Paradise Regained

Its snowing here in Memphis, which is a rare phenomena. Thanks to the winter storm that's playing havoc in the east coast and upper central America. But for us it is a beautiful sight outside. Mild snowfall forming a gentle white coating on the grass. Sitting pretty on top of the trees, these little snow flakes refuses to melt into the chilly wintry air. Sipping hot chocolate inside my warm abode, I can't help but marvel at this beautiful picture that nature is drawing in front of my eyes. So I am sitting in front of my big window watching it snow and blogging simultaneously. 

Its been a while since I blogged. I missed this place. This place is like my agony aunt. I visit her with my long list of complaints, frustrations, pleasures, silly things that make me happy and even sillier things that make me grumpy. So what's this post going to be like? I don't know yet, but I am not going to dwell much on that.

So many books, so little time (and many more on my book shelf).

As I am typing this post out I am extremely conscious. I have a book - Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss staring right back at me, asking me if I am placing my commas and apostrophes at their right places. I don't think so. Yes, I need to work on my punctuations. Which is why I borrowed that book. Because I want someone to tell me what I am doing is not right. How can I become a good writer (will there be a comma here? Oh dear God help me) if I can't punctuate properly? I want to become a writer, not a book writer but web content writer. So I asked myself the other day, if I am qualified to be a good writer and I heard myself saying that I will be once I get my grammar and punctuation right. I personally believe that to become a good writer one has to read a lot. So I took the 20 books a year challenge on Goodreads and made a list of books - fiction, non-fiction, parenting and self help books that I plan to read this year. Yes, when it comes to books I am always over ambitious. I want to get my hands on every beautiful book that catches my eye (yup I tend to judge the book by its cover but only the book). Take me to a book store or a library and I feel like a kid in a candy store or a toy store. As a child I was never into books much except the occassional tinkle and tinkle digest. Though I got a few Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books, I never really got around finishing it much (over ambitious, even then ha). Its only when I got to a all women's college that I started taking reading to the next level, the level where one reads the book from cover to cover. With my girl friends' recommendation I started reading Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele. Today when I look back I regret for missing out on reading a lot of books as a child and teen. That is why I want to give my son the wonderful gift of reading. Here in the US the libraries are to die for (ah well you get my point right). So we go once every two weeks and check out as many books as we can get our hands on. We have also subscribed to Shelby County books from birth. The books are super awesome and absolutely free. Thanks to Dolly Parton and her dream of making every American child read. We have also subscribed to Highlights and National Geographic Little Kids magazine for our son. There are plenty of resources out there if you know what you want for your child. The idea is to get them introduced to reading. Honestly, if a child doesn't see his parents read, he will never get interested in it himself. So get out, get a library membership, look for second hand book stores, hunt for book deals and if you can't find any of the above go to a book store and invest in some books. Its an investment worth every penny. Regain that paradise. 

I speak Talayalam,therefore I am !!!!!

Ok now what is Talayalam? To understand that you need to get yourselves introduced to a clan in Tambrahm community called Palakkad Iyers (I will use PI from now on) So why are PI different from others? Or are they? Let me first tell you who these people are. Wikipedia may give you a detailed write up on PI here. But I am not going to go that technical. Below, you will find typical characteristic features of PI. This will help you recognise a PI better.
For your convenience I have divided the post into sub sections to understand PI better.

Please Note :
To understand this post you need to be any of the following
- Be a PI ( If you are one I am sure you can totally relate to what i am going to say)
- Be a Tambram
- Be a tamilan/ malayalee
- Have a PI friend
- Have a Tambram friend
- Married to a PI
- Married to a tambram
- You should have watched the movies Micheal, Madana, Kama, Rajan movie and enjoyed the role of Kameshwaran in that movie (beem boy beem boy, andha lockerlendhu aaru laksham rubai eduthu andha avinashi nai moonjila vittueri)
-You should have watched the movie Nala Thamayanthi and enjoyed and laughed watching the character Ramji. (Aiyo adhu Saraswathi akkum, adha vechu epadi thodachukaradhu)
If you are not any of the above then I suggest you not to break your head trying to understand this post.

