16th January

16th January, Cow Pongal day in Seetaramanpet.

This morning when we woke we could hear in the distance the tinny music being broadcast over loudspeakers which heralds Pongal day. In good time for midday we set off to Seetaramanpet along the road through Kavanur. On the way we came upon a huddle of men clustered across the road, considering a large lorry which had overturned and lay on its side in a paddy field. 'Some drunk driver is here' I was informed as I stopped,  in my capacity as  taker of reportage photographs for this blog. Quite how that will be rectified we cannot imagine but doubtless it will involve a lot of chaps standing around giving their opinions very loudly. 

We went first to Balaji's house to return a tiffin box in which Santa had given us some take-away meals-on-wheels payassam for Jude. Come, come in, sit, take coffee, small coffee mam, sir, was the greeting, of course. Before we had coffee however Santa was about to do the pooja, which is a kind of prayer which they do frequently in their homes, and which is special on Pongal festival day. She first arranged photographs of her deceased parents in law and then lit candles, as you can see in the photograph. Then she led us in making the namaste - two hands placed together in a sort of attitude of prayer. All the family were crammed into the small side room which has a pooja shrine corner and incense sticks were lit, which made the atmosphere very smokey and a bit chokey. 

Once the brief ceremony was over we sat to have our coffee and a lentil burger- no amount of saying 'we are just on our way to Suresh's house for lunch, no thank you' etc will prevent this from appearing in front of us, oh and just a quick cup of payassam whilst we're at it. No problem they said, this is only small snack. Delicious of course. Payassam seems to feature milk, jagaree sugar, cashew nuts, cardomom pods, sultanas and noodles. Andy has shown great enthusiasm for this so he  now gets two pots of it at least! 

Off then to our lunch date. On arrival however we discovered a bit of a change of schedule. Apparently communication hadn't worked so well and the family were not sure we had confirmed for today, so when we appeared in the village a bit of rushing around must have gone on behind our backs. As a result Padmini, one of the teachers, who had invited us for Sunday,  had very kindly agreed to give us lunch today instead and to swap so that we will eat at Suresh's in laws house on Sunday.

Keen followers of this blog over several visits might know that Suresh has married into the family of Santi, a widow, who has three (very beautiful) daughters. Suresh has been one of the group of young men in the village, led by Balaji, who have helped us over the years. He now works for Ashok- Leyland in Chennai, doing computer design. He has married Veejaykumari, who is a nurse and lives, now that she is married, in Suresh's home. They had a baby just over a week ago and whilst she has the young baby VJ is living with her own mother. Suresh comes back to the village for weekends. He said to us today that he views his week in Chennai as a necessary evil because he has family  responsibilities, but that he really feels he is  coming home to heaven when he gets on the five o clock train out of Chennai on a Friday.

Santi's oldest daughter Uma lives with her husband and two young children just behind her mother's home and they have just constructed a very nice new home. She does tailoring work at home now as she was an employee previously of Bishopston Trading Company which has now closed. The third sister Veejaylakshmi is home for four days for Pongal. She works doing Software engineering ( I think) in Chennai and lives in a hostel. She too comes home to her village every weekend. Santi's girls were the very first recipients of the One Candly fund. Their story of hardship, which meant that they could not stay on in school as their father had died, so disturbed Pam Morris that she decided something must be done, and thus the idea of the small bursery to fund children to stay in school was born. These girls have done incredibly well- Veejaylakshmi graduated with first class honours. As I took this photo of her with her mother and with Uma, they spoke as they always do when we visit, of how we - donors to the Candle fund- have changed their lives. Better indeed to light one candle than to curse the darkness. 

Back now to Padmini, who had been rushing around chopping pumpkins and potatoes and something called 'elephants' food' - which we have not before encountered and must be googled. Normally she would have been preparing our meal for hours but she had kindly offered to put it all together in about an hour and a half. It was super, of course and we had a lovely relaxed meal with her husband and her two daughters. Afterwards we looked at her photo albums - starting with the large wedding album naturally, then going on to several featuring her older daughter as she progressed from babyhood. One album was all about the special celebration which was held when, aged thirteen, last year, she began to menstruate. She was given her first very lovely sari ( by her grandmother) and made the centre of attention. Padmini explained that this is their custom and that for a fortnight around that time her daughter was given specially nutritious  food. 

After the albums came the Dressing Jude and Sally in Saris. We have always found that our Indian friends want to do this, to dress our hair with flowers and to put a sticker on our foreheads, to make us look altogether  much more glam than we normally do.  See below for results! 

Just at this juncture we were asked by Balaji if we would pop next door to his home. Here we discovered that a large party of visitors, all the family of Santi, Balaji's sister in law, were waiting to meet us. They were full of admiration for our new Indian look, though personally I was less convinced. Then guess what 'Mam, just one coffee, one small coffee' etc etc. I managed to get Jude out of hers, but the umpteenth cup had to be downed by Andy and me. Finally, back to say thank you to Padmini and family, to be divested of our finery, farewells to Balaji and co and also another quick hello- goodbye to Raghu's mum and dad and off we wobbled on our bikes. Alas however,'some puncture problem' for Jude, fortunately not far out of the village. No worries however, Balaji is the original Mr Fixit. So we sat and watched as he deftly dealt with the inner tube and made a makeshift patch. Finally we really were off. 

On the way home we passed lots of evidence of Cow Pongal festival; several games of cricket and volley ball being played; a small procession with a boy leading it, drumming furiously;  several cowpats by doorways decorated with flowers; beautiful column patterns all along the street  and every cow we passed had been garlanded. It had been a perfect festival day for us.