food

Navarathri 2026

This year we celebrated Navarathri by visiting friends and family across the bay area.

San was happy and that made me happy.

She did all the driving and logistics. All I did was match her Sari to the best of my ability and go sing in a lot of places where she was happy to sit back and listen. She also had to do most of the eating as I am allergic to lot of things. Felt bad that she had to pull this off solo..

Here are the pictures..

First the matching matching..

Once your head has stopped spinning.. you can take a look at this.. (except today, where I was not invited, made it all the other days).. The picture below is definitely prettier than the one above, without me being a “repeater drishti pottu”. This one needed the floor pose to cover up some gaps.. not all pictures were the same.. San was not happy that I kept using same backdrop in same location every day.. hope she sees this and understands why!

A gallery of all the Kolu’s and any dolls that were unique or caught my eye…(in portrait format)

Photos in landscape format..

There was a lot of enthusiasm, creativity from adults and kids in the doll displays this year! Hoe this gives you a good glimpse of our bay area navarthri visits..

We are at an age where the number of folks who don’t celebrate every year is increasing. We are all in fifties. That means previous generation is in their 80’s and 90’s. A lot of missing folks and kolus this year as well. Then again, time keeps going and they will come back the following year.

Got to learn 12 new songs and got to sing a few of them.. A separate post on that tomorrow. Have finally learned to admire Dikshidhar after all these years!

Indian festivals are amazing!

A renewed festival season

Last year there were no celebrations or festivities in our house. It was a year of “remembering dad”.

This year we started celebrating again with the Varalakshmi, then Krishna Jayanthi, Aavaniavittam, Ganesha Chathurthi and finally we are ending with the Navarathri festivities. Life has thrown a few curveballs in the last few months and every event ended up with memories that made it not blog worthy.

Finally getting to share some photos from those events in the blog, before we get to the kolu padis..

Let’s go one step at a time..and I made them all collages..

Food that completely covers the carb, fat, sugar ternary phase diagram..

Then there is photos I send to my mom after completing each poojai or prayer… you can see the improvement in my knee from the smile on my face after sitting down cross legged for an hour at least for each of these prayers.. This morning I managed a smile and drove to work without any additional swelling!

A few other photos (the Onam spread would have required a wide angle lens that is yet to be developed)..

Now that brings us to the Navarathri festival that needs a special post or two..

A different kind of Tiger mom - Onitsuka - Japan Day 4

The previous post in this series is here..

After we had lunch near the golden pavilion, we took an Uber XL to Kyoto shopping area. It was already early evening and we went to the Onitsuka Tiger shoe store.

The little one had told us that we need to get her a pair of shoes at this store as it is a Japanese product that is cheaper in Japan than in the US. Also not all designs are available in US.

The Tiger mom went into overdrive to make her cub happy. We saw the line at the store was really long. Our friends saw the madness and said “we will go rest in the hotel. When you finish this and come back to the hotel, we can all go back for dinner”.

We stood in line for 2 hours just chatting with others in the line. Then our chance finally came. I had also selected a shoe in blue but it was sold out. Still we picked the version for the little one and also decided all of us should get one given the two hours spent in the line.

Then we made it back to the hotel. There is a Puma store right next to this one and we got socks for my buddy on the way there. We hope the Onitsuka’s are noticed on Bubb road during the local walks.. given their price, I might as well do pooja for it or carry it on my head instead.

Things we do…

We were to have dinner at a vegan place in Kyoto. Again a Jr. selection and she had made reservations. The food was good as was the service but the price was very high compared to other options we had seen. We were happy with the food. Then we made our way back to the hotel.

A very short video..

Our original plan had us spend another day here. We did change plans the previous day. We were going to our next stop a day early. It was going to be our last night in Kyoto..

Will start with our next stop in the next post..