16th January 2019

16th January 2019
Today is Cow Pongal!

All this week locally Pongal ( Harvest) is being celebrated and today is specifically Cow Pongal, when often we can see very beautifully decorated cows. I've never before seen a kolam pattern drawn on the ground in the shape of a cow, like these two in front of the house where today's feast will be served to us, chez Balaji and family. 

Regular readers of this blog will know what our feast looked like- another delightful thali plate. For the first time this trip I was defeated by my portion size, so had to pull the top of my banana leaf over the bottom half to indicate that I'd eaten enough- this is the polite way to do it, apparently. Prya and Santa, Balaji's wife and mother were quick to reassure me this was OK, no problem. 

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We had a delightful couple of hours with this, another of our special families, stretching our Tamil and their English as far as possible. The two lovely daughters of Balaji's brother Shankar are in an English medium school and the eight year old is already quite helpful with communication. His younger girl painted two of Brian's finger nails in lurid pink and blue, very fetching; both girls obviously loved my hat; Pam had a lesson in flower-tying ( garland making) which had them in fits of giggles, but in the end Balaji- ever the practical one- showed her how to do it very slowly and bingo! She had it! Balaji's little girl, aged 2 and a half, managed this time to overcome her mistrust of the four large white people and we got some beautiful smiles from her. She is going to be a Patchaikili pupil when she turns three in June. After all the support Balaji has given to us and the play centre over the years it will be super to have his daughter benefiting from it at last. 

After we've been stuffed and decorated with flowers!