Pandigai 2009 – Round 1

Ok.. so the serious attempt I made at blogging a few months ago in April certainly became what can be at best termed a mega-flop. I seriously do intend to be here more often, but so many things have been happening, and kept me so busy that this blog had to go down closer to the bottom of my list of priorities. But today, since I am up early and my daughter isn’t, I figured I would put this off no further and get it done.

So how have things been in blogosphere? I have to admit, that I have barely even been reading comments these past few months, barely reading my favorites on your blogs, and almost never commented on anybody’s blog either. A lot of things happened.. we cleaned up, re-painted our old house, and then started showing it to prospective renters (which I admit is more stressful than being seen at ponnu-paarthal). We eventually found one and then moved to a home closer to where I work, and got about getting it furnished. So you can imagine, control freak that I am, how crazy things must have been.

Before we moved to our new home, we did have a very traditional grihapravesam this time round and I was very satisfied with how well it went. Right after, the season began – week after week of festivals – pullayar chathurthi co-inciding with avani avittam, followed by krishna jayanthi, followed by navarathri – to the point that I am now almost relieved that there is a weekend where I can laze around a bit and not feel on Monday like the weekend hasn’t yet begun. Also, this year since there are no planned India trips, and we rarely do long holidays, I decided I would use up all my vacation on and around festivals and prepare for them at leisure.

So, starting with Pillayar chathurthi – this was literally a week after we moved in but I wanted to do something and we did a basic pooja and offered sundal and modhakam (or sweet kozhakattai). It did turn out really well. We then went over to b-i-l’s house where m-i-l and f-i-l were also staying and did an elaborate celebration of both pillayar chathurthi as well as avani avittam. My co-sis V made a really beautiful pillayar with rice flour (since clay ganesha’s are not available for sale). 

Avani avittam and Pillayar Chathurthi were quickly followed by Krishna Jayanthi. M-i-l and F-i-l were with us for this – so it was all the more fun. M-i-l prepared Seedai, Vella Seedai, Appam and Sooyam. Once again ate a lot of food. We also dressed up my daughter as Krishnar this time. After all the build-up I gave her about wearing “Umaachi” dress, I had put on a bunch of jewellery and taken off her shirt. She was disappointed to say the least. The Krishnar kaals (footprints) were a delight to do this time round – because we had hardwood and stone all the way to the pooja room. I didn’t have to make Krishnar magically fly past carpet etc.. like I’ve had to in the past.

V making the pillayar with rice flour

Pillayar Chathurthi

Rice flour pillayar

Avan avittam in the background

Ton of Food

Kutti Krishnar

Krishnar Naivedhyam

Krishnar Kaal

That ended Round 1 and to spare you the effort of keeping your attention on this post any longer.. Navarathri will have to be a separate post.. coming up soon.. hopefully.

Were you served, Krishna?

As my regular readers know by now, my excitement levels peak around this time of the year. Starting August, all the way until November almost every other week, there is some festival or the other to celebrate. When all this has died down, comes Christmas and New Year, and customary holiday cheer.

This year my celebration marathon started with Krishna Jayanthi. As usual, Krishna was born all of three days this year. We celebrated on the second day (Sunday) for convenience when in fact by our family traditions we should have actually celebrated on Monday. We had our friends (P, Fa and S) over as well as my bil and his wife.  Since bil’s wife takes a minute to figure out that I am referring to her when I say bil’s wife, for her convenience, I will henceforth refer to them as V&V.

I started at 11 in the morning and cooked up a storm that ended around 6 in the evening. The krishnar who visited our house had a plateful of bakshanams (snacks) – Mul Murukku (a) Manankombu, Rava Seedai (which was quite a breeze considering how apprehensive I was), Appam and Sooyyam. They all turned out really well. He also had a plateful of dinner – the usual pandigai thaligai (festival meal) which always includes paruppu, mor kozhambu, kootu, karamadhu, rasam, vadai and for a sweet, akkaravadisal (which actually ended up being more like sakkarai pongal). He was also served his all-time favorites of milk, navaneetham and aval-vellam.

I had to change his path into the house though. Instead of walking in from the front door, he had to take the more convenient route from the backyard. You see, our home has carpeted floor most of the distance from the front door to the poojai shelf. The route from the backyard however is all on wood and vinyl. So I happily made feet all the way from the lawn till the poojai room, and they turned out bright and neat too.

For calling myself a maami, I actually know very few stotrams. This time however, I made it a point to at least read krishnashtakam out of the book. (I really need to improve my stotram skills a bit more.)

I was soooo happy that everything turned out well this time. I had this nagging feeling that the past few krishna jayanthis had been so unsatisfactory – this time I made up for it. I think this year, Krishna was well served!

Due to popular demand, my own interest and good weather outside the house, I took a few pictures of my krishnar kaals. Here you go…

P.S: I don’t know if any of you iyengars out there have heard of this fabulous book written by an old iyengar maami called Rajalakshmi Raghavan. It is like the bible (or may be gita) for maamis like me who go crazy around pandigai time. It has a list of festivals for every tamil month, plus what food to make, what stotrams to tell, what kolams to draw etc. I only wish it were in English. Thanks to my poor tamil skills, it is quite hard for me to figure out some of the things she has written.