This and That

Chinnu likes "Super Why" on PBS kids. He pointed at one of his toys and told me "Why". His toy boy looked like Whyatt, the lead character in the show, indeed. I was surprised to know how this little brain makes such connections. Here are the pictures of his toy and his favourite animation character.

I have no regret for not being in Chennai during this Margazhi season. I'm watching Jaya TV's Margazhi Maha Utsavam on youtube. Priya sisters rock as usual and this rendition of them was a masterpiece and everytime I listen to it I feel like I am enroute to the Lord's abode. The Bhava, the lyrics, the modulation and everything else are in perfect mix. Vijay Siva's concert was no exception. He has a charismatic voice and his katha-kalakshebam style is well received. I am waiting for Aruna's videos - they are not in full on youtube.

My chef likes Vah Chef and he made this tomato chutney a few days ago. Wow, it was awesome. I bet you will fall in love with this chutney. I also tried my hands at this and it came out very well.

Watched Kamal's interview on NDTV. What an innocent guy? Chinnathambi ellam jujubee. Ivaru thonthi ganapathy nnu (mattum) than sonnaram.

Look at this wonderful pencil drawing. It is a collaboration by two artists - the beautiful drawing is by a "sakalakala valli" friend(she is a painter, craftsperson, a good cook, beautician and so on) and the background sketching is by my dear son. I am sure he is gonna be an artist. I want him to be all those that I am not, like any other parent :))  (1000 Taare Zamin Par vandalum nama appadiye thaan iruppom!)

Had a potluck in a friend's house last saturday, not just the kids but we also had some funtime.   Now, looking forward to welcoming the new year.  Happy 2011 :)).

Mynaa and my 'no'

What is life without watching a movie over a long weekend?  

With that being said, DH and I watched Mynaa yesterday.  We had to keep the volume under control because we did not want to disturb the little one's nap (in turn did not want to get disturbed), so I started to lose inclination towards watching it further as I had difficulty in following the accent for sometime and within few minutes I saw the protagonist hitting a lady so violently and I walked out to the other bed room, intolerably.  DH stopped me and asked me what I was intending to do - he got to understand from my facial expressions that I did not want to continue watching and he also knew at that point that I might not like the movie.  I told him I would better blog than watching this crap.  By this time the unpleasant scenes rolled and the screenplay got its dynamism.  Yes, you are right, I brought the laptop out and started to surf while I had a watch on the storyline as well.  

When the movie ended, I had a heavy heart and was sympathetic not to the lead characters but to our own selves. Our movie-makers have to understand the basic fact that we want only ENTERTAINMENT for those 2-2.5 hrs and certainly do not want to end up wiping our tears or get any sort of negative impact on us or on our society.  I vehemently believe that the movie-makers have the moral responsibility of influencing the society to a great extent;  Cinema is so much in our blood and culture - we see our illiterate society doing pAl abhishEkam to their super-heroes ( When I was nursing Chinnu, I used to feel quite bad in a situation when a single drop of breast milk gets wasted; honestly, I used to think that the milk that I consume is the calf's birth right and this was the time I wanted to convert to veganism) and the educated ones celebrate movie releases like Diwali, new year - their FB headlines will whirl around the movies during then.  

I remember few crimes that were merely triggered from our tamil movies - a little boy's murder in Chennai and the criminals were minors too; they used red-chilli powder in order not to get traced by the sniffer dogs - seems they stole this idea from a movie, in another case a girl was gangraped just that the accused wanted to experiment what they had seen in the movie paruththiveeran.  There may be so many other cases that did not come to the light.  That being the situation, I think the movie-makers can not just say that they only get their stories from real life.  They may be true but they also feed the ignorant with new ideas to commit crimes(or should I make it a passive sentence here?)  One gangrape in a remote village in Jharkhand or Orissa may be a news for a week but a movie with such a storyline will easily stay in our minds for a remarkably longer period.  

After the movie ended, DH and I did a postmortem (romba thevai!!) and were discussing about the logical flaws in the idea of sending mynaa with the policeman who had a terror-wife.  I see no reason why she was not sent with the older guy.  Secondly why was the former's wife not updated about the accident or further happenings?  Anyways, I made a resolution (new year resolution?) - I am not going to waste my time on watching our movies; at the same time I do not want to miss TZPs, 3 Idiots, Pasangas, Arunachalams, etc. etc for sure.

Lets come to the lighter side of it.  After the movie ended I told DH that the accident scene was well conceived and I had not seen such a thing in other movies where accidents were shot.  He said it was perfectly stolen from a hollywood picture.

rEmEmBeR DeCeMbEr...

2010 is approaching its end.  By God's grace I had to throw something off my mind that was worrying me for quite some time and the good deed happened yesterday.  This is the best day of 2010 for me.  In the same lines, I was thinking of the last few Decembers and I had only good things to count.  Here is the chronicle -

2010 - A sigh of relief on Dec 16.  I can stay calm for some time.  Thank you, my dear God.

2009 - Hmm, nothing significant happened but had a good get-together with friends at our place on the eve of new year.

2008 - The most memorable year in my life.  I saw my mom alive for the last time on Dec 9.  Thanks to my FIL and the technology(skype).  I wish SriVaikuntam is web-enabled and I can see her again and talk to her.

2007 - India trip in Nov-Dec.  Just missed (thalai)Deepavali but had fun during brother's wedding.  Unforgettable awful travel through Emirates.

