When in Adayar, do as the Adayarians do..

The day Jr. and the little one landed in Chennai, their usual fascination with the dhoti wearing Madras thatha (grandpa) started!

For some reason, Bombay thatha does not wear a dhoti that often.

As for me, I stopped wearing it in the house and switched to shorts or track pants from the time we had Jr.

The reason was simple. When you throw a dhoti in the washing machine, it is bound to get crumpled and tangle with every other piece of clothing you put in that load. That means lot of time ironing the dhoti and all the other clothes. It got worse when my MIL / mom lived with us and the saris, dhoti's would all get tangled up and even tear clothes when we tried to pull them out of the washer. To minimize the damage I switched.

The kids saw thatha and promptly took the next piece of cloth they could find and started wandering around the house in their "veshti" or "dhoti"..

The little one was reluctant to even wear a vest borrowed from her cousins wardrobe. She also insisted on folding the dhoti and tying it in half "just like thatha"!

While Jr. was content with wandering around with a turkish towel folded in half, the little one insisted on being "just like thatha", and that meant going without a shirt! Had a tough time explaining why only boys go without a shirt, but it fell on deaf ears.

Even after grandma's advice and daddy's attempted threats/ bribes, she wandered around the house "just like thatha" for two days till she got bored of it.

My dad was so happy and amused that his grand kids wanted to be just like him, inspite of this being a bad idea.

The things kids do....

.