2 very different things

I do believe this is going to be my last post from Kenya...the land of utter beauty (according to me!) Today happens to be Pongal...i woke up really early in the morning and surprised my parents...said tata to my dad who left for work, and promptly went back to bed! Since today is, like i already said, the festival of Pongal...that gives students in chennai so much pleasure because of the string of days together that are decalred off, i would like to state one of my observations on the 'dish' pongal that one of our fellow bloggers here relishes so much ;-).

I've been eating alot of pongal off-late. And i love the taste. Be it my mom's, my grandmom's or the neighbour-next-door's. But i cannot stand the so called pongal that we get for breakfast in college. That, my friends, is a disgusting mass of white blob that can hardly draw any possible similarity in taste to the real stuff. However, we are forced to believe that it is what it is due to the appearance. Pushing that aside and coming to the point, I have come to realise that of all pongals across the globe, the taste of the pongals that we get as 'prasadam' in temples have the best effect on the tongue. They have extravagant amounts of ghee and salt and...cashewnuts which appeal no end to the taste buds. And while eating God's prasadam, we do not think of side effects, or of diets (this is for people like my dad who are very stringent on salt and oil...or people who want to watch the lateral growth of their bodies), it is God's food and hence, is neither questioned, nor wasted. Isn't that lovely? Hence i conclude that the best 'pongals' in the world come from the sastrigal's(poojari)kitchen...and thus, from temples. Mouth watering? ;-)

Next i would like to post about an incident that happened yesterday in the late hours of the evening, in a third floor balcony, with the full moon and the strong breeze as witnesses of the act. I have heard people say that 'holidays do crazy things to people'.But i beleieve that 'power-cuts do crazy things to people'. It is a little queer that i happened to believe both phrases simulataneously yesterday and that's only because i am on a holiday and...yes, there was a power cut. We were to dine with our neighbours who live on the top floor of the building where-in we live in the ground floor. The lights went off after a while, and the room was bathed in the subtle-ness of candle light...i love candle light. There was a stronger light outside, though the country seemed drowned in darkeness. The harsh silver of a moon in all its full-ness. Harsh enough to cast definite shadows of trees, and of 2 people sitting on plastic chairs, blankets wrapped around them, sheltering themselves from the chill. One of them, is the person who is typing this post (quite obviously i suppose) and the other, a girl, a tender age of 10, who claims a reference in one of my previous posts. No sound seemed to reach the ears except that of the whistling wind. Nothing seemed visible to the eyes but the moon moving in and out of the clouds. Then she spoke...and i listened for a while. Then, realisation dawned upon us that we'd both learned the song 'Heal the World' (by Micheal Jackson) in school, taught by the same teacher. Just that she learnt it many many years after i learnt it. All the same, we both knew it. And she said "Lets sing the song, and when we're singing the chorus, the moon will come out". And so we sang...it may have sounded like a tune to object to, but to us, it was music...it was a conspiracy to get the moon to come out. And by some force of nature listening to the both of us, the moon revealed itself when we reached the chorus. And we both laughed...laughter sounded like music...everything did. And she said 'I feel like crying, that was so beautiful'. Indeed it was beautiful. Anything we said after that, or before that may be of no consequence. But it was said all the same...and it left something etched in my memory. A memory of yellow light inside, and silver light outside...a wonderful evening when nothing seemed to matter but the lady of the night throwing silver rays into darkness. A night when eyes watched an embodiment on sweet innocence fall asleep under the brown balnket of warmth.

Life is Beautiful...

Signing off...