Great grandma visits and binge eating..

On our 5 day India trip, we managed to visit all great grandparents, thanks to some efficient auto rickshaws..

my maternal grandma is 90+ and her mind is very active. She is unable ot walk and she no longer asks me "when will my time come". she has been asking me that since my grandpa passed away almost 10 years ago. She has come to realize that no one knows.. and is now reading books to pass her time. She blessed us with all her heart!

San's grandparents are also pushing 90 and they are doing okay given their age. Walkers, hearing aids, etc. A slow methodical life and an approach of taking it one day at a time. Some lessons for San and me there.. Grandpa told me that till a few years ago he was doing yoga regularly including Nauli but now he is not able to. He is still active given his age and is a role model for all of us.

The best part was that they were the couple honored during my fathers sadhabhishgam as part of the "dhambati pooja" and given I was doing the pooja in proxy for my dad who could not bend down, it was a great honor! Will write a separate post on the function and what we did as part of it.. 

Then there was the eating in three places..

We went to watch Toy Story movie at the mall in 3D.. it has been some time since I saw anything in 3D given the massive headaches I get for days after watching any 3D movie.. but the kids wanted to go together somewhere and an Air conditioned theater was a good idea! After the movie the kids decided based on reviews that the best place that would accomodate everyones menu requests was Haven Sampoorna right near Phoenix mall in Velachery. It was an interesting place. I got my butter naan and side dishes and the kids who wanted pasta, got their pasta.. food was good. service was good. ambience was funny.. 

 Here is PIchchai Sundar with Sundar PIchchai... (kid you not, this was the photo right behind my chair)

you have no idea how many jokes I have to put up with ever since this guy became Google CEO. We are both the same age, went to similar schools and the same IIT coaching class in Chennai, think he also studied metallurgy, went to work for semi conductor companies ... I stayed in Semi and am traveling back and forth to Asia.. he moved to software and management..and probably has a lot of things going for him that I simply don't have or want.. but the jokes, they keep on coming.. So it was only fitting that I ended up below that photo! 

The sceond place we ate was Amethyst.. again nice ambience, relatively quiet and excellent food.. we went for evening coffee/ tea with San's cousin and brother's family who also happened to be visiting and ended up eating a lot of stuff..

The last place we went to was in Matsya in Adayar.. on a previous trip we had gone to another Matsya branch.. this was closer to where we stayed. It was also a nice place (we didnt take pictures). It was raining in Chennai that evening and we were all not our best when we got there. The funny thing with Ola/ Auto etc. is that they drop you off at the location but on the opposite side of the street and there is no way to cross over for a good kilometer either way! So we walked around a flyover for 25 minutes to get to the place. The dinner was great though. They had an amazing variety of dosas and cricket matches playing on 4 different TV's.. so I got to watch cricket and eat dosas.. 

That was pretty much all the activities we did outside of the function. 

Still waiting for photos from the function itself...

Missing San's maternal grandma who passed away recently as I write this post. We would always make a visit to see her as well. She passed away three months ago. 

Great grandparents are precious.. the way things are going, not a lot of kids get to see their great grandparents! 

Best of both worlds.. but...

Recently I felt like eating Rava dosai after coming home late at night after a yoga class.. given time constraint, decided to make upma and smear the upma around the Chatti to get a dense rava dosai roast on the vessel..

that came out pretty good.

Today I did a double at BYSJ. My MIL who is visiting joined me for the first class. When she came out, she asked me "do you want me to make you some upma or something ? I will be able to make it for you by the time you come home!"

I told her "no, it is okay.. I feel like eating Maggi noodles after class".. Nothing beats some carbs and spices after back to back yoga class for me!

Somehow in the middle of the second class, I started remembering all types of Upmas.. every upma I had ever remembered over the years etc.. it was like my brain had issued a grep command inside the memory for "upma" and presented the massive result base scroll through my wide open eyes and nose.. 

Came home and saw that MIL had kept a small cup (to tell me she would also like some Maggi)! Told her that she should not have reminded me of upma between two yoga classes.. so Plan change! Upma for dinner.

Instead of making the usual Rava Upma, decided to do this dosa-upma thing again and show her.. 

there are two issues with this.

1. I put jeera (cumin) in the upma to make the dosa come out good.

2. it does not scale very well.. Remember surface area and volume do not scale the same.. so the upma per MIL became the consistancy of Karudaththu maavu.. Felt bad.. we still ate the upma.. It was okay for my standard but did not get any thumbs up from her..

the roast on the other hand was really really good!

Lifting the roast from the chatti was... priceless! 

I have to improve on scaling the proportions and use less or no Jeeragam on the next try...

How to eat.. பேகல் சாப்பிடுவது எப்படி

My wife would call me current state of mind and body in one single word.

"Vetti"

aka

"unused"

Have been sleeping for the most part of the day and night and sucking up oxygen over the weekend.. the exceptions being the trips to Pep Boys and then to Toyota service..

Woke up to an empty house.. and in the process of waking myself a little more, decided to share with you how I eat a bagel, the authentic Madrasi way.. with Ghee and Dosai Milagaipodi (aka gun powder).  

Usually make cuts on the bottom side of the bagel to make grooves like they do for "pal manga" on the beach.. so the ghee and milagaipodi will be in the grooves.. but that required a videographer.. doing that one handed would have been risky.  When already going through a bad time, why invite more trouble?!

Definitely feeling better after all that resting.