June 14th: Family Ceremonies and Dindigal

With Ashvatha, Rithani and Kavin

Blurry pic of the house all lit up

Somehow we forced ourselves to get up at 4am (more like 4:30am in my case) and get ready to go to the puja. I decided to wear my new white sari since everyone else was going to be dressed up anyway and I didn't really bring more than one fancy salwar kameez/chudidar set. We went into the room where the puja was set up but couldn't stand there for too long because the smoke was burning our eyes. Pretty much everyone except the priests and my aunt and uncle that were performing the puja for Bala Anna and his wife left the room with tears running down their eyes. It was still dark when we got to the puja but the sun slowly started coming up around 5:30-6am. There were a lot more people that were here for the puja compared to the dinner the night before so we spent some time again with different people coming up to us with their barrage of questions about our life and how our parents were and how they hadn't seen us in such a long time........ It was actually a rather boring morning. We spent most of the time just sitting and watching what was going on around us and listening to people talk about us around us. That is always the fun part. People trickled in and out and there was another new house ceremony that was happening across the street so people were shuffling between the two ceremonies. Breakfast was an ongoing affair and people just kept trickling in whenever they felt hungry. It was definitely a heavy meal and I don't think I had fully recovered from the dinner the previous night because

The cow and the calf that is hiding

I couldn't eat much of the food. I tried to eat a little bit of everything but I really didn't want to get sick (that kind of failed) for the one week that we were here. After breakfast, my sister and I wandered over the park with the kids to see what they were up to since they seemed to be having a lot more fun than the two of us and we ended up playing on the swings and the small merry go round esque contraption. Eventually we did go back to the puja because it was time for the two cows to be led into the house and apparently having the cow urinate and poop in the house is a good thing. Who knew? At least it wasn't directly on the floor and on the carpet but still it is an interesting concept. There was a cow and a cute little calf that were led into the house.

Visitors that I don't know

Eventually we got tired and left around 8:30am to go home and take a nap. It felt like it should be 4-5pm in the afternoon and not 9am but all the little ones decided that they wanted to come back with us and nap because they were tired of hanging around the puja. We all trudged back home only to figure out that none of us could really fall asleep no matter how hard we tried. Ashvatha was the only one that passed out but being 3 years old and having been up since 2am she had good reason to crash. My sister, Rithani and Kavin all watched Vaarnam Aayirum (which is a great movie) while I hung out with my grandma and uncle. Slowly people from the puja started trickling over to our house to talk and more importantly take a nap. It was actually entertaining when more and more people started coming over and realized that people they had been looking for over at the puja were actually over at our house sleeping. We were planning on heading to Dindigal with Rangaraj Mama and Bavani akka this afternoon so my sister and I could visit our grandfather who lives about twenty minutes away. We were going to leaving around 2-2:30pm so we went back over to the puja to eat some lunch before coming back to get our things together. We finally after eating and answering more questions were able to pull ourselves away around 1:30 to come back home and pack. At 2:30, my uncle came with his family and the seven of us piled into his 5-seater with the kids on our laps in the back for the 3 hour trip back to their house. We all fell asleep at various points throughout the trip but thankfully it wasn't a horribly cramped trip back. I don't know how Kavin and Rithani managed but they curled themselves up in two balls and went to sleep right away and didn't wake up until we got to their house. I ended up falling asleep once we got to their house but had to get back up when our other cousin Kumar Anna came to visit with his wife (Gomathi Ani) and their 7 year old son Siddharth. The two of them live in Dindigal as well so they came over to visit with us because all the kids are in school now so this was the only time that we would have gotten to see Siddharth. I think I was half awake during their entire visit but it was definitely nice to see them. I don't think I saw them during my last visit and Siddharth has definitely gotten bigger in the meantime. 

Gomathi Ani, Kumar Anna, Rangaraj Mama, & Rithani

Siddharth was pretty engrossed with angry birds 

My uncle was really proud of his mosquito tent. 

We were all pretty exhausted from the long day so once Kumar Anna and his family left, we ate dinner and went to bed around 8pm. Kavin and Rithani had school the next morning and needed to get up somewhat early to get ready for school. While the rest of us slept on mattresses my uncle decided he was going to test out this new mosquito tent that he had bought and set it up outside on the patio and slept there. He was quite proud of his purchase and really excited to use it. He wanted me to take a picture of him inside to show my mom, so here you go Amma.