To have or not to have Pongal ?

Pongal is a festival that gives us a chance to thank the Sun for shining down on us and giving us food to eat!

2006 was great!

2007 Pongal was spent in Bombay with the in-laws (We had just reached, and were starting to go out)!

2008 brings us some questions. My aunt passed away a few weeks ago in India. My dad, who is the only sibling left of what was a dozen kids, could not even go to the funeral as he is tending to my recently operated mom in a city that is alien to him! I know that he shed a silent tear or two and moved on because of his current circumstance. That said, my mum told me over the phone that this year, there is no Pongal for us!

I do not know if this is a custom restricted to Indians? south Indians? Hindus? Brahmins? a sub set of Brahmins? etc. etc.

It is possible to understand the sense in the one year mourning(yes, it is a no festival celebrations rule, till the anniversary of the death), to remember the person who passed on. It might make that person's soul happy, when they are looking down and they see their family is toning it down when the rest of the townspeople are painting the town red, but no one can actually verify this.

The thing that gets me is that this is very hard on the kids. Many a year, as a kid, when my parents would declare no Deepavali due to the death of some older relative we have hardly met, we would actually curse that relative! If kids are closer to god and we were actually cursing the dead relative, the parents were doing more harm than good by not celebrating! They could have cut down the prayer and given the kids the sweets and fire crackers.

However, I do have to add that when two of my uncles (dad's brothers) passed away within a three day period, I really did not feel like celebrating anything for a long long time... I was also not a kid anymore! That was 1993 and those two back to back events left my dad and his elder sister the only two left out of a 12 pack!

On the one hand, I am torn by what my dad is going through. None of his generation is left. He might be feeling lonely for all I know. I do feel that my aunt (who I knew) could be remembered by a toned down pongal!

Not fair to Jr. and the Little One though. They do not know my seventy year old aunt. Jr. spent 10 minutes with her three years ago, and the litte one has never seen my aunt!.

I have decided that there will be no prayer, but there WILL be Pongal for the kids to eat. Planning to make the Pongal myself, with a silent prayer for my aunts soul to rest in peace.

In the event I do not make the Pongal, we know at least two local Indian restaurants that will have free Pongal! for all who eat there...

Here is my grandmother's recipe, in case you are interested in trying...

1. Take 3/4 cup rice+ 1/4 cup moong dal + a few spoons of channa dal, roast in pan in low heat to make them dry. Then, put in pressure cooker, add two cups water, one cup milk, cook partially (let your cooker whistle once if it normally whistles thrice) and set aside.

2. roast cashewnuts, raisins, cardamom seeds in ghee (clarified butter) and set aside

3. soak some saffron in a few spoons of water and set aside

4. In a big vessel, add 1 cup jaggery (or 1 cup of molasses liquid, if you are in a place like Troy, New York and Jaggery is not available! works the same) and 1 1/2 cups of water. Stir till the consistancy of the liquid is such that when you take it on a ladle and drop the liquid back into the vessel, the liquid does not break or spatter. Remember the ad's you see on TV where the cough syrup smoothly coats the inside of your throat? That consistant!

5. At this point, add the contents from the rice cooker to the sugar syrup and start stirring. Add some more Ghee and the saffron water and keep stirring. When the ghee starts to segregate, add the roasted Cashews etc.

6. Finally, sprinkle some pachai kalpooram into the pot (literal translation is green camphor. don't know where this is available in the USA. we have a small box, which I got from India in 1998!) and give it a final whirl.

You are now ready to taste something that is downright Divine!

To all those out there celebrating, Happy Pongal!

"Iniya pongal nal-vazhthukkal!"

May your year be as sweet as the Pongal you make!

A footnote: it is spelled pachai and not pachchai!! Here is the Wiki Link to the edible camphor! Got to go find out if this tree is available in the US! and plant one in the backyard right away...
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Flying with kids..

In a recent post on kids travelling under constraints, a couple of links were pointed out to me by s.b. These links were good, really good!

Here is how we manage the kids during our flights. We do not let them float in the aisle. We did have two other kids walking up and down on their own constantly, during our last flight. One of the kids actually stopped by for almost 20 minutes near our seat and I was holding his hand so that he wont fall down. Eventually his mom came and took him back to the seat! We do let the little one out of her seat, but she is confined to our row, and sometimes I carry her up and down the plane.

We do not let them open the door hatch! Jr. is entertained extremely well by San and her mom, by teaching all kinds of grandma games on the flight!

This one is Dosai amma Dosai! (Dosa is a south Indian Crepe and amma is mommy).

