Think And You Have Received

As a normal tiresome day at college came to an end, I got into the college bus waiting to get back home. The one thing different that day was that I had a lot of friendship bands tied on my wrist. As I sat down chit-chatting with my fellow travellers, there came up a conversation about rakshabandan occuring the next day. As the conversation continued, I was in my own world thinking about asking mom to get me few rakhis that evening, so that I can celebrate Rakshabandan for the first time. Rakshabandan normally coincides with Avaniaavittam and that meant all my brothers meet up in one place to perform the thread changing rituals.


As I reached home, I found the house full of students. Admist them was my mother, glancing at a book through her reading glasses. I refreshed myself and ran to the kitchen shouting for my evening coffee. She came in a second later and started preparing my coffee. Then came in one the kids asking something. I shouted at her, asking her to get back to her seat and wait for two minutes. I hate it when someone gets between when she prepares my evening coffee and snacks.

Ten minutes and I was off to accompany my mother with my scheduled job of teaching. One hour had gone and mom reminded me that it was time to go for our dance rehearsal. She was already kick-starting the 'sunny'. After assigning them work, We left the stundents under my bro's supervision and proceeded to the choreographer's house.


Being known for her punctuality, we were at the spot on time to find no one else there. In the hall, we sat facing each other on the sofa. She looked at my wrist and suddenly something flashed across her mind. She spoke slowly, "I have got 9 rakhis at home. Tomorrow is Rakshabandan. All of them will be present at our place for avaniavittam. You can tie the rakhis then. Also I got 10 pieces of Diary milk. When you tie a rakhi you need to give a sweet also" I smiled. I wanted to ask how she knew what I thought hours ago and had already forgotten. But then I knew she did the shopping in the early hours of the day, long before I thought about it. Then I said, "for whom is that extra diary milk?" She said "That is for your uncle's helper boy, Murugan. Poor boy, he will feel left alone. So give him one too."

It might be apt to say 'Ask and you shall receive' when you talk about GOD. When it comes to her,
it's 'Think and you have received already.'

Nine years pass by since you bid adieu. But what I am today is what you did to me.

Nanganallur Days – Nostalgia

The last time I really celebrated Pongal was in 2002. That was when we had put 5 Rangoli Patterns in front of our sweet home, 1 in front of the door, 2 inside the house and 1 in the courtyard. With Mom preparing the 2 versions of pongal for breakfast, the spirit of the festival was achieved to the fullest. I never realized her pongal was the best until I started missing. Since then I neither had the time nor the interest to celebrate the festival (any for the matter) with the same spirit.

This year seems to be a really dull pongal, considering the number of emails, SMSs or scraps flowing in. The festival falling on a weekday, it had to be somebody or the other to remind me about the day. I wished just four people all day. Today being a holiday in this country, my cousins wanted to compensate for what was missed out yesterday in terms of food. So he pulled out a bunch of papers containing the recipe for ‘Ven Pongal’ and ‘Sakarai Pongal’. (Not that we are cooking pongal for the first, jus that our kind of cooking is slightly different from the regular tamil style). The very sight of the picture (below) got my thoughts wandering about the Nanganallur days. I have spent about 2 solid years in this place and I miss the Nanganallur Anjaneyar temple like crazy.



My house hunt in Chennai was getting really scary, considering the n number of problems: water, cost of rent, neighbourhood and distance from my workplace. It got too complicated for me and I left it to my dad to find one. After some research, he landed up in this under-developed (no longer) area. Madam luck being with us, we found a really good house without compromising on any of the above mentioned factors. Enough of water, Affordable rent, excellent landlords and 20 minutes drive to office. There I promised Mr.Anjaneyar that I will pay him a visit every day.

I did justice to that promise atleast for some time until the leading road became unusable for days due to the heavy floods. But I never stopped visiting the temple, though not every day. Apart from the peace of mind I got there, the below are the various reasons for the affinity I had towards the temple

1. Pepper Rice: Distributed every day in the evening probably a little later than 7 PM. The best Prasad they ever made, amazingly tasty.
2. Ven Pongal: Distributed every day Morning. I used to have my second breakfast before going to work. Very taThis is where my thoughts landed up today morning when I saw the pic.
3.Sakkarai Pongal: Distributed every day in the evening around 7 PM. If you are early for pepper rice you will be lucky enough to get this.
4.Puliodhare: I know this is available in the weekdays. But I normally get this when I visit the temple during the weekend in the mornings a little later than my usual time.
5.Curd Rice: Yummy, but I never got chances that frequently.
6.Vada: These are hard and can be preserved for days together, but have a taste similar to that of the regular ‘uzhundhu vadai’
7.Sundal: Or I woukd say ‘Chundal’. Normally made of chick peas and available early in the evenings.

Looking back at Point #2, I have been celebrating pongal for almost 2 years. And it took me almost three years to realize this!!!!!!!

........To be Continued

Games Sweet Games

Few days back, we were returning home after watching a movie and suddenly a conversation picked up about the games we played in our childhood. From then on I have been putting up a list in my mind.

Chogi:

All you need is 4 small sea shells and it will keep you engaged for hours together. My aunt was the mentor. The game begins with rolling the 4 shells (like rolling dice) and you are eligible to start playing once all the four shells land on the floor facing upward or downward uniformly. Once you find the luck, you can start tossing the four shells in the air and try catching them using the back side of your hand and then drop them on the floor positioning them in a certain manner to grab points.

