A different August

This blog is a good screenshot of our life over the last ten years. Every August has been marked by sickness of some kind for me. 

For the first time, this August went without me being sick. To that we have to thank god, and that we did yesterday morning..

We have celebrated Ganesh Chathurthi (aka Pillayar Ummachi's birthday in our house) every year and sometimes it has been a full blown out weekend thing with every type of Kozhukkattai (dumplings) and other times a quiet prayer where we just sang "Happy birthday to you" in front of the god and went to bed. 

This year it being a school day, we got up early and finished the pooja and the food ready before it was time to get the kids to the breakfast table. 

The little one took that picture. She is getting better every day at taking pictures.

This Ganesha idol was given to me by my dad 24 years ago. It was actually glued on to a "day sheet calendar". It became the pooja Ganapathy during my college days as this was the only 3D version. It makes me think of my dad everytime I set this idol down on the floor and start the prayer. 

We had a huge health scare in the family in August, but fortunately things turned out okay. We all thanked Pillayar Ummachi for helping us through this tough time.  

We are now into a long weekend with no travel plans. That means, it is time to go work on the other 1000 pictures left from the Jaipur trip!

Understanding WMD's from previous Yugas..

It is always difficult to start explaining why the Muruga idol in the Livermore temple has a "vel" (spear) in his hand or how our favorite elephant headed god Ganesha got that head in the first place when your kids get to watch Dora or Olivia during dinner time instead of grandmas telling them tales which all center around Mount Kailash, Hastinapura and the families of the gods!

Would have been a lot easier to get them started off with Shiva and Parvathi and graduate to Ganesha and Karthikeya and on and on, but one needs study aids!

Now that Jr. is reading comics, half a suitcase on our return trip from India was allocated for books and comics. The books alone weighed close to 25 lbs! A big part of it was this series of bound volumes of Amar Chitra Katha's...

Jr. has already finished Gods and Godesses once and is on the second round trying to figure out who is married to whom. This is very similar to but slightly less complicated than the grandmas watching sun TV serial reruns to figure out how the dude who acted as the girls husband 6 months ago is suddenly playing the role of her brother!

Nevertheless, jr.is now aware of the trinity of gods (brahma, vishnu, shiva) and that shiva's family tree is very straight forward while anything and everything is an avatar of sorts for Vishnu and he has way too many wives. Every now and then when she gets a brainache trying to figure out why Krishna marries 1600 princesses who were all put in prison by Narakasura and how any man could marry 1600 women and be alive when the man in her house cannot handle one woman who bosses over him, she switches to Jataka Tales or Tinkle double digests.

The little one is more of a silent observer and is content with looking at the pictures or having her sister read to her. She is more curious about all the blood and gore depicted in these comics and how killing by the gods is mentioned so casually.

This year we did not celebrate Ganesha Chaturthi because of a death in the family, but we did read all about Ganesha in the ACK's!

Here is to Ganesha!

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Lord Ganesha has yet another birthday!!

Today was Ganesh Chaturthi (Lord Ganesha's birthday) which is celebrated with gusto by Hindus everywhere. In case you are new to this blog and are wondering why an English Lord's birthday should get such prominence, Ganesha is the Elephant headed god revered by the Hindus as the remover of obstacles!

I have written about Ganesh Chaturthi in the past here and here. As you can see, it is always a celebration if it happens to fall on a weekend!! As you can also see, this blog is getting older (3 posts on Ganeshas birthday!!).

I did do the pooja with everyone in the house helping out, especially the little ones.

Jr. started the day by explaining to the little one :

"Today is pulliyar ummachi's birthday. But he doesnt like cake! We make Indian food and some special food. kozhukkattai(dumplings) irukkum. apparom Roti Irukkum (there will be Rotis), Vadai irukkum (there will be vadai's) ... " and she went on to mention a lot of Indian good eats that are not specific to this function! I captured the tail end of this explanation on video. Well, there is always next year for a better secret video.

Here are the photos from this years function, and yes, the eats were really yummy!

This year also saw another change. Jr., who was so far a consumer of Kozhukattais, decided to help out with the manufacturing process.

I saw that and got all mushy!! My girls are growing up, and it won't be long before they join their mom in lowering their estimate of my IQ. I pray to Lord Ganesha to keep my IQ constant in the eyes of my little girls going forward.

The festival season is here, ladies and gentlemen...

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