I went to my village the previous week. It was a fairly quick trip, so many miles to be covered in a day’s time. We picked the finest time to go to the village. With the harvest just over couple of days ago, I got to truly experience some of the finest parts of rural India. We got to see what true celebration was all about…and it did not involve alcohol, expensive food at an expensive restaurant. En route from the town to the village, we came across many tiny villages, maybe a total of 20 families or so. Every village was decked up in bright colours, each having its own live band of drummers and the annoying trumpet like thingy they play at all tambram weddings. Each village, having their own rounds of kabaddi, relay race, etc. The slightly larger villages had speakers put up which were blaring some of the really old classic tamil film songs. How do I know this? Well the parental unit was getting quite annoying with, “guess the hero and heroine of this song?” And they’d burst out into a duet of some sort...happened on quite a few occasions…. whatever catches their fancy in old age! Some villages even had the tiny ferris wheel, which obviously was not built for me…I don’t mean the ‘now’ me….the ‘kid’ me also would not fit into any of those. I have been asked to get off when I’ve tried them at the village fairs back in the day. Sigh!!!! Those were the memories…cute kid (am cute now too) with candy floss in hand….manages to squeeze butt into seat….ferris wheel does not move…promptly asked to get off….Sigh!!!!
We even passed the parade of bulls, which is something like what happens in the tiny streets of Spain. Where bulls are let lose and maul people. That is supposed to be fun. Normally a fan of gore and bloodshed, this is just madness. But the bulls looked super neat with ribbons and crepe paper on their horns, some having bells too. So much for the macho image….I can almost see the cows thinking, “ That bull is sooooooooo metro-sexual with that pink ribbon…..watte hunk….but the other dude is just plain queer with the bells. Maybe he’s into goats or something!!!!”. Wanted t stay the extra day and actually go to the death races, but we had a darn bus to catch back home. Tons of gorgeous photo ops….but no camera. Always happens…doesn’t it?????
I noticed this thing about many of the shops and tiny restaurants down south in the motherland, they are bad at English spellings. I do mean bad to a point where it stops being funny. Eg: Specell meals, no smokeking (only Singh is King) , thali mills 24 hours, chikin dishes availbill here, muttun briyani, quik photograf (is it like a Steffi Graf?) and many more. Many of the shops have been named by generally abbreviating the name of the owner or proprietor or their family members. So you’d find tons of shops on the same street with the same abbreviation. SKC silks, TNS coffee house, SMD fast food…..this does not work sometimes. I passed a place called PMS Men’s beauty saloon….that was it. Was rolling on the floor of the car and laughing for about half an hour. PMS Men’s beauty saloon…hahahaha…killer stuff!
The one thing I found quite annoying in the motherland was that despite being the land of coffee, idli and dosa…..you can’t find a decent place anywhere at anytime. We had to do a fair amount of driving around and by the time we got into civilization to eat, we could not find one decent place serving food. It was 2 PM, I’m hungry and the meals at most places are over by 1:00 PM. Another idiosyncrasy of the south that annoys me. People eat really early. And they eat a lot and don’t even look 1/3rd as fat as me. That is until they hit their 40’s when the pot belly comes out. We find places selling noodles and gobi Manchurian (or gobi manjuri as they call it), all swimming in oil….but we cant find one place with a simple idli-vada or dosa being sold. And the coffee just sucks…. For crying out loud, we invented the damn thing. It’s like the Arabs not finding camels, the French not finding truffles, the Australians not finding beer, the Russians not finding a place for Vodka......you get the picture!!! Anyway, we finally found a place that offered us some left over curd rice…..oh well beggars can’t be choosers.
All this apart, I am really tempted to buy some farm land back in the village and perhaps outsource the operations. (aha….corporate devil comes out). It is kind of sad not to own land in your own village. You see, most of the land was sold off by the elders leaving sentimental fools like me with nothing. I guess I shall put this on the bucket list. Nice fields of paddy near mountains…almost like in ‘Roja’….except, I need to find a way to get the darn cell phone tower out of the picture, which proved to be a major eyesore in many a picturesque scenery.
We even passed the parade of bulls, which is something like what happens in the tiny streets of Spain. Where bulls are let lose and maul people. That is supposed to be fun. Normally a fan of gore and bloodshed, this is just madness. But the bulls looked super neat with ribbons and crepe paper on their horns, some having bells too. So much for the macho image….I can almost see the cows thinking, “ That bull is sooooooooo metro-sexual with that pink ribbon…..watte hunk….but the other dude is just plain queer with the bells. Maybe he’s into goats or something!!!!”. Wanted t stay the extra day and actually go to the death races, but we had a darn bus to catch back home. Tons of gorgeous photo ops….but no camera. Always happens…doesn’t it?????
I noticed this thing about many of the shops and tiny restaurants down south in the motherland, they are bad at English spellings. I do mean bad to a point where it stops being funny. Eg: Specell meals, no smokeking (only Singh is King) , thali mills 24 hours, chikin dishes availbill here, muttun briyani, quik photograf (is it like a Steffi Graf?) and many more. Many of the shops have been named by generally abbreviating the name of the owner or proprietor or their family members. So you’d find tons of shops on the same street with the same abbreviation. SKC silks, TNS coffee house, SMD fast food…..this does not work sometimes. I passed a place called PMS Men’s beauty saloon….that was it. Was rolling on the floor of the car and laughing for about half an hour. PMS Men’s beauty saloon…hahahaha…killer stuff!
The one thing I found quite annoying in the motherland was that despite being the land of coffee, idli and dosa…..you can’t find a decent place anywhere at anytime. We had to do a fair amount of driving around and by the time we got into civilization to eat, we could not find one decent place serving food. It was 2 PM, I’m hungry and the meals at most places are over by 1:00 PM. Another idiosyncrasy of the south that annoys me. People eat really early. And they eat a lot and don’t even look 1/3rd as fat as me. That is until they hit their 40’s when the pot belly comes out. We find places selling noodles and gobi Manchurian (or gobi manjuri as they call it), all swimming in oil….but we cant find one place with a simple idli-vada or dosa being sold. And the coffee just sucks…. For crying out loud, we invented the damn thing. It’s like the Arabs not finding camels, the French not finding truffles, the Australians not finding beer, the Russians not finding a place for Vodka......you get the picture!!! Anyway, we finally found a place that offered us some left over curd rice…..oh well beggars can’t be choosers.
All this apart, I am really tempted to buy some farm land back in the village and perhaps outsource the operations. (aha….corporate devil comes out). It is kind of sad not to own land in your own village. You see, most of the land was sold off by the elders leaving sentimental fools like me with nothing. I guess I shall put this on the bucket list. Nice fields of paddy near mountains…almost like in ‘Roja’….except, I need to find a way to get the darn cell phone tower out of the picture, which proved to be a major eyesore in many a picturesque scenery.
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