It goes

Dosai amma dosai
arisi maavum ulutha maavum kalandhu potta dosai
ammavukku 4
appavukku 3
baby-kku 2
Jr. ukku 1
suda suda suttu
neiyla thottu
vayaru romba saapidalam!

(translation)

Dosa mommy Dosa
crepe made by mixing rice flour and lentil flour
mommy gets 4
daddy gets 3
baby gets 2
I get 1
hot hot and fresh
clarified butter dipped
lets eat till our stomach is full!

This goes on for 15 minutes before they switch to ice-cream soda!! Or I play "find that word on this page" with the in-flight magazine.

Point is, our kids are equally cranky, but we deal with a lot less negativity.

I have been thinking of starting a kid friendly airlines!!

1. I will have wide aisles for kids to run around
2. the walls will be painted with Disney , Sesame street, Barney, Dora characters.
3. I will hire daycare teacher turned air-hostesses or air-hostesses turned daycare teachers only!
4. Will not have any carbonated or sugary drinks on the flight that would make the kids hyper.
5. There will be little tables in the middle of the plane and little kid chairs where they can draw, paint etc., once the seat belt sign is removed!
6. There will be music and videos for the kids to be distracted.
7. There will be little beds for them to sleep comfortably instead of trying to lie down horizontally between daddy and mommy with those annoying arm rests pulled up halfway!
8. All adults who board will be asked a few extra questions.
a. do you like kids ?
b. did you let your kids put things in your bag without your knowledge ?
c. do you think kids should be allowed to travel on planes ?
a "NO" answer for any question will promptly trigger a cavity search by airport security and they will not be allowed to board the plane.
9. Instead of the pathetic paper barf bags, there will be a button next to the seat marked "V" which automatically drops a bucket from the top compartment. That way you can save yourself an inflight shirt change!
10. there will be a diaper change area and some special diaper trash containers. Have you ever tried pushing a full diaper into the small rectangle which says "trash" on local flights?

I have a lot more ideas for this plan, but don't want to get carried away! Damn, I already thought way too much about this. Now all I need is some nice billionaire to loan me some money to start Babiaire / Littlewings or Kidsfly Airlines!

Hope this inspires some other parents to control their kids during flights!

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In the drivers seat ?

Parent's magazine had an article on the previous issue about the top three mistakes driving mother's make which cause serious accidents or fatalities. These should have been generalized to any person who drives around with kids in the vehicle, because men who drive the "mommy van's" as equally guilty of the same mistakes!

They were :

a. trying to calm down fighting kids by looking back or sending one hand back to touch the kid in the backseat
b. feeding the kid or yourself while driving
c. talking on the cell phone while driving.

Of course we could always add the special case of :

d. trying to operate a DVD player that is behind you with one hand because the kids want you to go back to the previous song!

But these are the standard offenses. This post is not about them. This is about something even more fundamental with kids in a van. The seat belt!

Apparently it is safe for kids only if they are in their car seats or booster seats and nicely buckled up. One can understand this logic, especially with all those videos you see with kid sized crash test dummies flying out of windshields during accidents when not buckled up!

Unfortunately, real kids are not as co-operative as crash test dummies. The day my kids look as calm and serene in their seats, accident imminent or otherwise, I would gladly keep my mouth shut!

In our case, putting the seat belts on is supposed to be safe for the kids, but it is highly unsafe for the driver! Jr. has learnt to unbuckle her seat belt on her own and baby has a tolerance limit of about 5 minutes in her car seat. By the time we reach the end of the street she is screaming her head off trying to get out of the belt. That said, it is impossible to focus on the road and drive, with one kid floating around the van like a free electon in a metal lattice and another one setting new records for the maximum decibel level ever achieved in a confined space of 150 cubic feet or less!

Are there any alternatives to seat belts for kids ? (I am talking legally allowed alternatives here! I already know that they will be quiet without the belts). If anyone knows of any, please do let me know.

In the meantime, I have an idea. How about I make an inflatable cushion that takes the shape of the back part of the van. The kid sits inside this box and it can be padded so well that even if the kid bounces off the walls of this enclosure, they will be safe! I am modeling this based on the space shuttle here!! Would that have a chance of making it through the transport authorities ?

Please note that I said "kid" and not "kids". The only thing more dangerous than a free floating kid in a van is, another kid! There has to be separate enclosures for each kid. If horses, cattle and wild animals can be transported on highways without restraint, why can't I transport two wilder, crazier, out of control creatures with the same rules?

That brings me to the topic of "If my wife or mother-in-law release a kid from the seat, because the kids is making a racket (this in spite of my pleas to keep them in the seat), then who gets the ticket if we are stopped by the cop ? Me, or the wife ? or mother-in-law ? ". If anyone knows the answer to that one, please let me know as well.

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