Today is my Happy birthday to me : V Nayak

I wanted to write this blog, on the day of vinayak chaturthi;Thought it would be fitting.Anyways belated happy vinayak chaturthi blogging.First of all, like many might think Vinayak chaturthi is not lord Ganapathy's birthday. There is a long story as to why we celebrate this festival in such a big way.Especially vinayak chaturthi is celebrated in a big way in South India and Maharastra.

For some reason, known only to the god himself, my favourite god is lord Ganesh. Oh now come on, dont ask that question "How can some one have a favourite god ?" I have favourite food, favourite colour, favourite IPL team, they why shouldn't I have a favourite God ?? I do have and I will continue to have and no one can question me.

Whenever its ganesh chaturthi, the first thing that comes to every ones mind is Kudumu / Kozhukatta or however you refer to in your mother tongue. Yeah its called "modhak" in hindi if i am correct. Its a sweet thats made of rice floor and coconut pooran. This pooran is a kind of caremelized coconut burfi except that the sweetner used here is jaggery.

Now that you are familiar with Kudumu / Kozhukata / Modhak, I guess you are all set to know about the real story behind vinayak chaturthi. As the legend goes, after an All hands Extra ordinary general body meeting that took place in heaven, vinayak was taking lot of goodies and eatables distributed in the meeting, back to his place. To be precise he was carrying modhaks in one hand and coconuts on the other hand. He had given a spectacular performance during the lunch and his stomah was bloating. To make sure the stomach was intact he had to use a snake as a belt. He was taking a stroll towards his own palace and on the way he met the most handsome dude of their time, Mr Moon. Like you might have figured out, Mr Moon with 6 pack abs was making fun of Vinayak. This very act of Mr cool dude enraged Vinayak, and he cursed moon saying whoever looks moon from then would have a sheen less life.

Later Moon was upset and felt bad about his act and wrote a small poem on vinayak, he also read that out to vinayak. This made vinayak to take voppas of his curse. ( voppas means taking back, this is a widely used word in India, apparently the etymology is hindi)

This is the story behind Sankata hara chaturthi, which literally means chaturthi that removes all the miseries. I am sure this blog would be a reference to those kids outhere onsite working at the customer's place.

By the way if at all there is any doubt on the authenticity of the legend, don't worry its something that I came to know from my granny. So it has to be true, obviously it was told by my granny.

Ganapathy bappa moria

Toddlers

There was an article that I came across recently about spending one's time. The author had quoted a study which says spending time with kids under age 6 and old people above age 60 would help us to relax and it also would add some amount of personal development.Well I never gave a damn about such articles. I just read them. I have also read many articles that claim to offer some real, working beauty tips, well for such articles I don't stop after reading, I even try them out. A thought came to me, why is that I tried beauty tips and not the time spending stuff....Well I am not sure.

But for sure I have spent so much time with toddlers. Really its amazing to see how much energy they have. Perhaps when I was a kid, I too had so much energy in me.Spending time with them means you get lot of patience, you get to understand their thought process,you get to grab the meaning from unspoken words. This is definitely a lot of learning and can indeed contribute to our personal development.

There is this kid in the ground floor apartment who comes to my place on a daily basis. For some reason he finds it interesting to play with us. Very funny to observe that these kids prefer to play only with things that cost more than 5 to 6 grands. One day he came to our place and was playing as usual. Suddenly he started calling every one in his childish lingo and grabbed every one's hand and guided us to the balcony. From the first floor we get a very good view of the street below. He was pointing his tiny fingers towards something and by default we thought he was pointing at the street dogs that we along with the kid used to feed. The dog was sniffing at something, apparently for the dog anything that came from the first floor was edible. But this one was not something that would interest the dog, I have no idea when was the last time a dog was offered a samsung mobile phone to eat.

He also likes this TV program Dora the explorer. Every time he comes to our house he would bring his colouring book along with him and start colouring Dora Marquez, monkey, backpack and the map. This wouldn't stop here , he sould show the newly coloured book to every one atleast 4 times before he thinks about anything else. For him the world is too small, it consists of his mother, the dogs in the street and the dora the explorer. If he had to rate them, sure enough dora would be right on top of the list than the rest.

When was the last time that an elderly person really felt for a starving dog? But this kid is always considerate about them. Whenever he comes to our place he would insist that the dogs get thier share of bread and biscuits. In case we didn't have the stock he would go down to get few loaves of bread and would feed them to the dogs. This indeed gives him a great pleasure and happiness.

I was telling about the energy level they have. Recently I had visited my cousin's place, my nephew over there is a 2 years old kid and he loves to play cricket. As always if its cricket it has to be batting, bowling is something only loosers do. Same was with this kid, he was a batsman. But his understanding of cricket is a little different. there is only one bat and he will have it and there can be any number of balls and it can come from any direction and from anyone and the definition for a ball? it should be round.My cousin was having this soap bubble thing and was blowing lot of bubbles in the air. That means the kid has to play as many balls at a time. The moment the bubbles come out of the straw, he would become hiper active and would bash all the bubbles. One bubble had just landed on my uncle's hip, bang there was a huge blow towards his rib from the kid. His rules are clear, he would beat the round shaped object no matter what.

