My Musings

APPA's Sraththam - 2008 As I wrote earlier , amma's sraththam was on 26 June 2008 . Appa's thithi is on Friday, 12 Sep 2008. As usual this was performed at our house at Karpagam Avenue. We started purchasing the grocery items, butter, varatti etc a week earlier; the vegetables 2 days earlier. A day before the sraththam, on 11 Sep, Padma akka, Athimber came by 7 PM, though we waited for them since 4 PM. Krithika went to Mylapore in the evening to purchase vaazhai ilai, pazham, Pushpam etc. Vijaya and I started cutting vegetables like Pudalankai, Paagarkai, Senaikkizhangu, Vaazhaikkai, Vaazhai Thandu, maankai etc. As we had already disposed off our dining table and cots, we had to adjust Padma and athimber in Aditi's bed (arvind had gone to Goa for a week) and the Divan. On the sraththam day, 12 Sep, we got up by 5 and started work. Jayaraman, Kalyani, Poornima were the first to arrive, as usual. Saroja, Sugavanam followed. Arun dropped Gayathri, Sowmya, Sriram at 8-15 an...

THE DINING TABLE To designate this piece of furniture as just a dining table will tantamount to calumny and insulting. Multi-Specialty Furniture? Multi- faceted furniture? For want of a better word, let me call this dining table only. We purchased this sea-green colored table in early 1975 at Hyderabad. For a paltry Rs. 400.00, I guess. Then Vijaya and I ran around Hyderabad to get the chairs, made to match the color of the table. We had to try hard but we did manage to get the same color. Six chairs were got made at Rs. 100.00 per chair. At last, we too had a dining table and we could sit around it for eating. But, it wasn’t a simple plain dining table. When Ashok was months old, he would lie on the table and play with us. Then, 2 years later, in 1978 it would be Arvind to replace Ashok on the table! This legacy stopped as Arvind grew up. After nearly 28 years, in 2006, Arun’s daughter SOWMYA and then Arvind’s daughter ADITI resumed this habit. When they were about four – five months’...