only till Preparatory. I was disconsolate for a week and even cried in class. Besides, I was in Preparatory now (next to UKG) and I had a horrible class monitor called Likki. She was a really thin girl and kept calling me "moti" in class. I even believe she secretly made fun of my plump cheeks. To make things worse, she always made first rank beating me by a couple of marks. Suffice to say, we didn't see eye to eye.

But serendipitously, I got double promoted as well after a couple of months in Prep! So I got to skip 1st grade and go to the 2nd grade. And I was to join Gunpun at Stuart school. Yippeee! I threw tantrums and got into the same section as he was in. I think he was also elated to see me. Mrs. Das, the class teacher, made me sit next to some weird girl. I got all upset because I wanted to sit next to Gunpun. My father told me to be a "good girl" and articulate my request to Mrs. Das myself. But I was terrified of being denied. So I complained loudly to my parents and cried so much that my Dad came down to school one day and told Mrs. Das that I had to sit next to Gunpun. I think he was very annoyed at having to leave work and rush to school mid-day because of his temperamental kid. But it turned out that Mrs. Das was my father's colleague's wife and they had a nice chit-chat about me and everything else under the sun.

Everything turned out OK. Gunpun and I remained best friends. I spent a lot of time at their house. His younger brother, Tathu, was a particularly fun kid to be around with! For a change, Gunpun & I could boss him around because he was younger to us by 2 years. Hehe. He was eager to please us both and he'd do anything we asked him to. Apart from all that, Tathu & I had a bond. I felt all protective about him and he was very affectionate to me (called me his elder sister and all that!). He was a bit naughty though and used to get in trouble with the colony dog -- Balu.

Balu Dog was none's dog in particular but everyone in the colony loved him. He was kinda common property and ate at whosever place he wished to. He was also the protector of the colony. He'd bark and chase down any strangers at night and I think, once, he even caught a thief. Tathu, being the boisterous kid he was, would throw stones at Balu or tie tin cans to his tail. Balu was a very, very patient dog and put up with troublesome kids better than most. Once, my brother put one of his building blocks into Balu's mouth and stuck his hand in to retrieve it. Poor Balu still had his mouth wide open when my Mom rushed out to find my brother happily fishing in his mouth. But Tathu drove Balu nuts. He'd harangue the poor thing so much that Balu would bark loudly and chase him madly down the street. Anyways, none would believe Tathu when he complained against Balu. Such was Balu Dog's standing in Acharya Vihar!

The night before we left Bhubaneswar for good, Balu came to our house and slept in our verandah with a sad face. Somehow, he knew we were leaving. My dad gave him food but he refused to eat. He stayed with us until the last minute when we got in a car to leave. As hard as this is to believe, my parents thought he had tears in his eyes as he watched us go..:(

I don't know if Gunpun & I would've been good friends if we'd grown up together. One never knows about these things. But I'd definitely love to at least know where he is and what he's doing right now. So, Devidutta Panda, if you ever land up on this blog and remember me, do drop me a line! I'd love to catch up on life with you!

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Gunpun, Tathu And Balu Dog

'Tis the cold,miserable weather outside that's making me turn to warm memories for comfort. Hence this nostalgic post.

As a child, I'd like to think I was quite independently minded although, Lily Madam -- my LKG teacher -- phrased it a bit unflatteringly as "stubborn and sometimes moody". I don't think I liked my initial school years very much. Mom had taught me alphabets, numbers, colors, animals, nursery rhymes and what-not even before I went to school. And I found it very boring to sing "A B C D" all day in LKG when I knew how to do it quite well. And what was with all the classwork and homework stuff?

"Write A B CD 10 times"
"Write 1 to 100 10 times"

If I could write 1 to 100 correctly 1 time, what sense does it make to write it 10 times? So I refused to do this absolutely boring homework. I was very logical even when I was 3 and my teacher didn't see my genius. She made us write our homework in the calendar book so parents could monitor them. Because I was refusing to note it down in my calendar, Lily Madam did it herself. The next morning when my Dad came to drop me off at school, she promptly complained to him:

"Your daughter refuses to write her homework down in the calendar. So I do it for her now. And if I ask her to write the alphabets 5 times, she does it just one time! Please check her calendar at home and make sure she does it right."

Hmph. None listens to a 3 year old, anyway. So I was forced to actually do my homework with my mom watching me while I did it. She wouldn't let me play if I didn't finish HW right after school. So, I came up with an ingenious plan. If I had to write numbers from 1 to 100, I'd write 1 to 50 correctly. Then, I'd skip numbers in between. Like, I'd skip 53-59 and 71 to 75 etc...This way, no one could find out and everyone would be happy with their stupid homeworks. Hehehehe. Mom and Lily Madam would scan through the first few rows of numbers and the last few rows (I wouldn't blame them. It must be sooo boring to look at the same numbers in 30 different notebooks). And I'd make sure I wrote them perfectly. In between, I had my freedom to do as I choose!

