When in Adayar, do as the Adayarians do..

The day Jr. and the little one landed in Chennai, their usual fascination with the dhoti wearing Madras thatha (grandpa) started!

For some reason, Bombay thatha does not wear a dhoti that often.

As for me, I stopped wearing it in the house and switched to shorts or track pants from the time we had Jr.

The reason was simple. When you throw a dhoti in the washing machine, it is bound to get crumpled and tangle with every other piece of clothing you put in that load. That means lot of time ironing the dhoti and all the other clothes. It got worse when my MIL / mom lived with us and the saris, dhoti's would all get tangled up and even tear clothes when we tried to pull them out of the washer. To minimize the damage I switched.

The kids saw thatha and promptly took the next piece of cloth they could find and started wandering around the house in their "veshti" or "dhoti"..

The little one was reluctant to even wear a vest borrowed from her cousins wardrobe. She also insisted on folding the dhoti and tying it in half "just like thatha"!

While Jr. was content with wandering around with a turkish towel folded in half, the little one insisted on being "just like thatha", and that meant going without a shirt! Had a tough time explaining why only boys go without a shirt, but it fell on deaf ears.

Even after grandma's advice and daddy's attempted threats/ bribes, she wandered around the house "just like thatha" for two days till she got bored of it.

My dad was so happy and amused that his grand kids wanted to be just like him, inspite of this being a bad idea.

The things kids do....

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Not sure about tonsure?

The little one bravely did the tonsuring ceremony. She was a real champ....

A day after losing her hair she was going through doubts. Kept trying to put flowers, rubberbands on her hair. It would break our heart to see her do this..

Then my mom put the little one on her lap and explained how giving your hair to god will only get you a lot more hair a lot faster as he will bless you etc. etc. and she was back to her beaming self.

Life is an illusion, but having hair is a big part of that illusion!

We now know exactly the way daddy Narayanan is going to bald over the next two years. Asked my mom why Ummachhi (god) did not bless me with a lot more hair a lot faster...

Apparently the illusion works only for kids under the age of five!

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Dream Job

Many a time when the daily routine got too stressful, San and me have had conversations that run something like this:

Me : I am tired. My health is going. Enough with this house/school district/money business. My parents gave me a good education. We can try to do that without this expensive school district thing or anywhere in the world. Let's retire. Or at least let me retire..

San : Can you come back to the real world please?

Me : Why can't I just start a drive through shop which sells only four things.. Maggi noodles, samosas, Chai and filter coffee? We can make a living doing that? no?

San : Where?

Me : anywhere on I-5. you will have a queue a mile long.. trust me!

San : usually shakes her head and walks off or says something to the effect of "by tomorrow your head will cool down and you will be back to work"

Recently we found a dude who is doing my dream job..

On a route between Rohtang pass and Manali, there is a guy who under a simple yellow tarp canopy makes simple omelet sandwiches and Maggi Noodles!

Hot noodles when it is really cold outside! Unfortunately he makes no Chai/Coffee to go with this. Still it is a pretty good deal for 30 rupees a plate.

Mochu's Cafe on the gate behind IT-BHU in Varanasi, used to be a favorite Saturday night hangout for us because our regular mess halls would be closed Saturday. Mochu would make us a plate of Maggi noodles for 5 rupees between 8-10 PM only. A big aluminum vessel where maggi was constantly added and removed.

Some of us south Indians would call it Mochus "Akshaya patram" where he kept coming up with noodles for a large crowd. He also sold us cheese sandwiches (2 nicely cut triangles with Amul cheese) for 2 rupees and Chai for 1 rupee. In winter when you see your breath condense in front of you, the hot Maggi would taste divine.. just divine.

In close to 20 years the Maggi plate price has gone up 6 fold, but the good news?

The taste has stayed the same!

ps. In the audio you can hear my FIL ask me :

Is it clean?

I say "the seat is clean".

He then tells me "not the seat.. the plates and spoons" and I say "you can't expect much here. The noodles is boiling. the hot noodles will kind of take care of the plate.."

funny how I switch cleanliness standards when we travel in India.

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