But it’s in parrots,
beaks like red chillies,
that I suddenly see,
you take another flight.

Dear Lali,

3 years to the day. Really miss you, with my mind wandering to you everytime I make rasam, see a crossword, write a poem or listen to Rafi. Or see a parrot.

Love,
Chinna Ponnu (older by 3 years, but still…)

PS: Silly me. Forgot to send you a song. Here, you quite liked this one. Even translated the Telugu version for me.

When friends have children, it’s like being given a chance to love your own friend like they were a baby. In their children, I see them.

I now have nanna munna rahi-s all over the world. How lovely is that..

But I do recall this absurd incident. I was rather young, perhaps about 12, and found myself at a friend’s place who had regular bhajan mandali gatherings. While I was aware of some carnatic songs, when I was asked to sing a ‘tamil bhajan’ I just froze. On an average, I had already found that heavy carnatic numbers didn’t really suit a majority of North Indian tastes. Actually they didn’t even suit a majority of South Indian tastes.

So it was, more out of performance anxiety than any actual desire to be clever, I sang Roja Poo Aadi Vandandu (Agni Nakshatram). Amala (so cute!) and Prabhu (also so cute then!) prance about aerobically. I knew the words to the entire song because I’d helped my cousin decipher them and write them down in her big brown book that I’ve written about earlier.

I think AK’s parents felt that it wasn’t very bhajan like, but they sweetly smiled and let me finish, before giving me two laddoos. Well, for some people working out is like religion etc. (If you know me at all, you know that’s not true for me.)

PS: AK, I doubt if you read this blog, but if you do, apologies for ilayaraja-bombing your bhajan.

Also, have a lovely Pongal. Just eat a lot. Okay?

How am I celebrating my Dashmi? So far, by lighting an incense stick, and rebelling against the formal attire culture by wearing something with a little dash of orange and brown. Little block prints on a white shirt. Maybe I’ll make a little payasam today. I don’t know. If I am in the right mood, we might have a feast today for dinner. But in this (lack of) festive food induced homesickness – I came across this article in the Guardian -

As grown-up cooks and food lovers we all owe an enormous amount to the people who cooked for us as children. Sometimes it’s a dish, sometimes it’s a whole food culture. For some it’s a sworn intent never to eat that badly again but, for me it’s the inherited belief that there is something profoundly enriching in making the best food you can for the people you love – an idea that still, I hope, continues to affect everything I do.

What culinary inheritance did your mum leave you?

My mother never tastes as she is cooking. She probably doesn’t realize it. But for a lot of folks who need to do the neivedyam, to be able to cook a perfect dish without tasting it becomes a matter of habit. And it’s something I have inherited I think. I can’t taste the dish till it’s completely done. It just doesn’t feel right. Also, it makes you mess it up. For instance, if you taste sambhar half way through, when the smell of the sambhar powder hasn’t quite gone, you’ll find yourself wondering if there is too little salt. You end up adding salt. But in the end when half the liquid has evaporated, you’ll find it too salty.

My mother never taught me how to cook. When I first started cooking, it was the memory of watching her put a pinch of this, and a fistful of something else that informed my cooking style. Don’t measure, trust your judgment. And never, ever stand over something that’s cooking and sniff violently. It’s disgusting. Don’t double dip. And constantly recycle utensils. Mostly, that it’s okay to take short cuts, and how well you cook is not a measure of who you are as a person.

My dad on the other hand, doesn’t quite cook as much. But he has his signature dishes. And he’s the one who gave me a weird taste for combinations. Like toasted bread (with a little nei on one side) dipped in rasam. Or a liking for raw rice, roasted coffee beans, raw vadams, raw maggi. You get the idea. And at one point, he used to make brilliant omelettes. When my mother wasn’t well, and recovering from a surgery recently, he did most of the cooking. My mother ate it up. It must have pretty good.

Cooking for others is pretty gratifying. Ask my friends, they’ll tell you how readily I cook for them.

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Back in my day, it was part of compulsory training, especially getting the Tak Bak Tak Bak Chak Bak Bak part right. If kids can’t even sign the first verse of Lakdi Ki Kathi, I shudder to think what kind of an education they’re getting. I wish I could gather desi kids and get them to learn this song by rote, and make them run around in circles singing it.

I should have done my dissertation on this topic.

She took up knitting one winter. My memory may fail me slightly but the yarn was thick and bright orange. I don’t know if she bought that yarn or if it was gifted to her. But there was enough of it to make two sweaters. She embarked on the project. She gave up in the middle I think. Perhaps a friend of hers finished the job. But what was to be a bright orange full sleeve sweater turned out to be a sleeveless and slightly tight. I also discovered then that I had a strange reaction to certain kinds of wool. It left my face red and puffy, and I constantly wanted to scratch the insides of my throat. She loves me to death.. my mother. But she can’t knit. Actually, being a supermom, she probably CAN knit, but she doesn’t like to.

I associated knitting with a certain kind of afternoon activity. In Delhi, you can see lots of people on extended lunch breaks in the winters. The men sit with their cups of tea and the women drink tea too. But they also knit. A furious vision of flying yarn on needles, automagically becoming something, someone might want to wear. I never really thought much about knitting before I met rr. She knits, and oh! so beautifully!

Thus it was that rr embarked on the Hat For Neha Project (HFNP). I found the colour I liked and she began knitting furiously. In fact, today I saw her live in action knitting a sock. Perhaps it was the sheer range of colours on the yarn, or maybe it was that complicated process that took four needles. But it was beautiful to just watch her knit away as we were getting back to Central London on a train. She’s changed the way I look at knitting. I am seriously considering learning the art.

And the hat that she knit me? It’s warm, comfortable and I have it on good authority (rr’s) that it makes me look rather nice. I didn’t want to take it off, even when the sun was out.