Pongal was celebrated in our house three weeks ago! It just so happens that I still did not have a laptop and before we could say "pongaloo pongal" , Jr. was back to college.
So was her laptop which I was temporarily borrowing for blog posts. I am tepidly happy to say that my new Macbook Pro has arrived. Tepidly happy because it took more than a month to show up instead of the two weeks (Chip delays apparently.. which is a good thing for people in the Semiconductor business like me as prices are going up!) and the new Apple M1 chip has a lot of "compatibility issues" with things like Photoshop..
Had to go shop for a new Photoshop. The old DVD based installs don't work anymore with new Operating system, especially with the M1. All is well that ends well. So after spending some more time and a little money, we now have a functioning laptop that can finally recognize my external hard drives, do Photoshop and here we are.. posting about Pongal, three weeks later..
I also happened to have a double bone graft dental surgery which is still a pain in the face and have not recovered from it fully. Now that it is behind me, can blog in a happier note..
Where were we? Ah, pongal..
We made some delicious pongal, did a prayer and got some sun. . .
of course there were vadais to go with the Pongal..
Then we tried a family portait.. it was a working day rush job.. but I was expected to have some "facial swelling" for a week.. so this was in anticiapation of that..
surprisingly there was no significant swelling post surgery. So we did get to take a decent family portrait just before Jr. was sent off.. they did co-operate this one for the photo on pity grounds.. so the dental surgery had one benefit at least..
There was no family and friends gathering to celebrate. Even last January, we had group gatherings to celebrate Pongal, before COVID did its thing. Hopefully by next Pongal things will be better.
Hope everyone had a good Pongal celebration. We live in surreal times.. we prayed for a better year!
We celebrated Pongal on a weekday this year.. so it was the San and myself team effort at 5AM to make pongal and vadai and do a quick pooja before taking off to work. The kids were not even up in time to participate.
Had to make a rush for the sugarcane in the local Indian store.. stiff competition from customers for the 10 or so canes that were there!
Managed to see the sun at work during a lunch walk on Pongal, which in itself is becoming a hit or miss the last few years.
My office mates know from the "chandhana pottu" on my forehead that there must have been some function/ festival going on. When I describe Pongal to them they go "oh, so it is your version of thanksgiving!"
There was no chance to recreate our Pongal family picture during the week. It was too cold outside and given our backyard has been remodelled, there was no chance to get that same shot anyways.. so the closest I got to a collage was this..
The kids can no longer stand in front of us! It was also not easy to be in a dhoti today, given the cold weather.
In four years, Jr. will be a senior in college and the little one a freshman. It is my sincere wish that they show up for Pongal to take one more picture. Daddy will be waiting with pongal in one hand and camera in the other..
one can always hope.. put senti on the blog.. etc. but these kids have a mind of their own.
To everyone who celebrates Pongal, may this year be a good one for you!
The last month has been busy.. the kids are both in high school, the travel, school calendars are blocked to a point of exhaustion.. Then comes Navarathri festival.
This year was a mixed bag. Could visit folks only on three days.. The rest of the days were spent in pick up and drop off duties or in meetings. Also the kids did not dress up even once and visit any Golu. That was a new low.
There were games to be played, bands to be marched in, or the self imposed ban on attending functions while on periods. In any case, someone had to step up and dress up with San.. especially after day one when I told everyone I was ready to go in my T-shirt and shorts...
There was a lot of shaming and I decided to match her Sari.. there were a lot of compliments from friends, partly because they were all so used to seeing me in the same T-shirt that anything else was a step up.
Then I decided to do it the other two days of golu hopping as well. . . the end result .. a photomerge to remember..
This year the golus saw a lot of antique dolls that were inheritences for the ladies from their grandparents.. some of them were 100 years old handed down generations.. and they are all making their way to the bay area.. Cupertino and Fremont are the New Mylapore and New Mambalam.. have said that before and will say it again!
There were also a these miniature dolls with amazing detail. None of them are more than 3-4 inches in any dimension but the intricate color work is mind boggling.
My favorite from this year..
For the first time all the photos from the Golus were taking with an iPhone 11 Pro Max.. the new phone came just in time for the Golu season and is still being figured out..
Slide shows of the golus..
now for the individual doll portraits.. at least these dolls were unique across the golus I attended this year.. the iPhone has a neat portrait feature and if the dolls are lifelike, it takes portraits and enhances them automatically.. to me that is a measure of how life like the dolls are..
and finally, the photoshop masterpiece..that made the experience a fun one!
This blog has been capturing local golus for almost 15 years now.. hope to keep doing that over the years.. it has been one constant that has held over time for this blog!
Happy Vijayadasami to everyone! May the start of this academic year be a good and fruitful one!
We are currently celebrating Navarathri (nine-nights) and the Golu visits that come with the celebration.
The women and girls (and their drivers by induction) are dressed nicely.
There is high octane fuel.. err Sundal to feed the traveling beauties and chaufers..
Some fine singing by the kids in front of the doll displays and
the doll displays themselves.. a thing we look forward to in this household.
