My Food

My Dinner Yesterday...


South Indian meals from my office canteen...


North Indian meals from my office canteen...
- Pavala

Marriage-Make Up (Bridal Make-Up)

These days applying make up for the bride has become an inevitable and unavoidable event during marriage - for the obvious reason - many people have to face her and she also has to face many. And we can understand how this situation will be without a 2 or 3 layered coating of make-up. Also one has to remember this make-up or anything is not applied for the Guy, again due to obvious reasons :-).

The event of applying the make-up takes atleast 1/3rd of the total time allocated for the marriage. For a bridal make-up, the make-up lady comes a couple of hours before the marriage along with her acquaintances. I have difficulty in understanding why this lady has applied more make-up to herself than the bride... She will take the bridge along with her for the make-up session. They will lock themselves up inside a room, and we Guys never ever know what happens inside. After a couple of hours when the bride comes out, she will be an entirely different person.

The girl before the make-up may look pretty or average or anywhere in-between. But after the make-up session, they all look alike. I appreciate this uniqueness of the make-up process which brings all the girls to a common platform - pulling-down the good-looking ones, pushing-up the average-looking ones and adjusting the in-between ones. Some men before tying the holy knot get confused whether its the same girl which he saw before in the earlier marriage related events. (Here I would like stress my stand on the point that beauty is a relative term and it always lies on the eyes of the beholder. A girl who appears to be good-looking amidst one set of girls may appear average or below average amidst another set of girls. But I have to agree that to every guy, their special ones always look beautiful and pretty, not matter what :-)...).

Now this event appears to have taken another dimension. Ladies, who will be otherwise mere spectators of the marriage, also started having a make-up session before attending it. Though they may not confront the situation described in the first para of the article!!! May be they think or assume that they also face such a situation in the marriages they attend.

In my grand-mother's days, the bride would have just washed their face and come to the stage. In my mother's days, they would have applied a coat of talcum powder in addition to washing-face. But now... This makes me to think or assume that over the period of time, due to evolution, girls have lost their inherent beauty and because of this they have to augment it with supplements.

- SPGR.

சுனாமீன்

சமீபத்தில் என் குட்டி நண்பன் தாணு தன தாத்தாஉடன் பீச்சிக்கு சென்று இருந்தான்.
அவனது தாத்தா அவனுக்கு மீன் பிரை வாங்கி தந்தார்.
தாணு கேட்டான் "தாத்தா, இது என்ன மீன்...?"
"சங்கரா..." தாத்தா சொன்னார்.
"எனக்கு வேற மீன் வேணும்..."
"என்ன மீன் வேணும்..."
தாணு சொன்னான் "தாத்தா எனக்கு சுனாமீன் தன வேணும்..."
"அது மீன் இல்லை... சுனாமி..."
"ம்ம்ம்... அதன்... அந்த சுனாமீன் தன வேணும்..."
சமீபத்தில் வந்த சுனாமி நியூஸ் எல்லாம் பார்த்துட்டு அது ஒரு ஒரு டைப் மீன் என்று நினைத்து விட்டன போல...

- பவளா

Happy Women's day

I dont know whether being born as a woman is a boon or a curse. But still here goes my wish - Happy Women's Day!!!

- spgr.

Miles to go after I wake up...

After a long time, last week I woke up around 5 AM in the morning. Indeed this is happening after a long time, and I have been trying for this since Jan 1st of this year. With no agenda, I just sat in front of my laptop and started thinking how my various mornings all these years have been.

Without any doubt some of my best mornings were the ones I spent in my native in my maternal grandparents home. It was a village on the Erode-Coimbatore main road. Our grandparents home is just near the main road. As we used to sleep outside the home, for the whole night we used to hear the horn & sounds of the buses and lorries hurrying on the road. My grandmother will be first to wake up around 5, followed by my grandfather. Grandfather will wrap himself around a blanket and walk to the Moopanar tea kadai for his morning tea, which is also near the house around 50 feet on the other side the road. If I wake up early I also used to accompany him to the tea shop. In fact on most of our mornings, we used to wake up hearing the Murugan saamy songs from the Moopanar tea shop.

By now grandmother would have started the process of tea preparation in the make-shift stove made out of 3 stones kept near each other, fuelled by logs. I still remember the tea pot with its dark outer side. I used to go near the stove and watch the preparations. We all will wake up one by one and join for the morning tea chat, sitting on the corridor. Having idli bought from the Idli kara aaya at 7 AM is another memorable event in the morning. That aaya will sell only idlis and the taste of the sambar she gives is so unique, which I have never tasted after that.

Mornings spent in my paternal grandparents also used to equally good, till I was young. There also tea sessions, followed by idli from idli kara aaya. I used to wonder, how here also there is a idli kara aaya. This aaya used to have dosa also along with idli. Around the same time my grandfather would have caught a hen from the flock and started the preparations for the chicken kolambu. If I describe how that hen gets converted to chicken kolambu, then this post will become a very violent one.

Now let me move to our home in Trichy where I grew as a child. How can I forget those sunday mornings which invaribly starts with Rangoli. It is the sound of the Rangoli which normally wakes me up on a typical Sunday. I used to peep out of my blanket to watch the Rangoli, the same old songs again and again. Once Rangoli got over, it will be followed by 2 or 3 cartoon shows(which we used to call Bommai Padam) of Micky Mouse or Donald Duck (or) Charlie Chaplin in the later years. And a typical morning on a sunday will extend till 12 in the afternoon.

It was on one morning that it happend. I was studying in 6th standard and I was studying for the geography annual exam. It was the last exam after which school closes for the summer holidays. I have asked my mother to wake me up at 6 o' clock in the morning since I have to study the pending portions. I had to push so hard in order to finish them. I thought if I had studied the lessons on a daily basis, I would not have to suffer like this. On that early morning, I took an oath that from 7th standard onwards, I will study my lessons daily and will cover up the portions taught in the class on the same day. I followed it and it did wonder. I kept this oath until my PG and reaped the benefits of it.

My hostel days in Coimbatore used to be very different from other ones. I used to wake up as early as 4:30 AM, inspite of going to bed around or after 12 in the mid-night. Lying on the bed I used to recall all that I studied in the night. This will be followed by a quick revision of the previous day's portions. So all mornings during my college days were study mornings.

During my days in US, after the call with offshore call, will be going to bed very late and will be waking up late with sufficient time just to get ready and rush to office. During weekends, my mornings will start around 12:30 PM or later.

After marriage, in my in-laws home, invaribly all my mornings started very very late. And I enjoyed the royal treatment I received there :-). Similar to the mornings in my grandparents native, I also had memorable mornings in my wife's native. Morning started early, followed by a visit to the Periyaaru river with her little brothers for the morning bath. On one such visit, I would have been washed away in the river, since I didnt know swimming. It was her brother who pulled me back to the shore and I shall be grateful to him forever :-). This will be followed by breakfast and coffee, which is combinedly called as 'Kaappi Kudithal' in her native.

After joining for work, until recently my mornings started at 8:00 AM or later. As years have passed, I have become very lazy and seeing the side effects of those now. From 2011, I have decided to wake up early and after lots of efforts, able to wake up at 5:00 AM from last week. I have try waking up even more early in the coming days. The amount of time we get when we wake up early is amazing. With lot of agendas, I have to wake up early from this year.

And miles to go after I wake up,
And miles to go after I wake up.

- SPGR.

I invite Shen and Dhanesh Amma to write about their mornings...