You know that you are a PI if you can relate to the following:

Nick Names

 (we dont know what these names mean and how they originated but these are just classic and you will find any one or even more in any PI household)

Common Male names 

1. Pichumani
2. Venkidi
3. Cheemachu
4. Ambi
5. Chechu
6. Rasamani
7. Kicha/ Kichumani
8. Kondhai
9. Ramani
10. Kuttan

Common female names 

1. Angichi
2. Radhai
3. Chellam
4. Thangam
5. Ramani ( this can be both male and female names)
6. Vijayam
7. Rajam
8. Komalam

Common PI words used in converations

I will now take you through some classic PI words with their meanings.

PI expressions 

Midu Midukki / Midukkan - Intelligent

This word is used in place of buddhishali. When your son or daughter comes first in class you may hear your father or mother saying this 'Avanuku/avaluku enna midu midukki/midukkan.'

Adhu Kazhinchutu - After that

Usually used in sentences like this

Modhalla nammal koviluku poorom adhu kazhinchutu samanum vanga poolam.

Tiya/Tela - Suffixed to words, tiya is for younger people and tela for elders.

Used in sentences like

Naan cholliachu ini unnodu eshtamtiya

Naam cholliachu ini ungalodu eshtamtela

Ende Guruvayoorappa - My Guruvayoorappa (name of Lord Vishnu)

We may be shivites but our loyalty towards Guruvayoorappan is unbeatable. Even Iyengars can't come close to us.

We usually say 'Ende Guruvayoorappa enna Rekshikane (my Guruvayoorappa, protect me)

Ooooh oooh oooh (for tune please contact a PI)

This is a classic PI expression. We usually use this when we forget something or when we are disappointed.

Oooooh Ooooh ooooh adupula paal vachitu vandhuruken,

Ooooh Ooooh Ooooh reporta aathula vittutu vandhuten 

Aaaah Vuuuuu

This is used when we are tired after a physical chore and we sit down to take a breather.

My dad usually washes the car, comes inside, switches the fan and sits on the chair and says 'Aaah Vuuu ..Kondhai oru glass vallam tharaya.'

Chuttu Poshukaradhu/ Vesharthu Kotaradhu

When its too hot outside we usually say this.

When I go out in the afternoons my mom usually says 'Eppo endhuku porai. Velila chuttu poshukaradhu.'

Thanuthu Varaikaradhu

This expression is used when its very cold.

My dad doesn like it when we switch on the fans in winters. He says 'Eppo andha fan venama. Thanuthu Varaikaradhu.'

Ambadathan - thats all (Iyers usually say avalothan)
Sometimes we use this word to describe something which is very very

Alla 

This is usually prefixed to sentences such as this

Amma : Unaku threriyumo andha aathu sriramuku kalyanam nichayam ayiduthu

Pullai : Alla, avan America poran padikanu allavo chollindu irundhan

Saramillai : It's ok

Whenever me and my brother fight for something and he gets his way my dad would tell me 'Saramillai kondai avan unnavida chinnavan illaya.'

Pootum 

This is also similar to saramillai. We usually say 'Pootum poo'

Neku/Noku - For me/For you

The best one I can think of here is the scene from Micheal , Madana, Kama, Rajan

Converation between Kameshwaran and Thripurasundari

Kameshwaran : Aaruku kalyanam...Neka..Noka..Nekum nokuma.

And now for the most interesting part. 

Food 

We are also food lovers. A function in the temple, kalyanum, poonul or even thevasam is incomplete without saddhi chapadu. We usually have a fixed menu here.

Sambar - you all know what that is

Rasam - duh!!!

Kaalaan - we refer to mooru kulambu as kaalaan..Its usually fluorescent yellow in color and very thick in density. 

Avial - This is a typical kerala dish..a melange of typical nattu kaikari like Chenai, elavan, matthan, vazhakai.

Kharry - usually either vazhakkai or chenai with loads of coconut.