For those of you who are new to this blog, here is the background. South Indians celebrate Navarathri (Dushera, Durga Pooja in other parts of India) with elaborate doll displays on a staircase pattern (padi) and make some yummy treats with various legumes on 9 nights of the festival. They invite ladies and kids to visit their house, they sing in front of the deities, eat the snacks and are off to visit other folks. The ninth day is a prayer to the godess of learning, Saraswathi and the tenth day is celebrated as the day of Victory (Vijaya- Dasami).
In most houses where there has been a death in the family that year, they skip the display in their house and visit other folks. In some rare cases, where families found that the first year they kept the display as a newly wed family correlated to a death of a closed one, and I use the term correlate with a lot of hate given my applied math background... they watch cautiously.
My grandmother apparently lost three kids to three years when she tried to keep the golu and decided that keeping the golu was not auspicious for the family. Since then (60 odd years ago), there has been no golu in this house on any paternal desencents. Any woman who gets married to a guy in this family, is promptly brainwashed irrespective of her education level and is told "not to tempt fate by keeping a golu".
Let's just say that everytime I piss a flamingo dies. Unfotunately piss I have to. Out of respect for my elders (let's call it that) I am just happy visiting golus and taking photos of my cuties in different dresses. . . and of course documenting the golus from bay area which are frozen in time.. the Golus in Chennai seem to have morphed into some advanced concepts in terms of themes, dolls and partying!
This is typical of any immigrant community that evolves on one side and supresses evolution on other fronts to keep things "authentic"..
This year we managed one family portrait..
and visited 10 or so Golus over the weekend. I will miss the rest of the golus because of work. It is what it is.. Have asked Jr. to take some nice pictures of golus they attend and show me and I can add it to the slideshow below..
This year I also got to take pictures of the Dasavatharam set (10 avatars of Vishnu) from different Golus (where it was possible to take a picture). Given the circular golus and a shallow depth of focus, some golus were a challenge to capture.. next thing I know, we might need drones to take ariel views of the golu and add videos. Golugraphy has to make its technological advances, no?!
Talking of technology, the kids are taking their science projects and making the Golus interesting. We were witness to a volcano demonstration as part of a golu. Every visitor gets to see the volcano. Just think of how much fun Golus are becoming!
Here they are...
Given that kids place the dolls and there is sometimes breakage in transit, it is impressive that the golus make it with all 10 avatars. Sometimes folks place it in the wrong sequence while majority place it right. Have written about this in a FB post before.. but there is a logic to this. My grandpa taught me that the 10 avatars of Vishnu is our forefathers way of teaching us evolution. The puranas that talk about the 10 avatars pre-date Darwin by 100's of years.
The idea is :
life started in the ocean.. the first avatar is fish
Life moved to amphibians .. second one is a tortoise
Then it came to be ground feeding land animals .. third one is a boar
Then came a predator .. Vishnu as a Lion
Then came a pygmy or dwarf .. Vamana
Then it is all homo sapien transformations with a man who is mentally unstable (but physically a man as we know it) - parashurama (violent man)
followed by Rama - man with ideals
then Balarama -- a man with a plough (he has now settled and has figured out how to tame rivers and do agriculture.. non nomadic man)
then Krishna (god who does anything he has to to win and in the process sets up the downfall of man)
Finally Kalki, the doomsday avatar of Vishnu who finishes off what Krishna started. (Last year I had made fun by saying Trump is Kalki and regret that.. he won as I predicted and given where we are.. he might actually be the 10th avatar of Vishnu.. given God comes in all shapes, sizes and colors..even orange)
It is interesting to see how sometimes we miss the bigger picture or the hidden lessons!
This year we had Navarathri over two weekends, which is always a plus compared to it being spread only over one weekend!
Was way busy with work and had just come back from another overseas trip at the beginning of the festival. Wife, MIL and kids made it to all the Golu's while I chauffered them to select places over the weekends only. They took pictures of Golu's I missed so we can add it to the blog.
The highlight of this years festival was these two photos which we will cherish for a long time. Many thanks to our friends for the clicks and cracking the right jokes at the right time!
You need two things for good family pictures. Good lighting and good jokes that the entire family can get!
Then there were the golus. Neat and clean and simple, to complex to creative! Best part was to see the little displays the kids create on window sills and on the floor next to the Golus.. National parks, Hamma bead towns, cricket sets.. you can see they all are still setting classic three slips and a gully while the New Zealand team is now going to a field set up that has only third slip and gully!.. okay, where was I? yes, Golus!
We also had kids sing and dance and Jr. played the saxophone in two of the Golus. She is getting better. I get berated by my friends for giving her "feedback" after her performance, which is interesting in its own way.
Here is a video of her doing the Thillana this year.
Hope next year she will do the entire piece without any mistakes. I am very proud of her, but given her ability, if she just practiced a little more instead of two days before the festival starts, she could have aced the whole thing!
Finally the Golus.. enjoy the slideshow!
Thanks to all our friends who invited us this year. It was fun. Next year, will try to visit everyone!
Thursday, February 4, 2021 at 8:03PM ;)
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