Here is a limerick posted almost 3 years back:
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Friday, March 27, 2009
Ugadi Greetings
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Here is Telugu New Year
Bitter, sweet and sour;
Like Life's kind and good
Neem, Aam and Guud
We wish you well forever!
Here is Telugu New Year
Bitter, sweet and sour;
Like Life's kind and good
Neem, Aam and Guud
We wish you well forever!
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How time flies!!! When I started blogging that long ago, I never dreamt I would survive and keep it going this long. And it is due to all those kind readers who kept me on a leash...they have been passing it on like a relay race baton from one to another without let. And nowadays I get mails like this one from Vinit:
"Again, Don Feynman is another nice blog. It is amazing how quickly in a short time, you connect seemingly distant things together! Day by day, year by year, your blogs are becoming more and more interesting!"
That reminds me, rather, of the Emile Coue' auto-suggestion mantra:
"Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better"
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So, today is once again, the Telugu New Year's Day, called UGADI. There is not much of a spring to boast of in AP...but their New Year comes around Holi.
There is a very interesting ritual followed here. First thing on Ugadi Day, the housewives prepare a chutney made up of neem flowers (how cute and white they are!), unripe mango bits and the good old guud (molasses). And everyone in the household is served a couple of spoonfuls of the concoction in their open held-out palms. And they imbibe it with grimacing faces at first, but get addicted in no time and ask for more and more.
On the Ugadi Day of 1992, KK (junior), then in his final year, landed up at our Qrs carrying a Patel Hall kid on his pushbike. I thought that the new guest had a stomach complaint (PH default) and wanted to consult my medico wife. But, no...apparently this kid from Hyderabad was in his first year and refused to eat anything at all before the Ugadi Chutney. And of course it was not available in the PH mess. So, KK brought him in. Luckily, my wife kept up her Telugu rituals in Bengal and both of them had the chutney and a sumptuous Southee breakfast as an add-on.
Thomson-Reuters, where my son works as a Project Manager, didn't give a holiday for Holi but today was their holiday...Yankees live in Rome as Romans do ;-)
So, he and I visited the local supermarket which was specially decorated for the occasion. And the dozen or so sales-girls in their teens discarded their drab workplace uniforms and dazzled us in their colorful saris and makeup with imitation gold chains and bracelets hanging here and there. I ogled them mercilessly...advantage of old age. And when the billing came up , the girl there was short of coins and asked her neighbor girl to change a tenner. She refused point blank. And I brought out from my pocket coins worth more than ten rupees and showed off. Both the girls were begging me if I could please pass them on. I refused, saying that I sit here and there at Traffic Junctions and collect coins and sell them at a premium. But, as an Ugadi gift, I can pass them on to the original girl who asked her neighbor for change. And she was all smiles. The other one started scowling and then I dug deeper into my pocket and brought out even more coins and gave them to her...some fun!
I was describing this to my D-i-L and said that perhaps the Management of the Supermarket insisted that all their sales girls should come today in their best makeup and jewelry as a sales gimmick. But she said, No, it is the girls themselves who compete with one another on this New Year Day. And within an hour, she and her dot product Ishani decked themselves up in such gorgeous costumes that I never imagined they could be indeed be so beautiful.
About the difference between ogling and appreciating, here is our Autocrat's Dictum:
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"There are some very pretty, but, unfortunately, very ill-bred women, who don't understand the law of the road with regard to handsome faces (all girls look handsome to me...gps). Nature and custom would , no doubt, agree in conceding to all males the right of at least two distinct looks at every female countenance, without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to define the person of the individual one meets so as to recognize an acquaintance. Any unusual attraction detected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a second,---not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffensively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the silghtest demonstration of this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation countenance at home; she knows well enough that the street is a picture-gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody has a right to see them."
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A Very Happy Ugadi New Year to you and wishing perhaps we may meet again in this blogspot next Ugadi!
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