Hot Hot Hot !!

 

When all we desis talk of missing India and being home-sick, I don’t think we really had the Indian summer in mind, but somehow may be God thought he would be nice to us and try to replicate some Indian weather here in North America and brought on us this horribly hot summer. When we’ve waited all winter for it to get warm, so we could pretend to be outdoorsy people, we are welcomed by this sweltering heat. At least the local folks here, seem to enjoy sun bathing and putting on a tan, but for us folks from the Indian subcontinent, putting on a tan makes us go from looking brown to looking like unappetizing brownies. Becoming brownie aside, there are a few other inconveniences I have to deal with. 

The grass – The heat is killing the grass. We were away for about 4 days. Once we got back, our somewhat green grass had turned brown and crunchy. You might think I am overly attached to my lawn, but if you had been in my shoes last summer, you’d understand. This leads me into a somewhat unconnected discussion, but it makes for good talking anyway, so let me explain what we did last year. It was our first summer in the new single family home. The front yard lawn suddenly start balding in patches. After some serious “nachchufying” (banter) from me, my husband looked up the internet for what we needed to do to the lawn. Somebody said we should overseed it, so he went to Menards, bought a bag of lawn seed that was on sale and spread it around. It took a good month or so, before stuff started sprouting, and boy what a mess that was. He had bought some different kind of seed. This new variety of grass, lighter green, thinner, taller grass that grew faster than the rest of the lawn started sprouting all over the place. The lawn would look good for about 8 hours immediately after mowing, but by the next morning, the bright green tall grass would be all over the place. Ugh! Walking around the neighbourhood made me want to run a bulldozer over our lawn, it looked horrible. It went from looking like a balding 40-year-old to a 40-year-old hippie. I couldn’t figure out which was better, but both were definitely bad! So this year, after having shelled out a lot of money to a landscaping company so they’d save our lawn from our experiments, I was temporarily relieved to see it nice and green before the 4 days of heat that almost killed it. Now Mr. Baldy is back  

Having a 5-year-old in the house through summer is very hard. Yes, I love my daughter, but she is not easy to entertain, if you take away TV. Having to keep her in the house and postponing the time she can run out of the house because of the heat is no joke. I kind of feel bad for her though, that here she waits for warm weather, and just as it gets here, I am already telling her it’s too hard to go out.

It is kind of amusing that I crib so much about this summer, because I’ve seen a lot worse in India. I’ve lived in Hyderabad, where the heat is so bad, you’d not want to touch the walls. We’ve poured water on the terrace to cool the house down, we’ve poured water inside the house, to cool the floors down, we’ve used air coolers, and desert coolers. We’ve dealt with regular power cuts by sitting in the dark on a pile of sand outside our house and playing antakshari with the neighbours. Those were fun times, at least I learnt the first 2 lines of a 1000 songs without knowing any more than that. I’ve also dealt with the heat in Chennai. It has to be the place that disproves that famous saying “Success is 10% inspiration 90% perspiration!”. Surely, if that was true, people in Chennai must have to be the most successful in the world! It’s that place which makes you re-consider the reasons for bathing – do you really need to bathe so you can generate fresh sweat, or do you need to bathe so you can wash of old sweat?

So, when the mamas and mamis coming from India remark “Chicago romba kuloor nu sonnaa, inga vandhu partha Madrasae thevalai polarke!”, I don’t really know what to say!

Happy Summer you’all!

Hello.. Anybody there?

I can’t believe it’s been more than a year and a half since I came in here to write. What I’ve been up to all these days – pretty much the usual and I really did think I had given up blogging for good, but then, some folks persisted.

A few days ago, I exchanged some emails after quite some time with a friend from my past, and even though we hadn’t been talking or emailing for a while, he had been checking my blog for updates. When I told him that perhaps all the incessant talking for about 30 years had left me with little more to say, he insisted I try again, and even followed up with another email a couple of days later saying

Hellllloooooooo… I’m checking daily and yet to the see the blog. Is it taking so long to write one?

So, to my friend and his persistence and to others like him who may (I hope) still  be checking in every now and then, I think I owe another attempt.

So, to start off I must write about our weekend trip to Munising in the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan. This is our second trip there, and I think I like the place even more. It is probably one of the few places in the country (at least the ones I have been to) that are devoid of McDonalds. Small little town, by Lake Superior offers much in terms of beauty and time-pass. Here are some pictures:

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The beautiful scenery aside, I made a few observations while on the trip.

I realized that I am slowly beginning to like vacationing the American way. I prefer the smaller, un-crowded, less touristy towns that are calm and beautiful. That said, I haven’t reached the point of taking a vacation, just so I can read a book – I think that’s probably never going to happen and yes I would definitely prefer a Taco Bell in the vicinity.

The Munising area is popular for it’s many beautiful waterfalls. I couldn’t help imagine that if it was in India, people would not only make a beeline to visit, they would also make sure they showed up in colorful lungis and with their lifebuoy soaps. I don’t know what it is with guys under waterfalls - they bathe like they haven’t had a chance to bathe all their life. Here in the US, I’ve never seen people show any interest in bathing under waterfalls or may be I am looking in the wrong place. Let’s face it, water up in Michigan rarely gets warm enough for that.

On this trip unlike our previous one, we ventured into some of the local restaurants hunting for vegetarian food and were pleasantly surprised to find some options. When my husband commented how devoid of desis Munising was, I suggested that we’d know for sure only if we looked at Pizza hut. So, sure enough the next day at Pizza hut, 6 out of 8 tables were occupied by desis working on their pizzas. I guess it takes a couple of trips to venture beyond the familiar spots.

For the first time, we saw a July 4th parade. Apparently it is quite common for the different floats to throw out candy and for kids to pick it up. I have to admit as fun as it seemed to my 5 year old, I was a bit concerned about picking up (porikifying) candy off the road, but I was still egging my daughter to be competitive and collect as much candy as she could. I know – two very Indian traits at odds with each other. I am yet to decide if I should hide away the candy and pretend it disappeared.

Then, I ate a vegetarian pasty. For those of you who don’t know what that is, its a U.P. speciality. Basically, its a saltless, spice-less samosa filling inside what tastes like pie crust dough. It could have been awesome, if it had some salt, chilli powder and garam masala thrown into it.

In all, it was an awesome vacation. Something that got us to unwind completely, enjoy the sights and provide ample fun for my daughter.  Hope you all are making the most of the lovely summer weather.