This actually worked for sometime. But then, one day, mom got suspicious about how fast I was completing my homework and she started scanning everything. She was furious when she found out my little scheme of cheating! I whined to her that she knew I knew how to write 1 to 100 but to no avail. She notified Lily Madam of this trick the next day. Of course, I was out of sorts and hated Lily Madam for the rest of the day. I was sulking, didn't pay attention to her and I kept asking for bathroom breaks. So she unfairly commented that I was a "moody child". Duh.

Here's where Gunpun came in. His real name is Devidutta Panda and he lived down the street from us in Acharya Vihar. My mom decided she needed someone to monitor me at school. She made Gunpun sit next to me in class. I didn't like him at first. After all, what kid likes an overseer? I kept pinching or scratching him so he'd go away to some other desk. But he just put his metal, school box in between us so I couldn't do anything without making a lot of noise and the teacher noticing.

I've forgotten the details of how we came to be best friends or how he managed to win my heart. But I do remember that we'd both do our homeworks in the free period at school. We made it a game -- whoever finished last would have to be the seeker in Hide-n-seek that evening. So both of us would scramble to finish first. And then, he would arrange my notebooks neatly in my school box, sharpen my pencils, make sure I'd not forgotten anything in my desk and escort me to my mom or dad after school. I just loved him! :)

After a point, it became so that I'd listen only to him. If Lily Madam wanted me to practice cursive writing between the 2 lines of the 4 line notebook, she'd tell him. And if he promised to write along with me, I'd do it. We would play in the evenings on the street with his little brother. So it was all wonderful until he got double promoted and moved to a different school.

To Be Continued...

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On the topic of New Year celebrations...

We threw a huge party for my brother's first birthday. I really cannot include myself in the "we" as in "We threw the party" because I was only 5 years old back then. My parents did most of the work. All I had to do was flaunt my baby brother to everyone and smile for pictures. I have a very misty recollection about it but I do think it was a grand bash. We were in Bhubaneshwar then and all the kids in Acharya Vihar were invited. We even had gifts for all my friends like crayons, pencils, pencil cases, balloons etc...I used to love pencil boxes back then! My mom used to get me one with various Disney characters each time we went to the local superstore.

Of course, people tell me that my first birthday party was an even grander affair because I was the first child and all and Dad had invited all his office colleagues. Fancy that. I hope all of them got me nice presents but since I can't remember any of it, I am willing to forgive them even if they didn't.

Anyways, that is the only party I can recall that our family threw for a birthday. We were never a party family, you know. No cake-cutting or shouts of "Surprise" at midnight or gifts wrapped with shiny silver paper or parents fawning over how wonderful we were or any of those things. In fact, my dad hates to blow out candles on birthdays. He thinks that it should be a day when we light candles, not snuff them out. I agree with him on that point. Birthdays meant that Mom would cook an awesome meal and make nice payasam or some other exotic sweet (This year, when I happened to be in India for my birthday, she made badam cake and pakoras). We would wear our new clothes, go to a nearby temple and perform archanai. And that was that.

The logic extended to New Year also. As kids, I don't think my brother and I were ever awake till midnight on New Year's eve. It was just like any other day. But we'd visit family and friends, watch some special programs on TV, go to a fair or a movie and maybe eat out. But nothing compared to the hoopla we see these days about the "New Year". S & I spent the last moments of 2007 at a friend's place. We played "Sequence" until midnight, broke the bubbly, wished each other with lots of hand pumping et al, ate amazing home-made layered chocolate cake and posed for funny pictures. It was good fun because hanging out with friends is fun. But I wouldn't ascribe any of my joyfulness or levity to the fact that it was New Year's eve. I sometimes don't know what all the fuss is about.

Do people party on New Year's eve because they are celebrating the end of a strenuous year? Or are they celebrating a psychological watershed and decide to grow as a person in the coming year? Or is New Year's just an empty excuse to party? It really does make me wonder because I get these calls on January 1st and everyone asks me, "Soooooooo what did you do yesterday?Please don't tell me you spent it at someone's home? Come on, girl, didn't you hit the clubs?" Personally, I think that it is great to spend New Year's at home or at a friend's place celebrating the things that are important -- companionship, friends and of course, good food..:) I don't think its my cup of tea to go clubbing on New Year's eve with the mad, mad crowds and dance to wild music. I might try it once in a while but certainly not every year.

All that said, Happy New Year to all of you! Hope this year turns out to be a great year for all of you. As far as this blog goes, I think I have to make two solemn promises for this year:

1. I'll try to post more frequently.
2. I'll reply to all comments..:) I know I've been a laggard as far as this goes. I'll promise to be a good girl. There.

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Music mania!

A bunch of music maniacs got together this Thanksgiving holiday at our home. We rented a few instruments from a local music shop, put together a list of film songs and started jamming. Dinesh wanted to sing "recordable" material -- so we sang a few songs for the "record"..:) Arun was our aasthana keyboardist. Sujan & Dinesh were the drummers. RT, me, Nick, Moni and a few others were the vocalists. ANM and Venky were our sound/recording guys. Amidst giggling, musical missteps and flashes of brilliance, we managed to record a couple of songs with probably an hour of practice..:) I consider that quite a feat..