Poduththuval - Dry vegtable like cabbage or beans or potato.

Kootu - This is either elavan chenai or vazhakai or chenai kootu

Thair pachadi - Popularly referred to as Raita by most of us, this is made with curd and a vegetable like cucumber or tomato. 

Pulienji - Made with ginger, green chillies and loads of tamarind. Edha vaila vechelna chappu kottuvel. 

Mangakharry - This is a classic PI pickle. Naaku oorum.

Paysam  - Ada pradhaman is our favorite. We are expert in this. Also chakka pradhaman. Made with jackfruit, jaggery and coconut milk. And ofcourse the usual Pal payasam.
Chakaveratu uperi - Banana piece dipped in jaggery mix and deep fried.
Nendrangai Chips - Banana chips.

So the above dishes are usually part of saadhi chapadu. We also make these regularly at home and also the ones below :

Mulagootal - It is either keerai mulagootal or elavan mulagootal.

Pachadi - This goes well with mulagootal its either made with vendakkai and puli or matthan and puli.

Thogayal - Guess this is common dish of most of south indians so i dont have to explain that.

Upperi - Dry vegetable like cabbage, beetroot, beans, avarakai etc

Mezhukuvarati - This again is dry veg but mostly chenai or vazhakkai made with coconut oil.

Thairunchadam - This is a classic iyer dish we cant do without this. We have to end our meal with this , be it south indian food or north indian or even pizza. This is like the ending of a very happy movie :)

Rooms in the house

Adukullai - This is what we call a kitchen. tambrams call it samayalkattu

Machumel - Upstairs. Tambrams call it Maadi.

Kollai pakkam - Backyard. I dont know what tambrams call this. But as long as i've known i've always heard and used the word kollai pakkam only.

Thennai - Corridor I think thennai is a common tamil word too.
Tharaimetharai - Two levels of floor (one of which is slightly higher than the other)
Koodam - Living room 

Thaavaram : Typically found in Palakkad village home where one will find long corridors and a little Mitham.
Mitham :  Also found in village homes. Its a square or rectangular hole made inside the house into which the rain water drains.

So now you know what Talayalam means. Its Tamil plus Malayalam. Thats the mother tongue of us PI. Nangal idhulayum avial than.

I have pretty much covered most of our slang here. My reason to write this post is just plain and simple fun. I am a typical PI and this is the language I speak at home and so does my 3 year old son. When I was in college my friends would ask me to talk in this tamil and find it very very cute. I've always been very proud to be born into a palakkad family and very happy to be married into one too. No matter how much we try to speak in normal tamil with other tamilians, we always end up using a few of typical PI terms making the other person wonder what we just said. The other day (long ago when i was in Coimbatore) i bought some medicines from a chemist and asked him 'Etharai aachu' and he said 'yetuarai illa medam anjuarai than achu.' (i asked him in PI tamil How much? and he answered me its not 8.30 madam its only 5.30 now). And thats a PI for you, love us, hate us but you can never ignore us.

Glossary of words used :
Here are the unusual words you saw above and their meaning
Vallam - Thanni in tamil. Water in English
Elavan - Poosinikai, White pumpkin
Matthan - Pumpkin, Kadhu
Chenai - Yam

Here is a hilarious scene from the famous Kamal Hassan movie. You can find him using most of the PI words here. Enjoy

And here is Madhavan's Nala Thamayanthi. The really funny plane scene.

