Category Archives: Family

These are a few of my Favourite Things

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As the song goes….Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens…..from the Sound of Music, one of my favourite movies growing up. I must have seen the movie so many times that I think at one point, I could recite all the dialogues and songs, I loved it so much!

My favourite people in the world are my kids and S, followed by my parents. I think I can spend days with them, of course, sometimes each of them do things that infuriate me and irritate me, but I love them loads and can’t live without them. One of my secret worries in life is losing any of them – losing a child is a parent’s worst nightmare and I am also the same, but everytime S is late and I can’t reach him, I start imagining the worst. Another nightmare I am still not ready for is for my parents to leave me. I know, logically and practically, this will happen sometime, but I want this to happen later than sooner. I am still not ready to not have my parents at the other end of a phone call!

The next thing I can’t really live without are books, of course! I love reading and as it’s evident here and in my other blog, I need to read as much as I need to breathe. This has gotten me into lots of trouble in school (think reading in class, material that the rest of them had not yet graduated to). I was a very precocious reader, very often reading books 3-4 grades above. In the school library, I remember there was this cupboard which was mostly kept locked. I used to wonder what was in there that they didn’t want us to read and once somewhere in grade 7 or 8, I got the librarian to open it up as I had read all the books in the shelves meant for us. There I discovered adult books. I remember reading George Orwell’s 1984 around that age. It may not seem great these days for a 12/13 year old to reach such books, but in those days, given that there was no internet, India was still a socialist economy, people didn’t read for fun. I was that oddball who wanted to read, not because it was mandated by school, but because I just wanted to. We didn’t have access to many books beyond the school library and I remember I used to beg and borrow books, so much that I used to read older students school books (subjects like History, Geography and English) just so I had material to read!

I am so glad BB & GG, especially GG share my love for reading. GG is a lot like me in this respect, she will probably read a lot and widely as she grows up. BB is more a non-fiction boy – he prefers to read what his passions are – which is usually something to do with planes, cars and trains (in that order). I have to push him to read fiction.

Another favourite thing is music. Most days at work, I am plugged into earphones listening to music while working (I am listening to new age music as I type this). I usually listen to Indian music, mostly Bollywood music while at work, but I also like Fusion, New Age and Classical (both Indian and Western). I rarely, if never, listen to western rock and pop. I may change my mind sometime, if GG & BB start listening to such music at home, but as of now, it’s not something that still appeals to me.

Travelling to new places, soaking up on different cultures and learning new things are among the other things I adore. Since BB & GG’s birth, we haven’t done much travel, but the last year or so, we’ve made it a point to visit a new place each trip. Now that they move to secondary school and are teens/young adults, I envision more trips in the future. I plan to start taking them around the region and then the world’s our oyster. We do need to make periodic trips to India to keep in touch with our roots as well as visit the grandparents and other relatives (part of keeping in touch with your roots), but I want to add small side trips each time to a different part of India. India is so vast and beautiful, with so much to offer, that it’ll take a while before we discover the whole country. I have a big bucket list of places to see before I die and should start making a serious dent on that list.

So here you have – a list of some of my favourite things. I’ll leave you with the song which inspired this post, Maria’s favourite things from The Sound of Music

Festivals of India: Maha Shivaratri

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This year, I have decided to blog about all the major Hindu festivals as well as those of other faiths which are celebrated in Singapore. This will serve mainly as a repository of knowledge for GG & BB, when I am not around…

So yesterday, Hindus across the world celebrated Maha Shivratri. This is an annual festival which is celebrated in honor of one of the triumvirate of the Hindu pantheon of Gods – Lord Shiva. This day, celebrated as the convergence of Shiva and Shakti (male and female) is the day Lord Shiva married the Goddess Parvati. It is also said this is the day when Lord Shiva performed the Tandava dance, a dance which is the source of the cycle of creation, preservation and dissolution.

Devotees celebrate this festival principally by fasting all day and offering bael leaves to the Lord as well as staying up the whole night in prayer and contemplation. It is said that the planetary positions in the Northern Hemisphere on this day act as a potent catalyst to help a person raise their spiritual energy. The benefits of powerful ancient Sanskrit mantras such as Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra increase greatly on this night.

This Wikipedia link has some nice stories on this day which is a nice read.

The holiest of the Shiva temples in India are called the Jyotirlingas. There are 12 such temples, spread across the country. More information is here

Personally, though Lord Shiva is the kuladevta (or family deity) of S’s family, we don’t really do anything special on this day. There are no special prayers or dishes we make to commemorate this day.

Festivals of India: Pongal O Pongal

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This week all over India, various communities will be celebrating/would have celebrated their Harvest festivals. In the southern part of India, specifically Tamil Nadu, today is the day that is celebrated as Pongal.

Not to be confused with the yummy sweet and salt Pongal dishes, the festival of Pongal is a harvest festival celebrated by Tamil people all over the world around 13-16 January each year. This is a four day festival which is according to the Gregorian calendar, unlike most Hindu festivals, which are based on the lunar calendar and marks the start of the sun’s six-month long journey northwards or Uttarayan as it’s called in Sanskrit. This is also celebrated as Makar Sankranti in other parts of India.

