First Day of School

Remember the scene when kids used to cry to go to school and mom or dad used to drag them holding school bag in one hand and literally dragging the kid with the other hand into the school? Well, I dint go through that drastic scene for my first day of school but pretty much... I did cry and my mom had to leave me in the class and go. I don’t remember the first day of Kindergarten but this was about my first day in first grade. I was crying out loud and hugging my mom tightly making a scene...which really annoyed my teacher, who was strict. When I say strict... it is in terms of a typical Indian standard of strictness. After a while, my teacher said in an authoritative tone to my mom to leave me there at that instant and to exit from the class. :(.

We don’t see those scenes these days.Today's school going kids are more enthusiastic and happy. Their first day of school is much awaited day from pre-school years for them now. I wonder if is it to do with the media and exposure that kids are getting about the school and learning experience. This awareness is so much in the kids today that they know that, going to school is part of life and they also know that it is for good. They are looking at school to be the source of their independence in the future.This optimistic perspective might be putting their mind at ease.

Or is it due to the fact that, generation after generation, the attachment, love and affection between people is diminishing within the family? Brides of today are just saying a bye with grin to their family on their wedding day, compared to brides who were weeping during my age and to brides who use to cry during our parents age. I am not saying amount of tears shredded is scale to determine the affection, but I feel that mundane things of modern era has definitely loosened the bonds. Of course there will be exceptions in all those thoughts.

All said, whatever the reason is, it is good that children are more eager to learn and acquire a verity of knowledge and it is a good change that more children perceive that school is the place for fulfilling their quest. :)

A Day with Maidaku

Maidaku, Mehendi or the modern term of temporary tattoo fills a joy and excitement universally to all the girls. I believe it is one of the age old tradition or culture that is still very much in vogue among the females of all ages.

Applying Maidaku on hands used to be nearly a day’s work. First vital constituent in the process back then for me was the design. At that time, either the method of Mehendi in cone was not invented, or we were not aware of. There was a very little scope for designs that could be made with powder or with the paste made with the leaves of Maidaku plant.

I remember the standard design of a single big dot in the center of the palm and little dots surrounding it. Then there was another design of a big cross ‘X’ and with ‘V’s in between.

Mehendi in cone has revolutionized the complete concept of designs that we could do with it. Thanks to the readymade cones of today which has removed the process of making the cone at home after sieving the powder through the cotton muslin and folding the polythene in to a cone and sealing it off with safety pin after filling with the paste.

I trust people still prefer the hand made cone for weddings for obvious reasons of nothing could beat the handmade or homemade either it is a Mehendi cone or anything else.

The next thing after applying was the long wait. Waiting with hands rose so that the design won’t get disturbed and to be careful so that Mehendi won’t stain the clothes. Mind will be eager to see if the Maidaku has done its magic to turn the design into a nice orange shade but there will be constant buzzing from parents and grand parents to wait further as the more we wait the more elegant will be the color. I remember when we used to lift an inconspicuous corner of the design to sneak peak on the color it came so far.

The final satisfaction or happiness will come when you wash the hands and see the bright orange shade of the design on the palm. I remember when my mom used to be more excited than me to see the color. I could still feel the happiness and warmth of her kiss on my palms upon showing my hands to her.

Now, I am re-living that eagerness, excitement and happy smile about the whole process of Mehendi with my daughters. I believe the culture of Mehendi will linger around for the next generations too as I could see the same excitement on my daughter’s face as I used to see on my maternal grandmother while I was applying Mehendi on her palms.

Nehru Zoological Park - Best So Far?

Our little day trip to Bronx Zoo last week with my kids brought back the memory of my visits to NZP at Hyderabad as a child. After 6 hour walk in the Bronx Zoo, I felt as though Nehru Zoological Park is the Best Zoo in comparison to Bronx Zoo or any other Zoo that I have seen so far. Am I the person who does not have good environmental sense? Well may be.

The point is, what factors made the Bronx Zoo as ‘The Best’? The points that I could think of are, how well the animals are taken care of at the zoo? How well the natural habitat is provided to the animals? How well the customer service is provided to the visitors? How well is the overall experience to the visitor? Bronx Zoo embarks high on all these points.

The aspect that was boring for me at Bronx was walking a long distance from one exhibit to other. Visitors of the zoo, especially the little ones, will practically not have energy to see African Giraffe after visiting amazing amphibians since the trail connecting these two exhibits stretches far-off. May be it is not meant to complete the zoo in single visit.

