A brief blog...

January 17th

Finding myself having spent (wasted) much time writing a blog for today which has vanished into the ether, I am just going to precis the day's happenings very briefly and add a few photos, since it is time for bed here in hot and sticky India.

We went to Padmini's ( Pachaikili teacher) house for lunch and a third consecutive day of Pongal face-stuffing. Delicious meal, as always, and good fun here too because Padmini gets by with her English well and has a very ready wit. Her husband Ramesh is also a nice chap; and today we met Padmini's mother for the first time. She had come specially from Katpadi to help Padmini prepare the feast and to meet us. After lunch we had the compulsory looking at photo albums, followed by the equally compulsory dressing us up (well, Pam and I anyway) in saris, with stickers, flowers and gold jewellery. All this horror then to be recorded in photos and then paraded through the street to Raghu's house, where we were expected for coffee at four (second visit) and of course one coffee never going to be sufficient, so another dish or two of payasam to be consumed. This  is a very sweet milky dessert made with vermicelli and the odd cashew nut and raisin and seems to feature specially at Pongal. More ghastly photos to be taken as Raghu in Thailand has to see the full awfulness on Whatsapp!

Whilst we were being dressed up, Andy and Brian enjoyed playing keepy-uppy with some village lads, who were greatly amused!

There was a real air of holiday in the village and as we have often seen before, a group of young men, this time including Suresh who was trying not to laugh too much at us, were sitting on the ground in the middle of the street playing a chalked out traditional game. As we made our escape in time, just, to beat the fall of dusk and the arrival of the mozzies, we cycled off through Kavanur and all along the way people in their best Pongal clothes were sitting out and called out to us merrily, Happy Pongal, or hi, or vanicum! We have, as you can tell, well and truly celebrated Pongal this long weekend, with excessive eating reminiscent of the worst excesses of Christmas. It is devoutly to be hoped that tomorrow will require less over-eating, though I fear that Andy's dream of a nice crisp salad is not going to come true.