Well, what exactly is a manimal? A man-animal aka "Purushaa-mirugham" in Tamil.
It is a scary looking stead for the gods. Oh, yes, the mind is still in Mylapore..
This one was on a weekday and there were high school examinations in the state government schools smack in the middle of the festival and the crowd was not as big or as enthusiastic. The local government is atheist and these days, the poor kids from Mylapore have to study while all the bands are playing outside. Now that, is tough!)
Just like the attendence on the last day of a cricket test match that was a definite draw, this crowd was comprised only of the real ardent devotees who were going for the record books to say "I attended every day!".
Still it was fun to watch as they did the rounds faster. The photo sampler follows..
Purushaa-mirugam (the manimal)
Singham (Lion)
Puli (Tiger)
All of them in series..
My theory? The whole idea of having a utsavam is to entertain kids and get them to like the temple and associated concepts at an early age.
This was the "catch them young" marketing campaign?
KaaNa kaN kOdi vendum, adhigara nandhi sevai thanai..
10 million eyes to view the adhigara Nandhi (commanding bull)
The way they carry Lord Kapalishwarar on the silver bull, the way they sway it to the rythmic drum beats, it is a sight to watch.
It has been 17 years since I got to see this! What with coming to the USA and the India trips always aligning to summer or winter, you never get to go there during Navrathri time (september) or Utsavam time (April). This trip was indeed a godsend.
My tired father and grandparents thanked me so many times for bringing the utsavam to them with the videos and photos.
Here are some photo highlights as well.
There are many of you out there in the same boat. Hope you enjoyed the video and photos.
One of the local parks here (Vasona park in Los Gatos) has a Fantasy of Lights event where they put nice Christmas light displays and you drive through them at <5 miles per hour with the matching music to go on a local radio station.
The light displays were amazing! The kids were initially entertained, but they were not happy with the open passenger side window. While it accomodated the photo/videographer, it made the van too cold for their liking. This was followed by questions like
"how much longer do we have to drive like this?" "are we going to stay here forever?"
etc. etc..
It is a good idea to teach your kids a few patience lessons before taking them on this drive...
Or should we say "belated" happy 4th, since it is already past midnight!
This year, the 4th of July was celebrated at "Roaring Camp" which included a nice train ride through redwood forests.
This was followed by some activities for kids (you can see Jr. and the little one trying to do some Hula Hoops in the video.. note the little one trying a hoop with a diameter larger than her height).
Then daddy took the kids to watch Fireworks with K. while the ladies went to watch the latest Hindi Movie with ARR songs, which for some reason is sold out, playing in the local english movie theaters as well!
All said and done, a fine day.. but.. but.. but..
Daddy made the mistake of formating his CF card just before the fireworks, forgeting the fact that he never downloaded the roaring camp photos from the camera! All may not be lost as there are apparently some software out there that can retreive the formated photos, provided we buy a card reader that can show up as an external drive on the laptop!
We have our fingers crossed..
In other news, Bush and Bush Sr. of the house have mandated that daddy edit them out of the video for this blog post!
That was not easy.
1. The guide told us so many interesting things on the train and I wanted to have all that in the video. 2. The ladies planted themselves right between me, the kids and the driver and made it next to impossible to get them out of the frame! 3. I could have been that dude from the next coach taking a video of the whole thing with GWB and GWBS who is possibly posting it on youtube right now with them in the frame!
It is high time the democrats in this house came to power!
Seriously, learnt so many new things today..
a. Switchbacks and how they work b. redwood tree seeds lay dormant for upto nine hundred years. c. The seeds germinate only after a forest fire. A forest fire is almost a must to get the next generation of seeds to sprout. Had no idea! For some strange reason this got memories of Gavaskar and Tendulkar .. on a freaking narrow gage train up a mountain! d. I still love cricket, somewhere in the back of my head! e. Most of the trees we saw today were 300+ feet tall and were >1000 years old! f. Butterflys love a steam bath or at least excess moisture. From out of nowhere a bunch of butterflies came to enjoy the steam puffs from the engine.
and much much more, like how to switch from standard to night vision in my camcorder, how to possibly retrieve images from a formatted CF card, etc. etc.
A day well spent. Here is the video....
Next years July 4th will be interesting.
