My Musings

Amma's Sraththam - 2011 We three brothers (Sugavanam, Jayaraman, and self) perform the sraththams of our parents every year at Chennai; our elder brother Sundaresan performs at Dapodi, Pune. Amma's Thithi is Aani, Krishna Paksham, Ashtami. This year (2011) amma's thithi came on Thursday, 23rd June. This is the first ever sraththam that we are performing at our OWN house (Flat F2, No 3, Kalakshetra Avenue, 2nd Street, Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai 41). All these years we were doing it in rented houses. Vijaya and I purchased the grocery items and Vaathiyar saamangal from Marthandam Stores, Lakshmipuram, Thiruvanmiyur. Varatti from a kadai near Marundeeswarar koil. A day before the thithi, we purchased all the vegetables, fruits incl vaazhaipazham from Thiruvanmiyur market. On 23rd morning I purchased Vaazhai Ilai and Pushpam from  North Mada Street Thiruvanmiyur. This year too I missed the Mylapore ambience. Except for blouse bits from Amudam Stores, we didn't do any

Arun - Gayathri booked their flat with XA realtors nearly 18 months ago, in late 2009. The plot is at Padur village, in Old Mamallapuram Road (OMR, now Rajiv Gandhi Salai) 22 kms away from Thiruvanmiyur. The registration papers were signed by Arun at Tirupporur on 19 Nov 2009 (read here). The flat was ready and the Key was handed over to A-G on 5th April 2011. Even though A-G wished to have the Gruha pravesam in Feb/March itself, the builder wasn't ready; finally the GP at the new house was performed on 17 April 2011 (details here). Once GP was performed A-G started with the woodwork (modular kitchen etc). New electrical fittings like split AC, fans, lamps were bought and fixed in the new house. Date for shifting was fixed as 4th June. As we two had shifted to Thiruvanmiyur a week earlier, we went to A-G's house (10 minutes by walk) by 10AM with lunch. We were ready but the packer didn't turn up. He promised he would come the next morning at 6 itself! Next morning

We shifted from A1/14/1, "SAIRAM", 22nd Cross Street, Besantnagar, Chennai 600090 on the evening of Sunday, 29 May 2011 to our own house at Kalakshetra Avenue, Thiruvanmiyur. This is the fifth house we have lived in Chennai since our coming to Chennai in Dec 2001. First was the Mandapam road house in New Avadi road (Dec,Jan), Kilpauk, then was the Aspiran Garden house (Feb 2002 to 30 Aug 2005) at Kilpauk, third was the Karpagam Avenue house (30-August-2005 to 28 Nov 2009), the 4th was the Besantnagar house (28-Nov-2009 to 29 May 2011) This is a newly constructed house owned by Krithika and Arvind. The structure that was there earlier was brought down and this construction started. The bhoomi-poojai was performed on 21 Jan 2010. The ground level will be the parking place and above this will be 2 floors; the southern side will be for the erstwhile owner of the site; on the northern side, Arvind will have the 1st floor and Mr. Ganapathysubramanian (Krithika's father) wi