On the other side, animals at Nehru Zoological are all kept close by. Though here also, strolling through the entire zoo is exhausting, but given a 6 hour time, one will be sure enough to see all the animals from Wild African Animals to Reptiles to Amphibians to Birds. And above all, we could see Tigers and Elephants unlike a Tiger and an Elephant in Bronx zoo.

Zoo in Hyderabad might not be the ideal one from an environmentalist view or from the view of an average person who is really concerned about violation of Animal rights. This zoo might also earn least points on above mentioned scale, but it left some wonderful memories for me.

I might be having this view because most of the times first captured is the best compared to the later ones. I have to wait and see if my kids share the same perseverance as mine about these two Zoos when they see Zoo at Hyderabad. :)

Road Trip - Boston

As I hail from tropical climate, summer is a much awaited season. It is a lively season with people buzzing around on the path ways and trails. Strolling grand parents who are visiting from back home, people burning calories, toddlers improving their motor skills and kids with bicycles and scooters is a vibrant picturesque so unique to Summer – a season with parks and barbecues, Popsicles and lemonade.

Among these entire, Road trip is one of my favorite venture. Every time I go on the road trip here in US I will not fallback from appreciating the infrastructure that they have created. Whether it is the long stretching bridges, the tunnels running underground with the river or the high raising buildings over them, every thing exemplifies the meticulous well planned outcome. Maintaining these well laid infrastructures all through these years is a magnanimous effort in itself.

A road trip to Boston few weeks back has exposed the 'Big Dig' project - an infrastructure project for managing traffic in Boston. If having a vision for modern architecture and efficient planning of infrastructure for years to come is one passionate and intellectual aspect, executing that vision to reality needs much more skill and knowledge. The visionaries have a challenge to consider needs and growth of population, the rescue plans, the maintenance to name a few keeping aside the practical hurdles that have to be addressed for implementing it. I was wondering about the two lane tunnel in NY City all these years but the 6 lane tunnels with exits within the tunnels in Boston left me awe struck. Of course, the Big Dig project is quite recent, when technology was much matured compared to the times of construction of NY tunnels.

It is so apt to say America icons for modern infrastructure. All its infrastructure projects from Hoover dam to Erie Canal project to Tunnels in Boston shows their vision, planning, organizing and execution skills which everyone from individuals to nations could learn and inspire.

All said, have you ever felt gruesome while riding through the tunnels? I do. I will be looking for the end of the tunnel as eagerly as admiring the infrastructure. :) . I wonder what would be the experience riding through the Channel Tunnel - Tunnel connecting UK to France.

Ratanala Muggulu

...
...

తీరాయిన సంపద ఎవరిన్టనున్డు

దిన దినము ముగ్గున్న లోగిళ్ళనున్డు

...

...goes the lyrics of C.Na Re. One of the favorite lyricists of my Dad. Do really the homes with amuggu or kolamon their front entrance are blessed? As with most of the Indian traditions, muggucould be a way of making people to get up early in the morning and clean the surroundings. A healthy habit to keep oneself active and in good mood which in turn may reflect on the family to be happy. May be this happiness is what interpreted as 'blessed'.

It is a very native of India, especially Southern part to have a glimpse of, women in the street sweeping and sprinkling water and then drawing designs with flour at dawn. And drawing these designs becomes a passion from a daily chore during the festival time of Sankranti. Sankranti itself has become a metaphor for colorful rangoli or vibrant and large designs of muggulu. Though this festival stands for a lot of other things as getting home the harvest, celebrating winter and others, but the most significant blink for the people in the city is colorful rangoli. The colors in rangoli has a beauty of its own but the kolam with lines (without dots) is a definite classic of our culture and heritage.

Kolam is like symmetrical equation. The modern versions of muggu include dots, which eases the depiction of complicated images or patterns for ones artistic expressions. The aspect of dots itself could have emerged from the tradition of drawing designs with simple lines. Still we could see these age old traditional kolams with lines during the time of Sankranti. It is much similar to folk art where canvas is filled with figures made of lines and some simple shapes if required.

My (paternal) grandmother could make a large patterns of these for Sankranti. The 2 or 4 parallel lines that make the design are drawn together with passing the flour from between the fingers of the hand while the knuckles face down the ground.