Aggravation:

This is an advanced version of Ludo, almost the same rules, but the board is bigger and 6 players can play at a time.

Brainvita:

A board and 44 marbles, you can spend hours alone. Start by jumping one marble over the other and remove the later. The aim of the game is to reach at one marble by jumping and removing.


Tell Me Quiz

Quizzing Game. Take turns to draw a quiz card and spin the alphabet wheel. Answer the given question in a single word starting with the lucky alphabet.

Scrabble:

Crossword game, build words on the board and grab points for each alphabet. The rarer of the alphabets you use, the higher points you score. Luck matters when you pick your alphabets and you can have only seven alphabets at a time.

Business/Moneyply/Monopoly/Trade:

Trading game, where you buy and sell places as such. It’s such fun when you know you own Darjeeling, Mumbai (Business) or Miami Beach (Moneyply). Another such game, I can recollect playing was ‘Barbie Goes shopping’ where you purchase household furniture to set up the house for your Barbie.

Dark Room

Get into a dark room and hide under the tables, behind the curtains or beneath the cot or choose a corner for yourself. Once ready, call the seeker into the pitch dark room. He’s got to find and identify you in the dark.

Memory:

It’s a pack of 56 pairs of square picture cards. Shuffle them and lay them on the floor facing down. In turns, pick up 2 cards at a time; if they match they are yours, else place them back. Every time you get a pair, you play an extra chance. At the end the player who grabs the maximum number of pairs is the winner.

King, Queen & Robber

It’s a game for 5-6 people - King, queen, Jack, Minister, Police and robber. Write each one of these on a piece of paper and shuffle the lot. Each picks a piece and keeps his role a secret except for the King. The King has to find the Queen. If he’s right he gets full points. If he’s wrong, he’s got to exchange the chit. This way the queen finds the Jack, then the minister and so on.

Book Cricket

All you need is a school text book and a plain sheet of paper. The batsman opens the book randomly and the score is based on the last digit of the even page number. It’s up to you to decide the number of balls or the form of game.

Uno Cards

It’s a pack of cards (similar to the playing cards, 4 colours, Each colour contains numbers 0-9, colour change, +4, +2, skip and reverse.) It’s one game that keeps you engaged for hours together. Shuffle the cards and distribute 7 cards to each player. One player plays a card, the next one has to play a card that has the same number or the same colour else he has to skip his turn after drawing an extra card. The player who gets rid of his cards the earliest is the winner.

Trump Cards

It’s yet another pack of cards. Each card contains a photograph of a WWF champion, with some statistics like his ranking, weight, height, biceps, etc...Shuffle and distribute the cards among the players. Each player plays one card at a time and compares the statistics with the other players’ cards. The player with the card that has the best statistics gets all the cards.

It used to be real fun when we as kids used to gather a gang at home decide on a game (sometimes it takes hours) and sit together around the board and play. Parents used to keep us fed with snacks and beverages at regular intervals. Purchasing new indoor games was the first activity we do when school closes for summer holidays. Indoor games used to be our way to keep us engaged for the 2 month span by passing the heat.

Now are the days when most of these are available as flash games or executable programs and the kids are getting used to playing games with the computer all alone at home.

The ‘Dave’ Days

I have never been crazy after video games or computer games during my entire life. Yes I love to play a few small games. PacMan has been my favorite for quite some time now. I have heard my bro talk about counter strike where they do heavy setup at home connecting n number of comps and laptops. I have the least idea what the game is all about, I can guess from the name though. Am sure that in no way can it be compared to the flash games I play.

The first time, I can recollect having played video games was when my uncle gifted us with a video game console with 2 joysticks. It was supposed to have 1000 games built in (I doubt it). The package used to lie in the shaft at home through out the year. We used to dust it out and connect it to the television set during our summer vacation. (Used to imagine ourselves as great techies at that time) There were a couple of games similar to PacMan and all kind of sports (football, tennis, racing, etc ...). Most of the games were shoot out games and there was one or two related to spellings.

Then came the computer days. We always had a computer at home, though unfortunately, we couldn’t use it that efficiently (for playing games). Initially we had a lower configuration comp (upgraded from MS-DOS) that wouldn’t survive if we loaded games on it. It was used to type out question papers rather (no better than a typewriter). Inspite of all these restrictions, we managed to play ‘Dave’, spending hours during the night. This game seemed to have impressed us so much that we normally ended up fighting for the comp often. Later we gave up the comp as my dad had arranged to get another one for his business use and the idea of having two comps at home was not that appealing. We were thrilled about the new comp as it was supposed to be of a great configuration. At the end, we felt that the old one was better, as we were not allowed to install/play games or any other software for personal use. We used to keep ourselves satisfied with Solitaire or Minesweeper (I like this one also) and the ‘Dave’ days died off slowly.

After my college days, I never had a comp at my place of stay and so no more games (apart from the ones I used to play on my mobile phone to kill time) until I got my laptop a few months back. Two days back, I was browsing through my bro’s comp and was amused to find the ‘Dave’ game (I wouldn’t have even remembered the name if I hadn’t found it there). Since then I have played that game more than a dozen times and have already copied it to my Laptop as well. Now nothing can stop me from loading it to my laptop. After all it’s mine.