Nostalgia - Part-1

• Spending countless nights on the mottai madi staring at the stars doing nothing.
• Singing agninatchatiram songs in a high pitched voice and taking down the lyrics religiously while getting assurance from my friend that she will record a cassette on the very fancy double deck tape recorder of days of the yore. I remember the time when they got the tape-recorder and it was a big thing and all of us neighbours were there to look at it. And each of us tried recording, what not....Alpathanamana santoshamgal!
• Eyeing the then muttai in chettiyar kadai and finally giving in to temptation and getting it although this was a strict no-no from my father. Trivia: This is one of those very unhygenic yet extremely tasty candies that hung inside a plastic cover and costed like 5 paisa.
• Smell of fresh marudani (mehndi) when the upstairs mami applied it on our hands on Deepavali eve and going to bed with the exciting prospect of waking up early and actually lying there wide-awake since it was too exciting to go to sleep.
• Nila choru in the mottai madi on chithra pournami.
• Cup of bournvita after coming back from school.
• Ari nellikai- The sour ones.
• One of those yet again banned road-side kulfi that comes late-night.
• Paneer/Goli soda.
• On hot summer evenings - the wift of jasmine scented air. Sitting on top of the climber and plucking jasmine in vessels.
• The smell of mud when the rains are about to come and the excitement of looking out of the school's window thanking your stars and knowing that you didn't bring an umbrella and now can go drenched all the way home.
• Singing school prayer songs for golu and collecting all the sundal in plastic- bags. Dragging yourself and the pattu pavadai to each and every house.
• Hire cycle for 50 paise - Try to get hold of the blue cycle before the boy-next-door gets it.
• Rising adrenalin when discussing a maths paper when you know that there are more mistakes than correct answers.

OMG - This is scary for us!

I kept joking to my mom that one day my kids will settle in Mars and I will have to visit there to look after my grand-children and then we will keep cribbing about how good earth is (Just like our parents have to adjust to our lifestyle here in the US)! And lo and behold there is an open invitation from google to settle down in Mars. OK, that sure is freaking me out. At the rate we are going, there will be a time when all of us are just travelling in a space-ship and ordering rasam sadam in a replicator.