A creation called Life and a Creator called God

With heavy heart I brought my Christmas tree down yesterday. That tree lit up my whole house. Everyday morning as soon as I woke up and walked into the living room the tree would greet me and assure me that the day is going to be as colorful and bright as itself. When I finally packed my tree and ornaments and put it in the storage, I saw that there was a void inside me just like the one in the living room where the tree once stood. I've had this feeling before. Everytime I pack Navratri Golu comes to an end and as soon as I pack the golu bommais and put it up in the loft, I feel the exact same way. End of festivities always brings this kind of feeling in all of us. Be it Navratri, Diwali or Christmas. The whole city that was decked all this while suddenly looks drab and boring. Its like someone just caught all of the festive spirit and just bottled it up and threw it into an ocean or something. Every year we look forward to these festivities and holidays. It doesn't matter if its a Hindu, Muslim or a Christian festival. Its all the same. Its basically celebrating the almighty and his creation. Thanking him for all the beautiful things he has given us. The very life itself is a beautiful creation of his is'nt it? To be born a human being, to be able to smile, cry, love, hate, sing, dance, talk, learn, all of it is his creation. The contrasts in life is so amazing. The day makes us appreciate the night, the hot summers makes us appreciate the cold winters, the sad days makes us appreciate and be thankful for the happy days to come. The most beautiful of them all is the child birth. It just amazes me to think of this creation of God. As a woman I am so proud and humbled that God chose me to create another life inside me and love him/her with all my heart and soul. Though our life is never the same after a child, we love the madness. We realize all the pain our parents have gone through to bring us up and we suddenly start appreciating little things they have done, sacrificed to make us the person we are today. God has made our life a vicious circle so that we appreciate the little and the big things in life.
So when we look at it the ultimate creator is just one. We just give him different names and pray to him in different ways. I go to a church for my fitness classes and at the end of the class the instructor reads a passage from the Bible. These passages as I recall are exactly the same as the Hindu religion's holy scripture The Bhagawat Gita. If Gods are different then why is it that the message they are trying to convey is the same? I am pretty sure the Holy Quran also conveys the same. Then why this differences in the world? Why are people killed in the name of religious differences?Why can't two people from different religion marry each other and still follow what they wish to? Why don't people realise that there is only one Creator, the one who has created this beautiful creation called Life.

My Great American Dream...Really?

I look out the window and I notice that the leaves are changing colors. I know that fall is here which means its been three months since I've made US of A, my home. For many of us Indians coming to the USA is like a dream come true. It was like that for me too. But until I moved here in the month of July. Suddenly I felt like a fish out of water. This place is huge but I could not breathe, there are many people living here but not one friendly face, there may be many species living here but I could not hear even a bird chirp, there are kids all over the place but i could not hear even one child squeal. Is this how this place is? Is this where I am expected to live after I moved from a place where there was absolutely no dearth for noise. I went into depression. i could not take it anymore. I would cry everyday and wonder what the hell I am doing in this place. But soon everything changed. Like how they say this place started growing in me. I started enjoying the silence that filled this place, I realised that there are friendly people out there when I went grocery shopping, I went to the park and heard the children squeal, I made some friends too. I've lived in the United Kingdom for a year and a half but I can very well  see that USA is a much better place to live than the UK. People here are more friendlier and approachable.I can see that my standard of living may be better here, less pollution, less travel, easy access to things, great facilities but having said that there is always something that will be missing. There is a hollowness and an emptiness that this beautiful place cant fill.  The Big American Dream seems very beautiful as a dream but when you wake up you don't feel the beauty of it anymore. And that my friends can only be felt when you are home, closer to your loved ones. That emptiness gets filled up to brim when you are sitting in your living room with your loved ones around you talking about your childhood, that hollowness disappears when you step out of your house and there are people walking up to you asking to come by their house, when you go to buy vegetables from the vendor outside your apartment and she inquires why you were not seen all this while. It is rightly said that home is where the heart is. You can take the woman out of the country but you can't take the country out of the woman. I've left a part of me in that place I rightly call my home and I am sure one day I will go back to  retrieve it and after that there will be no looking back. 