A different president! A different US of A! A different world? A more powerful daddy?
When I was a small boy, every year it would be a festival or a function, be it a marriage, baby shower, birth announcement, or some such thing, where the old ladies would gather in the kitchen and make some sweets and savories that make your mouth water, just thinking about it!
A couple of bricks would be placed, clay plastered around and before you knew it, the stove was ready! They would have charcoal and "varaati's" (dried flats made of cowdung and straw) as the fuel. The extra large vessels reserved for the special occasions would be gathered from the "paran" (attic) and the ladies would go about the preparation process.
The chilies were sundried, the rice soaked and dried off on large towels, the trips to the mill to powder chillis, rice, lentils and even sugar(yeah, these were days before electric dry and wet grinders were there in every household!), the impatient waiting to see the goodies take shape!
Usually kids were not allowed into the kitchen area during these times. My grandmother always made an exception for me, simply because I would watch and ask her a million questions! Somehow between my grandmother and my grand aunt, who was referred to by every kid in every generation as "Ambulu Mami" , they would actually take time and explain things to me, probably because they were bored, or amused at my curiosity. Incidentally, Ambulu mami, was my grandma's aunt, but just a few years older than my grandma, so they were more like sisters!
They would take turns stirring the jaggery paste to make "vella paagu" aka caramel and then put peanuts, cashewnuts or split roast peas (pottu kadalai) and pour it into a large tray which had clarified butter spread on the surface.
At this point, the two ladies who had spent almost an hour stirring the syrup with the giant ladles with bored looks, would act like they just got an overdose of adrenaline. There would be a frenzy of activity, where they tested the temperature of the rapidly cooling mix with their fingers. In a motion that reminds you of gymnasts powdering their hands before going on the rings in the Olympics, the two of them would powder their hands with a mix of rice flour and powdered sugar and rip out small globs of this hot mix and roll it into little balls.
They had a small time window before the whole thing would solidify into a hard mass. "Reheating the mix would deteriorate the taste!", they would tell me. Sometimes they would put the plate (taambaalam) over a vessel with hot water to keep it from solidifying so fast. I am sure there is a lot of science behind the various phases of sugar syrup and the temperature vs. hardness response to rapidly cooling sugars, but this was definitely more art than science!
There is something to be said about making stuff and eating it, as opposed to just buying it and eating it. My grandmother is too old. My mom is going through surgery after surgery. Making all this stuff at home is definitely lost with the new generation, be it with San, my sister or Sister-in-law. They are all good cooks, but they would not venture past the usual rasam and sambar, to make laddus, or Jaangiris or even the therati paal.
"That is too labor intensive. Why spend all that time when I can go to Grand Sweets or Sri Krishna sweets and just buy it?" would be the question. In all fairness to the fair ones, they just don't have the motivation! They can all make the pongals, payasams and vadai's for the special occasion, but that is where it stops. My mother-in-law is still old school and she can do non-standard stuff and sometimes we talk about somehow capturing these things for posterity! She is probably the last of the dinosaurs, if you exclude me from the list.
Call me old school, but eating is just part of it. I would always long for the semisolid "Mysore pak" that is still bubbling on the stove than eat the cold solid pieces a day later. Same goes for Kaju Kathlis or Badam Halwa. Taking in the smell, the texture of what is cooking is a whole different deal. Somehow I feel Jr. and the little one are missing out on this.
It has been raining heavily here for the last two days. Wanted to get back in the kitchen and make something out of the normal. So went about making pottukadalai urundai's. Brought back lot of memories! San was definitely amused. She even videotaped the stuff. However, Jr. was just more interested in the eating than in the making. Who knows, even having a kitchen stove might become an alien concept two decades from now and the microwave will replace the stove!
Maybe there is no point to passing on these tricks to the next generation?
Here are the finished "yummies"...
I have been thinking a lot of my Sachi Patti (Saraswathi!) and Ambulu mami since yesterday. Do not know why. Went through my old photos and actually dug out this one from the early nineties. The one on the left is Ambulu mami and the one on the right is my grandma.
Like I told San, you can learn to do anything as long as you have great teachers! I was gifted with two great teachers when it comes to making caramel and kadalai urundais!
Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 12:37AM 