I myself could not draw much of these except for chariot pattern that is done for radha saptami.. which follows Sankranti. The actual drawing near the entrance with white flour on a flattened ground, brushed with cow-dung and water is a spectacular art in itself. Over the past years I neither improved nor learned other patterns of it....hoping to learn and share more of these patterns sometime... may be for next Sankrathi. :)

కుల్ల - The Obsolete Quilt

As I was browsing through the New Non-Fiction section of the library few weeks ago, I caught a book with the title "Sewing Green" by Betz White. As the title goes, it is the book about repurposing or reusing the fabric for different projects. Aren't the people used to recycle the fabric from the worn out clothes for various practical purposes earlier? There used to be cloth diapers, quilts and kitchen towels to name a few. At least people are still reusing the fabric for cleaning.

I remember my (paternal) grandmother's quilt. It is called "Kulla" - కుల్ల . It was in no comparison with the modern day quilts, but none the less it used to serve the purpose. It was a thick double layered square of fabric. It was made either by patching few small pieces together or with a single piece of fabric. The two layers were not binded together as we see in the quilts today. It was hollow in between the layers so that, it could be turned as a hood, by pushing one corner of the quilt inside. "Gongadi" -గొంగడి is also the same, except that it is made of wool and 'Kulla' is made of cotton fabric. It was a multi purpose accessory which sufficed as a raincoat, an umbrella, a mat to sit or as a shawl to wrap depending on the necessity for that day. My grandmother used to carry it with her every morning when going for administering or to fore look the fields. She was a versatile woman. She could do from sewing her own accessories, to take care of household and to manage her finances. Women were and are always versatile in every era.

"American Quilting" is looked and perceived with great admiration here. It is treated to be the part of their heritage, culture and art. The visible hand sewn stitches on the quilt are one of the prominent reasons for the price on the quilt. Why did we forget 'our' quilts? Were they not eye catching? Were they not practical? Were they not part of "Go Green" and environmentally friendly? They were all of it. It might be our eagerness in western culture and modernization that made us to forget few habits, values and art over the past couple of decades. We never tried to improvise the technique or art to adapt the changing environment and culture.It also might be the growth in the economic power that made people to afford new things rather than holding on to the old ones. Repurposing was not perceived as a step towards conserving the nature but was looked as an adjustment for economic backwardness.

As it is said, everything goes in rounds and history repeats itself, there might be days in life of our kids with shrinking resources, where they had to learn the things that we unlearned.

-PHOTO: S. HARPAL SINGH Publisher: The Hindu

Fading away: Shepherds are now preferring mill-made bedsheets to the trade mark ‘gongadi’.

A Memoir Of Telugu Words...

I remember the days spent as a kid at my native place for every summer vacation. All those vacations have given me a fond memory. Today I was thinking about few of the words which were very common and very native in those days without the influence of TV or the cellular technology.

Being a kid from the city I used to ponder on some of the words that were part of day to day conversations with the people there. As with the word తాతిన్‌లు - a common word for holidays or సాలె - which means school. These might be a native slang of Mahabubnagar and may not have been used in other places.

As with everything, most of these words have become rare or replaced with more authentic (without the slang) words or substituted with English words.If I visit my village today, I don't hear the word తాతిన్‌లు . Now most of the people tend to use సెలవులు or "Holidays". It could be due to the increase in percentage of educated people and percentage of school goers. Which is a good sign of our progress. However, just try to remember how many of those native words do we still remember which were common once?

I am not saying that these words have become obsolete, but the frequency at which we hear now is decreased tremendously from the past. At least it had in my experience.

Lets begin with Telugu words for colors. Almost all of us know the Telugu names of the main colors as Red, Green and Yellow. Do we still remember names for different shades of color? I could recollect only చిలక పచ్చ(Lime or Peridot), పోక బంతి రంగు (Chocolate Brown) , నారింజ రంగు (Orange),కృష్ణ రంగు (Blue) and పాల పిట్ట రంగు (Turquoise). I am not sure if we could still see a పాల పిట్ట (Blue Jay) early in the morning. That said, we might not forget some words as వడ్రంగి పిట్ట, which is a Woodpecker, since it is more or less straightly translated to English.

This post is not about saving the Language. Fortunately it is not in the verge of collapse and I don't think it will ever vanish. This post is just about feel good reminiscence of my childhood. If you know any of such words (not from Google but from your knowledge or memory), then please let me know.