The word Pongal in Tamil means ‘overflowing’ and signifies abundance and prosperity. The celebrations for the four day festival start with ‘Bhogi Pongal’ with the worship of Lord Indra, the ruler of clouds and rains to thank him for a season of good rainfall and to make sure he blesses the farmer with just enough rain to ensure abundant harvest. The next day is ‘Thai Pongal’ which is the main festival day. People wake up before sunrise and bathe and get ready and at the time of sunrise, ritually boil fresh milk and let it overflow the earthern pot it is being boiled in. When the boiling happens, people shout “Pongalo Pongal” which means “Let there be prosperity and abundance everywhere”.  The third day is set aside for the animals in the household called ‘Mattu Pongal‘ to give them thanks for the work they do helping the farmer with his harvest. The farm animals, specifically the bulls and cows are scrubbed up and decorated and treated with goodies. The last day is a time for family reunions, called ‘Kaanum Pongal‘ where brothers give their married sisters special gifts and employers gift their employees. This marks the end of the Pongal festivities for the year.

Other harvest festivals celebrated in India include Bihu in Assam, Lohri in Punjab and Makar Sankranti in Gujarat, my home state of Maharashtra and other states in India

This is basically a festival meant to thank the Sun God  for a good harvest and has been celebrated for more than 1000 years, though some historians say it’s older than that.

Culture is important for a human being. You need to know where you come from, what your values are, so that, as custodians of the next generation, you are able to pass it on. This post is so BB & GG know where they come from and are able to pass it to their children and grand-children!

A Cousin a Day keeps the Boredom Away

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“Nobody will understand the craziness of your family better than your cousins”

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Cousins are your friends by blood. Not everyone, especially these days of smaller families have cousins who are with them through thick and thin.

My mom is the oldest of four sisters and my dad is the oldest of a younger brother and sister. We’re closer to my mom’s family. My dad lost his sister when I was in school and his brother moved away when I was real young and now we are not in contact with him or his family! I feel real sad that I don’t know my cousins from his side – I have not met them (two boys) in the last 15-18 years and they must be adults now (I last saw them when they were 4 & 8!) I sometimes joke with my dad that if I ever pass them in the street, they would be random strangers to me, that’s how out of touch we are!

I’m the oldest of eight cousins from my maternal side, dominated by girls. Between me and the youngest there’s an 11 year gap. We’re six girls and two boys.

Growing up, we were close, but since we’d meet maybe once a year if lucky, it was not that “tell you all my secrets” type of closeness. Plus, because of the eleven year gap, when I was say fifteen, my youngest cousins were like three or four! I even have memories of my second last cousin’s birth! I remember seeing her as a new-born in the hospital and since she was born in early March, I distinctly remember going to my grandmother’s home for our summer holidays in April/May and being with her. I have memories of begging my aunt to let me hold her and I would sit patiently with her on my lap when my aunt went for a bath or did something else.

However, as we grew up, the age gap somehow closed and we could relate to each other and instead of growing apart, we grew closer!

Thanks to Facebook, emails and social media we got even closer, sharing photos and milestones. It was great, but somehow we were not able to meet due to distances, schedules and what have you. Currently, we’re scattered all over the world – Hong Kong, Singapore, India, UK, USA and Canada – you get the picture right, when someone is free in one part of the world, the others are busy in another!

However it was last year, when one of my youngest cousins got married, we really started connecting with each other. Before the wedding, we started a Whatsapp group to discuss what to give her. This was something we started when the first one of us got married. In addition to the family gift with the parents, we wanted to give something special to our cousin and at that time, with hardly anyone working, it used to be small. Now that we can afford it, it’s more expensive.

It was great fun at the wedding – we had the time of our lives and missed the one cousin who could not make it. Then we decided to keep in touch more since it was so much fun and since then there’s hardly a day when texts are not pinging their way across the globe.

Cousins brighten up your life so much, that I hope BB & GG also have the same relationship with their cousins, both first and second (aka children of my cousins)

Sunday

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Yesterday, after quite some time, we went out as a family. What with S’s erratic work schedule, we hardly get time to go out together. We decided to check out the new mall in Jurong East – JCube. My impressions – same as all the other malls. Nothing so very different except for one shop Payless Shoes. Wow! So many shoes and the best part is that there were so many options in my size. My size is longer than the average size worn by women here and so it’s quite difficult for me to get good and reasonably priced shoes. I tried on many, but didn’t buy any. I will definitely go back when (if) I start working again. GG was also super impressed there. She’s getting to the age when all these things – shoes, bags, make-up are simply fascinating to her!

The USP of this mall is that they have Singapore’s biggest and only Olympic sized ice skating rink. GG wanted to to go in and try it out, but since we didn’t come prepared, I had to persuade her not to. We’ve promised her to come back and try skating there another day though!

We also had dinner at Chilis. Normally at most malls, it’s a challenge to find food to eat as we are vegetarians. But Chilis had some vegetarian options and we had American Southwestern (Tex-Mex) food. The portion sizes were huge and we could not finish our food. So a lesson for the next time – order less and share!

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S’s dinner – Enchiladas

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My dinner – Veggie BurgerImage

My Drink – Strawberry Lemondae – Super Yummy

Our starters which we couldn’t finish and had to take home in a doggie bag!