Janmashtami and Parippu Pradhaman

It is Janmashtami today, birthday of Lord Krishna. My childhood memories of Janmashtami is the pageant shown on TV on that day, with young kids dressed up as "Unnikrishnan" and his many lovely gopikas. Today, for the very first time, I made something special for Janmashtami, parippu pradhaman, also my very first parippu pradhaman ( Have never ever ventured at sharkkara payasamas, as I am not usually good at it). G told me that it came out well. I guess he does like it, as he had a second helping . Also, after having lived all these years with him, one thing I have become an expert at, is to make out from his face when he enjoys a dish and when he does not, latter being the norm at our household usually :)

I got inspired by the kadala parippu pradhaman made by my friend's mom, the other day for Onam. It was "yummilicious" as M says. Also the fact that it is a three day weekend gives me some breathing room to indulge.

I have come to realize that, such things give me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction. Deep down inside me, somewhere, I am like my mom, a typical malayali housewife, although I pretend(?) to be "that career-oriented mom".
 

M's school started two weeks back and this is the first long weekend. We have no plans. "Stay home and take it easy" is the motto for my weekend. One of my favorite past times is to surf through music. I seldom do it,though. Today, as I am keying in this, I am listening to some of them.Songs make you nostalgic, makes you realize, memories are precious and probably, are the only ones which are eternal.

This makes me sail back to my child hood memories. In most malayalee households, we very often say, "ente krishna" or "ente guruvayoorappa" which translates to "My dear Krishna/Guruvayoorappa"."Krishna" referred to here of course is "Lord Krishna". We malayalis, take personal pride that "Krishna" somehow is our own, and oh we are so sure,he is from somewhere near Thrissur (Courtesy Guruvayoor temple). Anyway, I grew up in a house hold, where we would use the catch phrase (mentioned above) every now and then. From the tone, we can make out the emotion with which it is uttered.I, as a child, was fascinated by Krishna's stories and was in awe of Krishna. I adapted to the catch phrase easily and Krishna became my favorite God. I used to believe that Lord Krishna had a special affiliation for me (I am sure, every child in Kerala probably believes that) and to my marvel, all my childhood prayers("Please God, let it not rain today","Please God, I should ace the test and win this years proficiency award", "Please God, it should not hurt, when my teeth gets pulled out today", "Please God, my mom should not find out that I faked head bath today") were answered dutifully by Lord Krishna. So my belief that, Lord Krisha indeed had a great concern for me were true. As I grew older, not all of my wishes were granted. I attributed that to my innocence being lost and some of the wishes were unreasonable too :)

Lately, I watched this movie (forgot the name, I think it is Bruce almighty), where Morgan Freeman plays the role of God. In the movie, Mr Freeman is so busy as he has millions of prayers from we mortals to attend to. I liked that idea and took it to heart( Don't take me wrong, I am not crazy, at least not yet..). When things do not work for me, I assumed that God was busy or HE had  far more important things to attend to, like when I did not make it through the interview the other time. Also, I think, I started being slightly more considerate in  demanding things from him. HE has millions of far more important  things to attend to.( But trust me, sometimes I do break the rule and be greedy and just keep on asking unreasonably..)

We all change with time. I have changed quite a bit with time. Questionable, whether the change was for good or bad.Our beliefs change, our lives change, but memories do remain. always..They are eternal. Thank you lord for everything and here is wishing YOU a very happy birthday!!. Happy Janmashtami!!