Quo Vadis?

This post is about something that polarizes people coming from Tamilnadu. This is the famous pongal. I am not talking about the festival, there are no doubts about it, Pongal is the most important Tamil festival. This post is about the breakfast staple “ven pongal” or kara pongal that is loved and hated equally.  I am on the side that loves it with a caveat. I prefer to eat pongal with sambar and at least coconut chutney, a vadai is a bonus. After all how can you eat just a gooey, almost tasteless mash? So if it is breakfast in a restaurant I go for a pongal vadai combination. This does not seem unusual to many unless I am driving on a road trip. I have seen eyebrows raised when I opt for this combination during a breakfast halt. The infamous after effect of feeling drowsy after a plate somehow does not work for me. I love pongal and I enjoy it on road trips. At home knowing my preferences sambar & chutney are usual with pongal. Pongal is an essential carb loading ...

This post is part of the Chennai Bloggers Club's CBC VIBGYOR BLOG TAG 2 where some of us will write a post on the colours of VIBGYOR each day starting 1st of May to the 7th of May, 2020. The colour theme for today's post is BLUE. Blue is an interesting colour and I have many stories with Blue. Let me begin with school, for many years I belonged to the Yellow house and I was partial to the colour till I came to higher secondary where I passed out as the Asst House Captain of the Blue House, since then that colour became my default colour of choice. School was on the Marina and exam times we could see the horizon where the sky and the sea met in vivid shades of blue. I remember when I used to buy aquamarine Blue for letter writing and that kind of was my signature style for some time till I grew out of fountain pens. School was the time when my music preference was dominated by the King of Pop. The King used contemporary R&B, (Rhythm & Blues) to sweep ...

So the season of Advent has started, despite all the commercial trappings and merry making it is also a good time of preparation. Many Christian homes are painted and cleaned in time and the decorations are pulled out from the attic. The star goes up along with the tree and Christmas music starts playing regularly. The ladies get busy with the sweet preparation which used to be an event in itself, preparing the ingredients and making the sweets, storing them away in dry containers for Christmas day. As a child I remember wandering around when mum used to make murukkus, achappams, adhirasams among others sneaking in a bite or two and taking the broken pieces for snack time. The smells will be divine and then the baking will start, which will make the house smell like pastry heaven. Back then buying from stores was not even an option unlike today when a lot of the sweets are outsourced. Christmas Day usually was all about waking up early despite the late night service and taking...

This is a picture of a gutter in a place called Annur near Coimbatore. This gutter brought back some strong memories and my eyes wandered to my ring finger. You would have heard the joke about marriage being a three ring game:  Engagement Ring, Wedding Ring and Suffe Ring. This post is about the second one and it is written after 10 years of it being on my finger.  There are two pieces of jewellery that are constantly on me both have a connection to special women in my life. The first is a cross on a chain that is a gift from my mother and the second is the wedding ring. I seldom take off both however this post is about the times when the ring tried to get away! Instance 1: This happened few years ago during a trip to Tuticorin. This was on a flight from Tuticorin after the inflight meal when the attendants were collecting the trash, the ring fell off into the trash bag. I did not notice and when I did I got frantic and called the air hostess. I asked to look ...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this picture should merit at least a hundred. Hand drawn by 5 enterprising youth as the décor for their new themed café, this was one of the many pictures that brought me many happy memories when I was there. This was a 90’s themed café and this picture brought many memories of school days. Those were the days of simple joys, restricted television time, board games, comic books,  outdoor games that went required no equipment but had enough space to play, softy ice creams that could be licked off a cone, bicycles  that came up with the glamorous name of Street Cat, PTC was the preferred mode of travel with tickets under a Rupee, picnics in school was a trip to Guindy park or Golden Beach. Ah!!! Those were the simple days. From the large line of cartoons, two stand out for me: He Man and the masters of the universe: The goose bumps that I felt in the moment when Prince Adam says “By the power of gray skull…” the transformati...

I was moving some things in my cupboard when I came upon some unused batteries still in their packaging and next to it this radio. For a moment I paused and in a flash the memories associated with both these things came back to mind from the deeper recesses of the brain. Some things cannot be forgotten and the Chennai floods will be one such. So much has been said and written about the floods and the destruction that it brought along but there is also another dimension to the floods that is overlooked. The floods brought people closer to one another and we have seen it all in the spirit of Chennai but the floods also brought people closer to themselves. It helped people discover themselves and thereby discover each other in ways that had not happened before. Our home was safe and relatively unscathed in the floods but we did have some of its effects; power shut down for over 3 days, lack of essentials and food items, complete shutdown of telecommunications and so much mo...

In case you missed it, it is Women’s day today. The day when businesses fall over each other with special offers for women, when the media honours women from every field many whom they may have never realized existed on 364 other days, when oh never mind, you would have got the picture by now. However well-intentioned it may be many of them are hollow and everyone seems to have an opinion either for or against the celebration. Personally I say, why not? It’s like a birthday, everyone has one and we celebrate that day even if we do not celebrate the person the other days and everyone is entitled to one more day of being celebrated. So let me first wish all the women a very Happy Women’s Day. Having done that I would like to expose one fallacy many hide behind, that men and women are equal; they are not, not always. There may be one more, men are superior to women, they are not, again not always. So if you wonder then “is the corollary right” and have expressions varying from de...

Last night I played a game of snakes and ladders. You know the one where you keep some coins on a board and play with the roll of a dice. I lost the game finishing last but it was fun and for a moment I enjoyed going back in time, when board games included among others scrabble, Scotland Yard, coppit, monopoly (sometimes business) and battleship.   These games were part of my growing up and I realize wistfully how they have faded away. My grandmother had taught me the Indian roll of die and the game called “pallankuzhi”, when we were kids vacation times were spent playing one of these games; sometimes the adults will allow us to play cards with them usually Rummy or the Ace of Spades.  These days games are all online and alone. Even multiplayer games are played over long distances. I played Scrabble for some time on Facebook but it did not feel good after a while and I simply gave it up. Even scrabble is a game of strategy, watching and observing the other players...

This post was in the making ever since Brags posted about his name . Many of us have our own name stories, usually the miseries that come with it because some people just cannot the name right. So here is my story. I was named Clement Karthick and I had an initial for most of my school days. Now I have not got any conclusive answers from my parents on the origins of my name, the Clement was straight forward, my dad chose the name and maybe he thought that the virtue of clemency will be my calling right through so that was a good enough reason. The second part lent itself to the usual “Oh! Are you a Christian? After pondering over the name and the almost oxymoronic effect it offers.  Karthik is undeniably a Hindu name and its etymology leads to confusion. The polite ones do not ask me any questions; the curious ones cannot restrain themselves and ask me why I am named thus. My usual answer is that the name was a favourite of my uncle and so I got it; though sometime...