Aapki Nazaron ne Samjha has been uploaded after a lot requests. Check it out here.I had been to a wedding yesterday in Trissur and since I hail from the place I love the traditional cuisine. Infact a survey held on the best traditional food in Kerala, the place won it.I think Cochin was included as it shares the same kind of style. The best is the payasam, 3 kinds. And though I am an ex NRI and have not eaten a lot of traditional stuff in the traditional way and been to the big weddings and blah blah blah blah blah... I LOVE having the payasam in the banana leaf aka *ela* which a lot of "non NRIs don't know of". I hate the whole assumption of NRIs don't know this and that and they are just a bunch of show offs who try to rub off their desi culture and bring in a lot of foriegn goods and are fussy about using local stuff. I mean woteva! It's so untrue...and that's not the way we are. Infact the moment I meet some localites ,there are some who speak in a 'put on' engilsh accent and despite my replies in my mother tongue they never seem to get rid off their angrejji. Sometimes I feel people should be their selves first and must accept that we are normal people like them who can eat with hands and can smell with a nose. Anyhow the wedding was a small and a cute one and got to meet up with a lot of 'ol friends. After the Big Fat Malu wedding we went back to Trivandrum and surprisingly there aren't any rains here. I love travelling by the 4:15 bus coz then you get to see Cochin in the lights. It's as though they celebrate everyday. Have never seen so much of lights and enthusiasm in any other place in Kerala except for a special festival like Onam or something. The place is so tempting that everytime I pass the branded stores there is this urge to break the window and jump out to get some real shopping done. Yeps, I am maaad about clothes-shopping. I hate shopping anything else. But clother be it indian or traditional..it's just my thing. Usually by eight or so the bus stops at a hotel where the people always serve the passengers. But this time we went to different one. More like a 'thattukada'. I've always fancied eating there since a child. And I must say, that's one thing we NRIs never got to do :)

Today we had a lunch party at my neighbour's place as an acknowledgement of the fixation of his marriage. I went there only for lunch (food factor always works) and my favourite was the 'ada payasam'. Apparently in traditional Trivandrum food 'semiya payasam' is always served on top of the Boli. My mom had taught me the Hindi name i.e. puran poli (or something like that) since she spent major part of her life in Bombay. I don't like the taste of that dish nor do I like to have it with the payasam. But in Trivandrum weddings if the payasam is served without the Boli then the sadya is termed as a 'bad' one. Once I and dad had flied to Chennai through Kingfishers and they give this menu card for a choice of the snack we want. Now I saw these weird names and asked my dad if he really wanted to have. Now my dad is a terrible foody and sticks to his all time favourtie *mummy ka khana*. But I didn't want to miss it so thought of ordering the chicken one. When the snack was served, actually it's not right to call it a snack ,it was some kind of a 'mid dinner' (as the flight was in the evening). The had noodles and chocolate truffle (desert) and the starters was chat stuff. Batata Vada if I am not wrong. In the menu it was given this long weird name something starting with a T. It took the chef (perhaps) three long words to describe our very own Mumbai ki chat...arre apna ghar ka khana. But it's an art to translate all these names to English though I didn't get a word of it. Anyways, the food was great and so was the truffle. You never know how time goes in a short domestic flight but in the international ones ,one can die of boredom. When I was younger we used to fly to Mumbai first and then to Kerala. So for the former we used to fly by Gulf Airways and I used to love that airlines only coz they had a screen and used to even distribute toys to small kids like me. Maybe it's their job to give those toys off cos I never even had to give them the cute smile. After that in tenth I couldn't take my days off during summer hols cos I am in 10th !!!! Something parents and teachers used to consider as big as the World war where a soldier better fight through or else it's goli maar bheje mein. Thankfully my math tuition sir said I could take two weeks off cos I am progressing well :) Math runs in my family blood. And that is the right reason for the good scoring in my boards only for math. That was the only subject where I scored above 90. A 96 to be precise. And I boast about it even today cos earlier I was compared to my sister as she had topped the board for scoring the highest in maths at that time. So it was an 'obvious' assumption that I had to lead the family tradition as though it's like carrying the olympic torch or something. So with my musical shows and basky and whatnot I was quite adamant about scoring somewhere near sis. For the sake of my prestige. Since then math is my most favourite subject. Honestly, it is. I don't have the brains for an invention or for mugging up raaga names. Am not too spontaneous on answering the name of the raaga for any given song. But math....I am good at it.I guess it's cos it runs in the family and maybe I am the first one to initiate a musical background at the Vattappillys. But I hate physics. From the bottom of my heart I never found even a tinge of connectivity of the subject with math. I mean V= IR or whatever never seemed to do anything with math except for the ODMAS. But if you see that way then everything is math's sibling. Like in geography we have graphs represented by numbers that too decimals! Enough of bragging. I have this tendency of deviating from the topic everytime. Can never keep it succinct unless it demands. I actually wanted to say that that year I didn't fly to Bombay and had to fly through an other airlines and it totally sucked. I mean no screens, no toys (I know I was 15 then, and a big girl..but still) and horrible food. After that flying was so boring that I wish I could be a superwoman or something to just click on some gadget attached to my wrist and say hooolaaa..and whoosh I reach the destination. But this time I flew though Jet Airways...great food, single screens, and the best of all.... ok never mind ,I cannot mention such things in blog :P My best friend calls me a radio FYI. And therefore it's the no. (___) FM station in the blog world {the ___ can be filled with an appropriate number between 1 and 2, no decimals allowed as per rules}....... *Stay tuned* :D

