Young at heart..

We have been influenced by western world and go about talking of our age with each passing year and get the feeling of growing older in mind and body...

I was pleasantly surprised when a very sweet gentleman , my landlady’s father , Dr.K.S in his eighties asked us “how young are you these days?” when noting down the age in my medical prescription. Yes! This (young at heart ) doctor is still practicing medicine with a small clinic setup in his house itself and has no problem in remembering the medicines for different illness and calls his patients in person frequently to get update of their progress and gets the fees only when the patient is cured completely.

In the same lines, recently saw K.Balachander, M.S.Viswanathan in their late 70’s and early 80’s respectively in TV shows, full of energy and they looked quite young as well. We can’t really tell their age. I had actually googled to know their year of birth.

Hats off to them –such people should be our source of inspiration...

I want to watch the recently released “Rettai Suzhi” tamil movie in which K.B and Bharathiraja have acted.

Nivedhitha

My unborn child’s name... She should have come to this world by this week…

She has made me realize that life is always not as expected and accept life as it comes.

It has made me accept that there is always a reason for everything we undergo. This
event has made me a little more stronger emotionally…Though, I do break down to my closed ones at times and wish at the corner of my heart that everything had gone smooth for me, by being patient and accepted all the medicines/painful injections and be on absolute bed rest to have had HER…

It’s a learning for me to take care even more of my health, slow down and be empathetic/compassionate to people around and their problems.. I have started to take up classes with Dwi for strengthening my pelvic floor and core muscles of my body. I had been a little irregular for the past couple of weeks on my exercise schedule. I am sure SHE will help me stay focused on what is important for my life and achieves that through sustainability.

Kerala weekend trip

For a person from a typical tamil iyer family, i was pleasantly surprised to attend a very simple, sweet wedding of a malayalee family friend’s in a small village close to Palakad. A total contrast to a typical iyer family wedding, which is anywhere between 1.5 to 3 days, this wedding was simple for 2 reasons- the people were quite simple and warm and the wedding procedure is hardly for 10 min . The total duration the bridegroom's family would have spent in the marriage hall would be less than 4 hrs! The bridegroom’s family had made their own arrangement for transportation for the wedding! The bride literally walked empty handed(like a saying in tamil- kattina pudhavai’yoda) in her bridal silk saree with jewels holding the bridegroom hands(like cinema). All the essentials she will need during her stay would have been purchased by the bridegroom’s family beforehand.


I have to definitely mention the sweet dishes in the sadya (marriage lunch), as i had gobbled 3 glasses of them during my lunch ;). There were two kinds of Pradhaman- one was with Milk called as "Palada pradhaman " and other one called as "Parippu pradhaman" was based on moong dhal and cocunut milk.

Just a little about kerala climate- I felt Chennai climate was far better ! It was 42C heat and the frequent power failures made it a little difficult to enjoy the mango, jackfruit, tender coconut and banana trees around. It was very calm and quite peaceful. There was a heavy shower with lightning during the night. Which was very much a blessing for us. But, that happiness didn’t last for long –as there was a complete blackout due to the rain!

Some learning in this trip is that you have to wash and eat a raw mango. Immediately on plucking the mango from the tree, it will have milk secretions, which will irritate our skin. I have some scar in my chin as a result of that. :(


We did see few multi-storeyed apartments in palakad. One of the multi-storeyed which we visited on our return to the station to meet another family friend was next to Palakad Town South police station. It seems it has won the second best ASIA’s police station award.

Grown up…….

I suddently felt this way today. I am sure many will be surprised seeing this statement from a 28 year old married me!

Yeah, this might sound silly for many, but I am very proud about the “grown-up” feeling after a lot of activities for/along with my father during an one day trip from Chennai to Mumbai..

The activities include deciding/packing dress for my father to taking care of all travel arrangements right from booking tickets/transportation, to handling cash/baggages, to brief father with the new process/procedures in the airport/flight, to ensure he gets what might suit his tastes, by giving suggestions on the new food choices, which we youngsters are spoiled to(like café choices to chat items to north Indian/Chinese food etc..), to handling valuables, to taking care of the smallest of smallest things for father at the time he requires, to overall ensuring he doesn’t feel the absence of amma!

Though I have to admit that here and there my childlike attitude showed up in this trip, overall I felt grown up as I took complete responsibility over the travel like how parents used to do those old days for us.

Though, the reason for this short Mumbai trip of yesterday(Apr 8,2010) is not at all relevant at this post context, I would like to give a short update on that as well to add some masala to this post ;) (at the cost of my cousin's! hope she doesnt mind that ;)). Had been for attending my cousin’s wedding! Yes- my (first uncle's first daughter) cousin has got married-similar to Two States book storyline. Ok, let me not get into personal details. I shall respect the personal space and privacy of others in my family.If you are inquisitive to know more about this, drop me a note , at my own discretion will give full updates of the nice rituals of a different style wedding which I attended with nice colorful photos ;)

This post transports my memory back down to my childhood days when we were traveling as a happy family of 4 on one of our travels to Mumbai(Bombay then) in a second class bogie of the train. Ok, for those who dont know about the 4 of us I am referring here is-its my sweet parents and my elder sister. Back those days, I used to hate my sister for being very studious and disciplined kid and feel she is deciding my measurement /benchmark levels in all activities- be it at home, relatives , neighbours and the school teachers! They always said "Are you R's sister!!??" . Hope you would have got what those people had tried to hint by those statements. But, you see I never felt or took those words seriously. I shall try to recollect my memories of childhood days with R-making my life miserable with her grades and behavior. ;) - OK, let me not deviate now on this. One more topic added to write about in my blog.

It was a summer vacation trip and those days one doesn’t get disposable water pet bottles(lesser carbon footprint) and hence people used to carry their own water cans. That was the time, we had upgraded from 2ltr water carboy to a water cooler can so as to not drink hot water in spite of getting ice cold water in our carboy(thanks to the scotching heat felt inside a second class compartment).. Actually, that water cooler was gifted by one of my mother's maternal side relative. My sincere thanks to him ! I still cant recollect the long relationship thread of that person to my mother and how I should actually address him in terms of the relationship. But, he is still very close to me and our family and I am still in touch with them considering all our hectic lifestyles and chasing dreams. :)

My parents were busy arranging our luggages in the space below the lower berth and checking our seating arrangment. The official inauguration of the cooler by elders(my parents) had still not happened. I had resisted the temptation on not trying my hands on to the new water cooler right from when it was cleant and filled with ice –cold water at my relative’s residence by my mother or sister(cant remember). The water was meant to last for 1 complete day of our mumbai-chennai trip, if its over before our trip, we will refill in any of the big railway station taps (But, now immediately on entering a hotel,as a health conscious person, I order for a mineral water as if I was born with one) . I was the official porter of the 3-4 ltr water cooler that day. I was instructed by my parents that we can take water from it only after we enter the train.


I was very inquisitive those days that anything new comes I will want to explore that completely (even if exploring results in breaking the object handled). As I follow the instructions of my parents to the word, the moment we entered our bogie in the train, I rushed to use the portable water cooler can to get a glass of water(even though I wasnot at all thirsty).

I opened the tap of the cooler to get a glass of water.Later, water started to overflow out of the small glass and there was a miny size river water flowing in our bogie, making our bogie floor water stagnated due to the slant train floors and our luggages also got wet.

You could have guessed what would have happened after that.

I currently feel like a grown-up daughter. :)