Happy Pongal!

Happy Pongal everybody! I had a fairly satisfying Pongal this year. For one, I steered clear of making any kind of Pongal for almost 2 weeks before the festival, just so I would not get lazy and bored of eating Pongal. My husband is still in India, so this year it was just my daughter and me.
Bhogi was a working day, yet in the evening, I decided to treat my daughter (and myself) to some Poli. I made about 6 or 7 polis in all, and we ate most of it without too much trouble.
On Pongal day, it was snowing outside so much that I decided to work from home. I put on her new cotton embroidered pavadai and boy! was she excited! Managed to find at least one “Ponga paanai” shaped vessel in which I boiled milk while my daughter made the ceremonial Pongal “a” Pongal (she somehow couldn’t get pongal o pongal) noises. Soon after, we had some delicious Ven Pongal and Chakkarai pongal ready to be offered to God and then eaten.
Yesterday morning, was the coldest day I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Yet, I decided we would do a quick Kanu tradition in the garage (like last year). So, it was Kanu on aluminium foil. We were both fully dressed in boots, sweater, jacket, hat and gloves. Quickly tossed all the colored rice balls I had made yesterday night, and we were good to go. My daughter asked me, if these were for the crows, where the rice for the pigeons were, to which I replied, the crows would take the food to the pigeons.

So Happy Pongal to all of you. Hope all of you got your share of Chakkarai pongal!

Happy Pongal!

The three day marathon of Pongal is quite over. However, this year I was way too preoccupied to really worry about Pongal too much and it ended up being merely observed versus being celebrated. Bhogi was a working day. I woke up late, and so could not find time to even make a simple sweet in the morning. Came back home very tired, and my husband (quite surprisingly and unusually) offered to make Pongal that same evening instead of the next morning, because he was going to be on a conference call from early in the morning. So, under my able guidance, we managed the Chakkarai pongal (which ended up tasting pretty good) on Bhogi night itself (so what, it was Pongal day in India). On Pongal day, once again, woke up late, could not even pack lunch and survived on a tasting menu offered by my colleagues for lunch. That evening, I made a simple Ven pongal. My daughter was sick and just not co-operative, so could not make anything to go with the Pongal and my interest in it was automatically diminished. On Kanu day, my daughter and I managed to keep Kanu in the garage. The deck would have been  much more suitable, but with her nose already clogged and her signs of heading for a fever, the last thing I wanted was for her to stand in the cold for 10 minutes keeping Kanu. So, we headed to the garage with our multicolor ‘pudis’. No turmeric leaves or banana leaves – so had to make do with aluminium foil. No sugarcane or beetle leaves, so skipped that whole part. Just did the pudis which my daughter surprisingly understood from the first one she did. She was very careful not to let them roll out of the aluminium foil. After having done that, we circumvented it thrice – she thought it was a fun game, and then off we went to daycare and work. The only kalandha sadham was thenga sadham. So by all standards, I’d have to say this year’s pongal was a pretty shoddy affair.

I was physically too tired, my daughter was sick and cranky, my husband was out of town for 1 of 3 days and I just hadn’t got things organized enough.

I guess I will make up for it during Karadayan Nombu which it seems arrives on a Friday, but it’s a simple event too and can be managed hopefully.

I did enjoy all the Pongal special movies on SunTV which I recorded on the DVR and watched at night. Certainly more interesting than watching interviews of unknown directors and cameramen.