Vishu

Am going home, this weekend. Applied for a leave on Friday, and extended(!) this weekend by a day.

Btw, tomorrow is 'Vishu' in kerala, and 'Tamil new year day' in tamil nadu.

In karnataka, 'ugadi' was celebrated last weekend. And a friend who works at Dubai, had blogged about missing ugadi celebrations back home. I started commenting on her post, and that comment went on to become big enough to qualify to be a post by ifself :-) I thought I'll copy it in here.

This is how it goes.

....Well, in kerala the equivalent of Ugadi is called 'Vishu' and in tamil nadu, its just tamil new year day. And they both fall on the same date - April 14th.

We do have all these poojas and stuffs there too, but the coolest part is, I was not supposed to wake up (rather open my eyes), until my mom wakes up, arranges lot of fruits and jewellery and money and many more things in the pooja room, and finally comes to wake me up, and blindfold me with her hands, to take me to the pooja room.

We were supposed to see the most prosperous things when we open our eyes on this special day. (poor thing, no one does that to my mom!)

And as a kid there was much more fun on that day.. We, me and my sisters, were given 5 / 10 Rs on the morning of Vishu, by my parents, and were let out to all the other elders in the family. And we used to compete, over who collects the most money from others. EOD, I used to collect like, some 25- 30 Rs.

And as I grew up, my role slowly changed, from being a observerer of all this fun, to being a part of the organizer.. I had to buy my mom all the fruts, get her that special yellow flower she would arrange in the pooja room, get my dad a lot of change in form of Re. 1 coins to give over to kids coming home the next day, and late at night, helping my mom arrange stuffs in the room. And finally when my mom comes to wake me up on Vishu day morning, I would fake to be asleep, just get feel the fun.

This time my collection would go up to as high as a 100Rs!

Later, things changed.. somehow I started drifting away from all this...

Last year I was home, for Vishu, and I had a chance to give over money to my dad, mom and sisters. I gave them all 500 each. Man, I did feel proud to that, though I had to wash out my bank balance :-)))

And this year, I am planning to be there, the next day, after Vishu..

Life sometimes, is too unfair.. It is..

And I do remember all those 'sweet chapathis' or 'obattu' tat you used to bring.. It was for Ugadi right ?

Hmm.. sweet old memories!

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Well, this year, I am gonna miss all that fun. I almost know how I am going to welcome this new year; by sleeping off at 12 or 1 - waking up late at abt 9 AM tomorrow - forgettiing everything about Vishu - rushing to office.

Thats the way life is.