Confessions of a stay-at-home mom/ IT professional's wife

I am a woman who portrays various roles in this life. A daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother. At every stage I've made sacrifices, made peace with my ambition and moved on. The moment one enters their high school there will be that million dollar question circling them 'So what's next?' I faced it too. I wasn't sure what I wanted. A teacher told me to pursue visual communications as she thought i had creative juices flowing in me which then was true. So I walked into my house that day holding my head high as I had the perfect answer for that million dollar question. But my dad had other plans for me. A man with old school of thoughts, he has never heard of Visual Communications and hence decided that there is no career scope in that field. He was like Madhavan's dad from 3 idiots who thought that an MBA, BE kind of degree are the only ones that can feed a man and pay his bills. So out went my creatively challenging career and in came the one that basically pays the bills. So I finished my graduation and post graduation and got into Banking industry. So according to my dad I had a perfectly secured job and a job that could fetch me a perfect groom. So out went my parents looking out for a life partner for me and thus I was married just like an other Tam Bram girl would be to an IT professional who globe trots. So that day finally dawned on me when I had to bid adieu to my secured banking job. The reason, my husband landed a project in the UK and I promised him that I will quit my work and follow him just like any normal Indian wife would do. Little did I know then that that would probably be the last job I would ever have. The project happened, after a couple of years a baby happened and then theres no looking back. My professional career went down the drain. Today I may be a super mom, a multi tasker blah blah. But I don't know if I have the guts to face an interview, to convince the interviewer if I can do the job he would offer me to do with the same amount of dedication and sincerity as I would put into that task of making the perfect meal for my family, laundering and pressing the clothes for my husband to wear to work and feeding my little son. So what is missing. How do women do it? How do they manage to take a break and get back to work? These seem like a million dollar question to me now. How should I feel right now at this threshold of my life. Should I be proud that I am there for my 3 year old, putting his needs before me, making a better person out of him.Should I be contented that I am there for my husband who has an absolutely stressful career. Or should I let the guilt get the better of me  for not pursuing my career like most women did when they had their baby.  I, a stay-at-home mom and an IT professional's wife, is still looking for an answer if that is all the identity that I have or can I do something to make an identity outside the 4 walls.

MOM is the word

Ok here's what it is, We are called stay-at-home moms. We don't like to call ourselves homemakers anymore. That word is too cliched now. Because we not only take care of the house we do something more than that. We raise children. We may not have a 9-5 job. We don't bring home salary. But that does not mean that we are not contributing enough. Isn't raising a child good enough. Are we supposed to feel guilty that everyday morning we don't wake up and walk out of the house carrying a laptop. Are we supposed to be ashamed that we walk into our house single handed carrying a grocery bag of minimum 10 kilos. We may not be whacking our brains making power point presentations or business proposals but hello we do whack our brains thinking of ways to keep our little ones busy, ways to distract them from the TV and ways to make their daily meal more interesting and edible. We have no idea how the day is going to turn out when we wake up in the morning. We don't know if our little one will successfully finish one meal, throw a tantrum, fall and hurt himself. We don't know any thing before hand but we need to be prepared for this. All those who go out there to work are slogging their ass off because they know that if they perform they get paid well. What do we get? We work our ass off bringing our child up so when they grow up we get to hear this - 'Shut up mom you don't know anything.' Ya right !! We know that a day like that will come but we can't walk out of our jobs can we? We don't have weekends. Everyday is MONDAY for us. Everyday is MONTH END. We have job appraisals everyday. But on 30th of every month our bank accounts don't go up. We don't hear people saying this very often that we are doing a great job but we do have people telling us what a bad mother we are. But that does not bring our spirits down because when we look at that little cherubic face smiling back at us and calling us 'MOM' we forget everything and start claiming that we have the best job in the world. So the next time someone walks up to you and asks you if you're working, then you bloody well know what to tell them right? They don't call us Super moms for no reason right.

Something that left me wondering !!!

God packed so much stuff into this four letter word called "LIFE." There is happiness, sadness, loneliness, jealously, greed, love, lust. Then he throws some family, friends into it to make it more worthwhile. Have we ever treated life well and given it back for all that it has been giving us? We fail in exams and blame life, we lose our loved ones and blame life, we have heartbreaks and blame life, we lose our job and blame life. Life still doesn't give up on us, it takes all the blame and tries to give us the best and then we humiliate it further by saying 'Life Sucks.' What if one day Life refuses to take all the crap we have been giving it and decides to leave us for good.