Another instance of such high levels of glucose in their blood, This kid from the ground floor would climb up and down umpteen times if he had to show something. Any time he gets a new toy car, it has to be first shown to us otherwise he might have a sleepless night.Once it so happened that he had got a wound in his knee, he came to our place and was happily displaying his wound to every one in the family. There was a great joy in him when he was showing his wound to every one, I could see that he was more happy, showing his wound to every one and explaining about it rather than getting worried about the wound itself.On that day my dad was not home until the kid left. He was so prompt to come and explain about that the next day.:)

Deck - Jaana vasam

Hi there, technically this is my first post in my blog.Hmmm I am sure you have also seen the first two posts in the blog. Frankly I had them put in the blog just to make sure that I dont misplace the lyrics. I have been writing for some time but never thought blogging would interest me for all that I have been writing were school home works and college assignments. I have written so much of them and I am sure I used to be the best.

I am blogging because I have been a jack of all trades through out my life, thats 23 years FYI. That means I have a lot to share and that would also mean I wouldn't like to leave blogging untouched, I said I am a jack of all trades that includes blogging as well.

Now about the title " Deck - Jaana vasam " Wonder what that is ?? well I am sure you wouldn't be wondering about that if you are a typical South Indian and for the people who are from all parts of the world that doesn't include South India, the right person who can give details on that would be a South Indian and here is a South Indian writing this blog.

Deck ?? well it has got more than one meaning and thus "Deck" qualifies as a Polysemy.The meaning that we are looking at right now is Tape Deck. Still confused?? Deck is a Video recorder and player. Back in those days, a family has to be very rich to own a Deck, Only the rich and the famous can think about having such high end luxuries. So what do the not so rich and famous people do? yeah they rent it from deck shops or video cassette shops.

Now what is so interesting in renting a deck ? did it cross your mind ? Not bad, first blog still I am able to guess whats going in your mind. Now the interesting part about deck in south India is, If a family decides to rent a deck, the family doesn't watch the tape alone. Now why am I using "family" here? because renting a deck is a family affair. It doesn't happen every now and then. There will be lot of planning, brain storming and all that stuff before the head of the family says a "go ahead". Now that the head of the family has said yes, its a party time. The home maker would get busy with cooking all sorts of snacks, preparing butter milk, rooh afza etc and etc.
Kids would come up with a list of latest movies that hit the silver screen perhaps a couple of years ago - That was latest at that point in time, there is no online download like these days. So now the entire family is all set to welcome the rented Deck and the head of the family has already left to the video rental shop to get the deck. Kids would be eagerly waiting and running towards the door on the sound of an auto,Invariably Decks arrived on autos on those days.
Finally the deck has come and the power has gone...what crap ? a family will plan for almost six months and after a lot of discussion they have decided to rent the deck and now there is no power? Hmmm well what can we do?? The video shop guy would have installed the deck and would have noted the time. After 24 hours he would come back and the deck will be gone. Now there will be lot of prayers, phone calls to the electricity dept and ofcourse kids would curse their bad luck.

Thank god the power cut was not for long, the deck is all set to be played. But there is something missing......Audience..Like I said watching a deck is a ritual. A family can not do that alone. Now its the time to send out last minute invitations to all the nearby friends and relatives. They would be making it to the party, after all the closest family is playing a deck.

The entire thought of deck came to me when I was watching a Jaana Vasam VCD in my uncle's house. I went to my uncle's place to motivate my nephew who is appearing for his board exam this year. After all the sermon I had to make there was a lot of time so my aunt asked me if I would be interested to watch their marriage VCD. Thats when I really understood the cultural change the south India has been subjected to. A decade ago Deck was a ritual but now I was watching it all alone in a VCD. No more decks, no more get-to-gether in the name of deck.
Its really shocking how the future generation is going to pull this through with out decks.
Crap, every one has a blue ray disc player. No more deck.

I was watching Jaana vasam and thats what prompted me to have this title of Deck - Jaana Vasam. Again Jaana vasam is something that happens in a very few marriages and are more famous in South Indian weddings.

This a funny event to say the least. Jaana vasam is a part of the whole wedding and happens on the first day of the wedding ceremony, Unlike most weddings South Indian weddings span as long as 3 days. In few cases even more. During Jaana vasam the bride groom plays his part in creating traffic in the city. After all he is the Hero of this whole stuff, He can create chaos leave alone the traffic thing. So what exactly happens ? This guy, not considering the Hot and humid climate of chennai as parameter, would be wearing a stuffy 'Reid and Taylor' blazer suite. Probably this would be the last time he would act as the hanger for this blazer, in case if he is a software engineer moat certainly he is, would wear it when going onsite :) Now that the blazer part is over, The marriage contracter would have been requested to get the oldest vintage car available in the country for the groom to take a trip in. Older the car gets, more prestigeous the ride becomes for our hero. Mostly they try to get an Impala or a Fiat. The car would be a convertible ofcourse, our hero doesn't ride in a 4X4 SUV or a Sedan nor does the custom allows the usage of a BMW or a Benz many people still think its a bad omen if the car was not an Impala or a Fiat.

The car is ready , Groom is ready and where are they going ?? Thats a million dollor question..This is his marriage he can go where ever he wants...But I have not seen a guy escaping from a marriage on this Jaana vasam car. Poor guy he din't know it was his last chance to escape. But heroes don't escape, they take the problem head on, They get ,married.

But still the car driver doesn't take the car from neutral to first gear, I still wonder if they really had engines. Poor driver what can he do with a car that isn't one.By the way the car is not only for the groom to ride, There will be so many kids, atleast 30 to 40 who should get a ride in the car along with the hero. The car will be stuffed with the kids and finally the car will start to move, ofcourse the Bride's family has to push the car from behind, every one knows these cars don't have engine.

Btw there is some one knocking at the door, how long can some one knock the door and nor can I stay here forever. Gtg, Thanks to my laptop enabled with WiFi, This post comes straight from my loo :).