Back Home

Finally.... did some serious duty free shopping!! And don't laugh , I know I am still a teen and way old for all these things...I got a soft toy.. a CAMEL !! Baby camel and daddy camel. By the time mummy camel came it was way too pricy!! and it had worn pink lipstick (yuck). So I thought I'll nurture the toy and be it's mummy. So I am big time name-hunting for both the toy camels. Any brilliant ideas??? Please do drop in... coz I really need them. From quite a young age I was fascinated and excited about naming my toys. Not all of them literally but I used to get so many kinds of dolls. Some were bald headed and some I got as a set with the mirror, hairbrush and even a makeup set. I never liked changing names of dolls who already had a name inscribed inside the cover. The only problem was two or three of them would be similiar cos most of them had names like Sally, Polly, Solly, Sarah. I used to even take care of my doll's hair more than mine. Till date :) Serious naming happened when I got my first pet, my 17th birthday gift, a fish! I named it Bangudai which means blue pearl, I think, in Chinese *giggle*.It was blue in colour and a fighter like me. Such fishes are usually isolated coz they can't live without quarelling physically, I guess. And when it died on Feb 27th, I was too scared to even look at it. Aaaaahh.....I am giving my self some time to still recover from that tragedy. So the end of the story is that I got the camel soft toy cos I was brought up in a desert and felt that it is my duty to get something that represents a desert and hence *tan ta daaa* the camel. So please suggest some cute names.

Since dad is quitting after his 28 years of service we had to cancel off our family visa and resident cards. It felt as though a baby is cutting it's ambilical chord from that of it's mother. But here I am not potraying the freedom the baby gets out of that , it's the detachment it goes through after having survived nine months in the stomach which gave it routes, breathed in life ,circulated the blood and got it prepared for the big battle to venture life with it's first cry. The pain of leaving that warmth, that secured feeling, that 'apartment' !! That's exactly how I felt when the counter guy was cancelling things on his system and he just threw my resident card away. Now if I ever go back it will be as a guest not as a home person *sigh*

The flight was good after all Jet Airways has just started it's fly to Cochin recently. Watched Aaja Nachle and the 'coconut flavoured sweet with a mango tinge' a.k.a. parippu payasam was bad!! While landing we were going through unfavourable weather conditions and alerted us to put on our seat belts. As I shelved up the window board we were flying right through the clouds. Clouds were looking like a cotton candy. Everytime we get into a biiig cloud the whole plane would start shaking. As we neared the land the whole journey from the white cotton candies to the lagoons.. WHATTAA SIGHT !! I started of seeing bald mountains and sandy deserts and landed seeing green cultivation. What a transformation! One cultivation was even shaped like an 'WA'...not a W and an A but something like a V and another V that makes a W and curves down to to make an A. It even had the line between the two lines that form an A. Now that's beautiful nature !

After landing ,our driver took us to Trivandrum straight where I was trying to prepare for my English exam- Novel and communicative English. So much for street lights!! I thought I would crash as soon as I reach home but Brunie's barking woke me up from my dreamy world and there I went off like a non stop radio till twelve or so. With a lot of compulsion and pleading they changed my FM Station to off mode and there I was sleeping like a baby.

Exam was good today except for the Phonetics. I guess I created my own symbols *lol* Next is Sanskrit, on 29th. Abhigyana Shakuntalam and Keralodayam. From the luring tales of the sparkling romance between King Dushyanth and Shakuntala to the manliness of Parasuramam. I have no clue how I am going to finish learning the foursectioned drama and the Mahakavyam of 1oo slokas. So until next post 'Jai Sanskrit!'