Patience Little one

Grandma is back. Tamizh comes back with Grandma because she insists on talking with the kids in Tamizh. They usually reply to her in Tamizh.

The five month grandma absence has turned the Little one to almost 100% English.

A conversation between Grandma and the Little One earlier today:

LO : This is my bow bow doggie. (the toy pooping doggie)
GM : Tamizhla sollu! (say it in Tamizh)Say "idhu ennoda poo poo doggie"
LO : This is my poo poo doggie.
GM : say it "in Tamizh"!
LO : Gives her one frustated look and goes "This is my poo poo doggie in Tamizh!"

We pretty much saw Grandma's middle stick uproot. Clean bold!

The score : Grandma out for a duck and Little one has figures of 0.1-0-0-1

Let us see how Grandma does in her second innings!

.

Trade Secret

Ask google questions like

How to build a missile defense system

How do you do open heart surgery

or even

How to understand women and there will be answers.

Ask it how to make Sohan Papdi (try son papdi, soan papdi, etc.) and you get only one answer..

The same freaking answer that is a copy paste job across a dozen or so food websites. (I thought this was some freak of mother internet!). There is one more soul out there that is equally surprised by it ..

No, you dont have to waste your time. I will also cut and paste it here for you!

=====
Patisa (Soan Papdi)
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup gramflour
1 1/4 cup plain flour (maida)
250 gms. ghee
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup water
2 tbsp. milk
1/2 tsp. cardamom seeds crushed coarsely
2 tsp. charmagaz (combination of 4 types of seeds) refer glossary
4" squares cut from a thin polythene sheet

Method:
Sift both flours together.
Heat ghee in a heavy saucepan.
Add flour mixture and roast on low till light golden.
Keep aside to cool a little, stirring occasionally.
Prepare syrup simultaneously.
Make syrup out of sugar, water and milk as shown in introduction.
Bring syrup to 2 1/2 thread consistency.
Pour at once into the flour mixture.
Beat well with a large fork till the mixture forms threadlike flakes.
Pour onto a greased surface or thali and roll to 1" thickness lightly.
Sprinkle the charmagaz seeds and elaichi and gently press down with palm.
Cool, cut into 1" squares, wrap individually into square pieces of thin plastic sheet.
Store in airtight container.
==========

There, armed with that recipe, you can make it! Right? Wrong.

Somehow this does not give you the same son Papdi that the street vendor sold us when we were kids. He would ring his bell and show up with this push cart with a glass jar (the lid would be wrapped in cloth to get the jar a tight seal). For 25 paisa (what is quarter of a rupee = a quarter of 2.5 cents) he would take a square piece of newsprint, make a cone out of it and put enough of the cottony white "son papdi" into the cone and give you.

Hmmmmmmmmm.. sooooo yummy! Recently thanks to Balaji we found a place in Chennai where they sell the cottony stuff compressed into little cubes and a box of this with around 40 cubes sells for a dollar. By todays standards that is a decent price and it has the same taste and manages to bring back some amazing memories!

Here is the thing though. How do you make the stuff? This is not available in any Indian store in the bay area. We only get the Barfi's!

If you know, please give me a recipe. something with enough details about the beating process to make the thin needles!

I would realllllllllly appreciate it and you know I will try it and there will be a videoblog of "the making of Son Papdi"

.

Deify

This is actually a very heartfelt post in the Tamizh blog, but wanted to share this with regular readers in this space as well.

It won't make sense unless we go through some glossary of terms. So ....

Tamizhnadu (Tamilnadu) : The south eastern state in India where the official language is Tamizh (Tamil) .The language is at least 5000 years old!

Kazhagam : Literally means "organization" or "collective" and is a short reference to Dravida Kazhagam (DK) and to the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)

Dravidar (not to be confused with the cricket player Rahul Dravid) : The original people whose roots are traced to the local indiginous population that had its origins in present day Sri Lanka and Tamizhnadu - history will tell you that these people spoke Tamizh in a purer form and were dark skinned and eventually mixed with the Northern people (who were not necessarily invaders) but the people who migrated down from the Indus valley. Most of this history was concocted by the British who used the divide and rule policy to separate the North Indians and South Indians so they could rule India. They succeeded in their divisive policy because long after the Brits have left, the Aryan-Dravidian concept is still a sore spot for Indians.

Periyar : The man who is also referred to as "Thandhai" (Father) Periyar or EVR was the brains behind the origins of the DK. The man was a social reformer and tried to knock some sense into the common downtrodden folk in the south to come forward against discrimination by Brahmins. He also became an atheist and todays politics and politicians are all his legacy!

M. Karunanidhi : The present chief minister of Tamizhnadu and the head of the DMK party, who also goes by the name "Kalaignar" (artist), Periyars political grandson (It was Periyar->Annadurai-> Karunanidhi). A fantastic orator, poet, writer and thinker, he used his experience as a story/screenplay/dialogue writer for movies to good use. The man is single handedly responsible for 80% of punch dialogues over a 15 year golden period of Tamizh cinema.

Kalaignar is also a staunch atheist and takes a shot at God, Brahmin bashing at every public speaking opportunity he gets. In his lingo God does not exist. When I was an adolescent, somehow this used to appeal to me. Believe in mankind, not god. Somehow that struck a cord. Service to humans is service to god, god lives in us etc. etc. So the guy striking out against god or striking out god was in my opinion a means to an end.

Later of course when I found that he struck out only against Hindu gods and he did not necessarily go against all the evils in a caste based society and the many other things where he showed that he was just another politician without a consistant standard, the charm was lost on me.

Having gone through all that explaining, here is the funny part. Recently there was a music album release function for the upcoming Tamizh movie "Dasavadharam". On stage was Kalignar. He was introduced as "Tamizh thirai ulagai kaakkum kadavul!" or in other words "the god, the protector of Tamizh cinema!"

That was really ironic.

What happens when an atheist turns into God?

Atheist alone knows!

.