Christmas is here!

So its that time of the year when:

• the Arien plays Christmas carols on the computer;


• the house is all decked up or at least preparations are on the way;


• we start on the gift-wrapping marathon session;


• last-minute purchases are made for items we will never need and no one keeps tabs;


• we play secret Santa @ work;


• someone dresses up as Santa @ work;


• the US folks are away on vacation and we have no mails from them for almost two weeks;


• sometimes we have a shutdown and sometimes we do not - depends on which you company you work for or on what is their policy that year;

Anyway, the song that the Arien is listening to lately is: Santa Baby. Did not know it was so popular. Almost every female singer has a version of this song. Jes FYI it is not a regular carol or a goody-goody song. If you have seen the movie P2, this song plays in the background. Its a gal's wish-list to Santa somewhat like Madonna's The Material Girl.

Ganesh Chaturthi

The day dawned bright and sunny at 7 am. Ahem!! Well, thts dawn for me on a sunday! The Arien was missing. Was he kidnapped by aliens? Nah!! The mystery was solved 5 mts later when the Arien walked in holding a plastic cover and said "Oh.. you are awake?! Well, then you can get started.." Usually, I do not attempt normal conversation until I have a nice cuppa chai but this time curiosity took over and I imm. walked up and peeked into the cover. The Arien had this "I did it!!" gleam in his eye and so I had to ask "What is it?" The Arien quickly shared his morning adventure. He had been to a nearby hotel to get Vada Maavu so we cud make Vadai(s) for Ganesha. I was so surprised and happy that I did not bother 'bout the technicalities such as wht kind of hotel, where exactly is it.. well, you know wht I mean. The guy at the hotel had laughed when the Arien presented his request, but the term 'Ganesha puja' made him change his mind. I was glad that this time we would have a grand Ganesha hubba as opposed to my earlier efforts.

The rest of the morning disappeared so fast, I cannot recall much of it. First, the Vadais were ready. Within minutes, we started on the Payasam. I did not realize my Chai was getting cold as I moved arnd the kitchen cooking black channa for the shundal, helping the Arien as he mixed the batter for the Kozhakattai, and arranging the flowers around Ganesha for the puja. By the time, we finished with all the items and the puja it was 1 p.m and I realized that we had not had breakfast yet. Surprisingly, the Arien had not gotten all worked up and cranky and so it was fine.

We were having lunch at the senior Arien's place and we carried all the goodies to their place as well. Of course, the Taurean did not feel tht our kozhaikattai matched the ones that paatee used to make. The Arien actually got us an Achhu to ensure that our kozhakattai did not end up shapeless :) The Achhu was garlic shaped and so we had garlic-shaped kozhakattais and we had used sugar instead of Jaggery and so the Taurean did not like it much. But who cares, I liked my kozhakattai and I am sure Ganesha did as well.

The Ganesha clay idol that we had purchased this time, seemed very close to my heart and I did not want to perform the Visarsan but of course, that was not right and so with a heavy heart, I performed the visarsan on Thursday with the Arien's help. It was a lovely Ganesha Chaturthi, unlike the earlier ones and I enjoyed every lil bit.

Eve of Ganesh Chaturthi

The day before Ganesh Chaturthi was a busy day - house was swept and swabbed by yours truly with a lot of help from the Arien. With all the help and support, the cleaning was actually complete only by 5 pm. Naturally, it was 6 pm when we finally left to shop for the ganesha idol, flowers, and other misc items that form part of what we know as Vinayaka Chaturthi.

The next 3 hours were spent in:

• haggling over the prices, vendors usually hike the price of the items on the eve of a festival;
• identifying stale items that the sellers try to sneak in;
• walking up and down a narrow street that already had too many ppl on it + a few two-wheelers+ some autos, and of course, an occassional four-wheeler and;
• lugging an amazing amt of stuff that is required for the festival and of course, the chief guest of this festival, the cute Gannu (Ganesha Idol).

(Parallelism ki jai !!)

We spent the next 1 hour worrying if the idol would keel over everytime the Arien hit the brake, turned rashly, or did sm arbit stunt. However, nothing untoward happened and we reached hm safely. The Arien had decided that we would make kozzakattai and vadai as well. I was ready to faint. So did I make the kozzakattai? Chk out next post which has the details :)