2006 - Had the best touring in my life.  Stayed at sis' place at Tirunelveli and went to Kutralam, Kanyakumari, Navathirupathi etc.  Nellayappar kovil was an architectural surprise for the one who had thought that all temples would be like the Parthasarathy temple.

2005 - First milestone achieved by nephew Hari.  He rolled over as mom anticipated (by end of 3 months).  Second consecutive year of attending Aruna Sairam's concert @ Parthasarathy Swami Sabha.

2004 - Had a cool darshan of Lord Narasimhar at Sholinghur.  It is a special temple for me and DH as we got to know of each other only here.  We stayed at brother's friend's house and had fresh cow's milk for our coffee in the morning.  However we heard the news of MS' demise (Dec 11) on our way back home.  Got mesmerized by Aruna Sairam @ Parthasarathy Swami Sabha.  I still remember few of her renderings from this concert. 

2003 - We moved to Chromepet.  Lots of fun!!!

2002 - Attended my SIL's wedding.  I still have the saree that I wore for the wedding and even my MIL wore it once or twice when she was here in 2009.  I recollect what hubby told me.  As soon as the engagement talks were on, my FIL picked SIL's wedding photo album and showed it to his MIL saying "maami, ido parungo unga peran pathu vechirukkara ponna!!!"

2001 - Memory corrupted.  Vella paper a karuppakkanumna, my father's Bday, Sis' Bday, Sis wedding day, Niece's Bday and New Year eve are celebrated (in every December) :))

2000 - I spearheaded the chris-ma/chris-child game for the fellow BSSLians.  And it helped two girls find not only their chris-children but also their lives.

1999 - Joined BSSL.

I think I have good memory, huh?

Atlanta Trip - Nov 2010

Chinnu and I had a 10 day trip to Atlanta to visit my friend's family there.  My friend's son was a great company to him while we both would chit-chat about quite a lot of stuff.

I flew by Delta and had a bad experience during the flight.  The crew member that served juice and snack gave me a paper napkin but just passed by me w/o giving the edibles.  It was as though she did not notice that I was there.  I got so much irritated and told myself - "It is all because of you, my dear husband.  This is a foreign land and I am insulted for being an alien".  When one of them (not the one who gave the paper napkin) came back to each passenger to collect the trash, I called her and asked her if the service is ticket-dependent as I hazily remembered that there was no in-flight service in the trip.  She said no and told me that she thought I was sleeping.  I told her that the other lady gave me the paper napkin.  She apologized and later the lady who (purposefully) ignored me apologized as well but my blood was still boiling.  I wanted to complain to Delta.  Later when I checked the Delta webpage, there was no option to lodge such complaints.  I had to leave the issue there - chee chee inda pazham pulikkum.

My friend was very happy because her naughty boy had naps in the noon and his lullaby was our gossip talks.  The weather was awesome there, a temporary relief for us.  We spent the evenings in the community park when the kids liked to play in the slide and the swing.  When his friend rides on his volvo (his tricycle) around the kitchen, Chinnu will follow him like a calf following its mother.  They both had some fun in the backyard, punching the balloons, cleaning the house with the toy vaccum.

My friend was happy introducing me to all of her friends whom we met during one of their friends' son's Bday party.  Alpharetta had good amout of Desis and my friend has a good circle of friends - konjam poramaya irundudu.  Costco, Kohl's, Walmart are within few miles of reach.  My friend drove like a man (I hope I will make her happy when she reads this!!) and I was scared to sit on the passenger seat.  We bought some butter biscuits and chat items from Hot-Breads - sad that Pittsburgh does not have these facilities :((.

It was raining for 4 days or so and the temperature was quite low in the nights.  Chinnu got accustomed very well over there.  DH came online to see his DS.  Chinnu did not bother to look at him.  I knew DH must have been crestfallen then.  

My friend did not want me to leave at all.  She was persuading me all along the day - she would suggest that my husband better move to Atlanta. (not a bad idea as Hot breads was within reach).  She also made a variety of food items for me to enjoy my meals.  She was quite satisfied and moved when I commended her dosa (I told her it was like my mom's dosa and it was so too).

I met one of my ex-colleagues from BSSL.  Went to her house that was 2.5 miles from my friend's place.  She has a new born boy and my friend bought some nice gifts for her kids on my behalf.  We talked about a few other friends in the states and got back home after an hour or so.

Did not know how time passed by.  We had to leave on the 18th.  Chinnu did not want to leave that place, he was throwing tantrums when we were about to leave.  I dumped some food inside amidst his tantrums and we headed to the airport.  I checked in online as suggested by my friend's husband and that gave us enough time for security check though we reached the airport little late than we thought.  Chinnu behaved well in the airport and there was again a bad experience and this time it was the confusion with my seat #.  The one at the counter gave me a new aisle seat with an unoccupied middle seat as I was having a baby on lap, but she was too considerate that she gave the same seat to somebody else as well.  I had to again wait and got another seat and the wait time for take-off was almost 40 minutes (thats why you should not live in such big cities) and we reached Pittsburgh at 11.40 pm.  Dad was eagerly waiting to see his son and when they met ore paasa mazhai than.

I was fully charged during this break.  It was a wonderful time well spent.  I am hopeful of having her and her family here in Pittsburgh during summer 2011.