It was fun to have the camaraderie of practicing together;of laughing together at some good and some dead-end jokes; of just just giggling away to glory for the most trivial of things; of just having friends over for the holidays.

Later in the night, after wolfing down pizza, we had a Carnatic music session. It went on and on and on until 2.30 AM in the morning..! :) Finally, exhausted but thoroughly entertained after a long evening, we settled down to just "talk" into the wee hours of the morning..

Here's a song we recorded with our miscues and all..:)

Singers: Subha & RT
Drums: Sujan & Dinesh
Keyboard: Arun

Ahh, it was a memorable thanksgiving! :)

Third Time Lucky..

Twice, I started writing this blog and forgot what I started it for. This is the third time and hopefully, I will remember..:)

We are moving. Again. Between S & I, we've managed 5 moves in one year. This will be our 6th. The thing about frequent moves is that you can never, ever find what you want. You will have forgotten half the things that you own so that when an old boondhi ladle springs out of a cardboard box, you squeal with the delight of ownership: "Ooh..that's so cool!" But the things you do have a memory of will be nowhere to find.

Where's the big tea filter that mum gave me when I came to the US for the first time? I remember it was in the big, grayish-white cardboard box when I moved the first time. Then, it got transferred to the big suitcase with all the vessels? Maybe it is in the topmost shelf above the refrigerator in the kitchen? Hmm..maybe in the cardboard box.

So, you can understand if I am a bit addled in my head right now..:) Anyhoo, the good thing about all this moving is that you get to relive memories of the past. In the name of cleaning, I dig out my college photographs, autograph books, letters that my friends wrote to me while I was in Canada, greeting cards from all previous birthdays etc... It is quite fun and makes you remember how young you once were and what others thought of you then.

So in my current digging spree, I came across this dirty bit of folded, creased paper lodged between some inland postal covers (the blue postal ones in India, you know! Before e-mail, this is how people communicated) and my old autograph book. As I opened it, my frown turned into a smile and then a grin! :)

Flashback. Tortoise rotates..

In my college second year, a guy called GS took a fancy to me. I never did like him much because the only way he showed his liking for me was by passing comments about my eyes and clothes in crowded corridors. But he was exceptionally good at Tamil and I'd heard that he wrote poems. So one day, during a very boring Microprocessor lesson, the professor was droning on and on about interrupts. On a very hot Trichy afternoon with the temperature in the 40s, if you've had heavenly curd rice for lunch, it is very difficult to keep the Goddess of Sleep away especially in the first hour right after lunch.

I was half asleep and doodling on my notes. A sound like suppressed coughing came from my right and I avoided looking in that direction. I did not want to hear any comment from anyone about my eyes. So I kept staring straight ahead when my friend painfully nudged me and thrust a piece of paper in my hands. I turned around and sure enough, I found GS grinning at me annoyingly.

Naan maskable interrupt- aaga irundhaal
Unnai kettu pin kathalithiruppen
Naano non-maskable interrupt
Aagave un utharavinri unnaiye ninaikkinren!

Even though I never did end up liking GS, I liked the the wit and the timeliness in the poem very much. It still brings a smile to my face when I read it.

Three exciting days condensed to a few snaps...

The entire wedding seems like a happy and exciting blur -- shopping, relatives, excitement, rituals, mantras, temple trips, good food & good times! I confess I was too wound up (about just getting the 9-yards saree tied in proper fashion before people started banging on the Bride's door -- "Neramaachu..Ponnai vara sollungoo!" ) to have the "Omigosh-I-am-getting-married-eeeeks" feeling..:) Everything went in fast-forward mode in India and now I am savouring each moment through photos/videos. Long live technology! :)

Indianapolis trip

Spent an awesome three days in Indianapolis. Reached there on Friday night and returned on Monday night (technically Tuesday morning but who cares?). Spending time with family feels great. My Uncle and Aunt had come from India to visit their grandson (my little nephew!). Anyways, chatted with them for a long while about what's hot in Srirangam, what's in and what's out, who's in town ( u know, just local 'vambu' and yadda yadda...) and of course, events in the temple, family stories etc...
My cousin's house is in a great locality. It is full of greenery and simply too picturesque. I loved the place. Went for long walks with my family. Had good old South Indian food. Went to a nearby park. Saw the fireworks on July 4th. It was a so-so display..not too good, not too bad.
Went shopping at a mall. Bought new sandals ( actually went to buy something else but us girls no can resist da temptation...:))

Saw Hum Tum...okay sort of a movie. Expected more but turned out to be a disappointment. I have seen Rani Mukherjee before and have found her okay in her movies..but in this one, she REALLY made me wish she had a better voice..U know the noise that initially comes when ice cubes are put in a grater??!! Well, that's the way she sounded to me..(freaked me out after a while).

The little guy (name's Vishnu, by the way) just stole my heart. He is 7 months old and he took to me very nicely! It feels great to be a part of a little one's life, to be there when he grows up, to be someone to whom he can turn to for care, affection and support. I really miss him.