Doravatharam

What is there to say?

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On Boots and Vadai Maalais

Last week saw us visiting the Livermore temple on our wedding day. The little one, who is now asking approximately 20 questions per conversation, started:

LO : Daddy, what ummaachi(god) is this?
Me : That is Krishna ummachi
LO : Daddy, what ummaachi is this?
Me : This is Ramar, Lakshmanar, Sita and Aanjaneyar Ummachi?
LO : This ummachi look like Boots the Monkey daddy! (and she puffed up her cheeks to make a monkey face)
Me : Yes, he is a monkey god Kuttyma. He does look like a monkey.
LO : (a few seconds later we are standing in a dedicated shrine for the Monkey god) Daddy, this Ummaachi also look a like monkey! (it was the same god, except in the previous shrine the idol was made of white marble and this idol was made of black stone!).
Me : It is the same ummaachi, kannamma!
LO : Why have they put all white stuff on him and put all cheries and nuts on him? and what is all those things?
Me : They have decorated him, to make him look nice. And he has a maalai(garland) of vadai's!
LO : Why didn't they give him a banana?
Me : He likes "vadai maalais"!
LO : Monkeys like only bananas. Not Vadais! Boots favorite food is Bananas, daddy!

I have never associated Hanuman aka aanjaneyar ummaachi exclusively as a Banana head!

Can someone tell me why a monkey god should prefer vadai maalais over bananas? Could come in handy to explain to the Little one.

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Hype, Hype, More Hype

First, a Belated

"Happy Valentines Day"

to all of you!

To a desi family, Valentine's day is as important as Halloween, President's day or MLK Day. The socio-cultural tie is missing, but the same goes for Republic day or Independence day for most of today's generation for countries which got indendence before their parents were born. In short, we celebrate Valentine's day very seriously!!!! Serious enough to make Mr. Valentine proud!

Thanks to this little custom, and its hidden implications of love, we managed to create a baby six years ago and repeated the feat three years ago. Being an engineer who has a tendency to graph things in his head, I extrapolated the line and was agahst! The next data point on the "Baby as a function of year" graph was 2008!

This thought was still resonating in daddy's head when something happened. A virus hitherto unknown to daddy's body, played havoc with his respiratory system earlier this week. He was pretty much bed ridden, just him and his little virus.

Now this post is more about Valentine's day hype and the cards that were purchased, filled out and sent to all of Jr.'s classmates. I am sure at this point that there is a Hallmark Lobby in Congress!

Valentine cards : US :: Diwali Firecrackers : India

Fun for the kids, but not for the parents and definitely not good for the environment!

Today it was Daddy's day out. Mom and the cousin family decided to get daddy out in the open to get some fresh air! Where else but the new combo Toysrus-Babysrus opening day in San Jose!!

Here are some pictures!

They had a huge discount sale, characters dressed up to greet the kids, freebies at the door....

There was a spiderman also, but the line to take a photo with the spiderman was at least 200 kids strong, so we skipped that photo.

Now for the hype part! Dora decided to go on lunch break just as our kids got their photo-op turn. We had to wait for 30 minutes to take a picture with "Dora the explorer" and as people in the head of the line, tell all passers by that the line was for "Dora". Toysrus should have paid us for being their informers!

The funny thing was that Dora was pretty much blind and a helper walked Dora to her designated spot! The kids were all screaming and we had less than 30 seconds to take "one picture per family!" and move on so other kids could have their picture taken!

Unfreaking believable! The queue at Thirupathi came to mind!

What we do for our kids happiness!!! The list keeps going...

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Whats Dora got to do with Baanaas ?

It was a quiet weekend after a long long time. Just too tired to go outside and do anything, and that implies some quality time with the kids in our very own backyard. What started as a cold day ended up as a windy but sunny evening.

A day well spent, taking pictures of the flowers in the backyard, pushing the poor macro on the old Canon S30 to its limit, flying a kite (or attempting to) with Jr. and thinking of old times with a glass of tea in hand.

Jr. got this kite as a goody bag gift at a birthday party. It is not the solid paper kite we are used to as kids in our younger days in India. They make them out of polythene now and the whole kite can be rolled into a little tube. You place a plastic crossbar across and use a quick connect tie in the middle (it is a clip on) and voila, ready to lauch. The fact that the kite has Dora the explorer and her trusted aid, "Boots" the monkey is an added plus. Unfortunately the experience ended when Dora got stuck on top of the apple tree!

The whole experience brought back so many memories. When we were kids, we got to fly kites only when we went to the beach. All this changed when the owners of our rental house decided to do some construction. The guys who did the construction were very friendly and they taught me and my brother all about "Baana kaathadis", a type of short tail paper kite on a bamboo frame which is not that easy to launch but once it is up there, you get a fantastic kite flying experience. The budding scientists that we were, the Mandaveli brothers spent every summer perfecting the art of Baana making not to mention our disastrous experiments of adding glass powder to coat the strings.

We used to run across streets, go across rooftops just to catch the kite that has been cut loose in our neighbourhood! It was only a few years before the government put a stop to kite flying in the city what with people driving two wheelers getting their necks cut on these glass coated kite strings. These days there are fixed days in the year like the "kite festival" where people convene in open grounds to fly kites. Somehow Kite flying is not a popular pastime in the US today. Do not know why.

I felt young again today flying that Dora Kite and that made my day!

The photos of the flowers and the stranded kite ...

The little green stuff is baby grapes! The whole bunch of grapes is smaller than a leaf. We will be tasting them in a few months.. Yum Yum Yummy...