Onam - a different kind of harvest festival

I think most of you would be familiar with the Thanksgiving festival celebrated in the US which began as a harvest festival. Today I am going to tell you about a little known harvest festival from my home state in India namely Kerala – called Onam.

Legend goes that Kerala prospered during the reign of King Mahabali and everyone in his kingdom was happy and prosperous. There was only one problem - the Gods became jealous about how much the people on Earth liked King Mahabali and decided to teach him a lesson. They sent down one of the Gods – ‘Vishnu’ disguised as a monk. When the monk was admitted to the king’s audience, the king told him that he would grant whatever the monk desired. The monk told King Mahabali that he did not wish for anything much - just enough land that he could measure with three of his footsteps.

The king readily agreed to the monk’s request. On hearing this, the monk who was actually ‘Lord Vishnu’ in disguise grew larger and larger in size. With his first footstep he covered the earth; with his second footstep he covered the sky. Since he still had to take his third footstep, the king offered his head and Vishnu placed his third footstep on the king’s head and pushed him into the underworld.

Since the king was so loved by the people in his kingdom, the Gods allow him to visit his people once a year for 10 days. And so the people of Kerala celebrate the festival of Onam, just after the harvest to welcome King Mahabali’s time on Earth which usually falls between the months of August to September. Some of the following customs and traditions are observed during the 10 days of Onam celebration.

The ladies of the house make elaborate decorations in front of the main entrance of the house using different kind of flowers called pookalam. Here is one made by the Leela Kovalam staff where I stayed on my last India trip…

During the festival days young girls and women perform a traditional dance called Kaikotti kali dressed in a special costume. Snake boat races are held in various locations called Vallamkali. We often have all night kacheris – traditional Kathakali dancers in elaborate makeup and costumes re-enacting the story of Onam through story and dance

Growing up as a child my favorite memories of Onam was the beautiful meal that my mum made – it had to have three main ingredients: papadam – traditional deep fried puffed up Indian flatbread or cracker made from lentil flour and spices; pazham –the small sweet bananas – sometimes referred to as honey bananas; and payasam – a sweet dish made from rice, broken wheat or lentil boiled in milk with sugar. All the items in a traditional Onam meal are vegetarian and most exciting of all the entire meal is eaten off a banana leaf.

The Onam sadhya (meal) can have up to 24 dishes. My favorites’ of course are: Erissery – made from yellow pumpkins and red karamani beans; Injipuli – made from grated ginger, red chilies, tamarind and jaggery; Aviyal – mixed vegetables cooked in a coconut yogurt sauce; Kaalan – green plaintains cooked in a coconut yogurt sauce; Thorans - vegetables in grated coconut – a dry preparation; Mezhukupezhati – vegetables steamed and stir fried in oil with mustard seeds, chili etc., again a dry preparation.

My mouth waters just thinking of the various goodies of the Onam meal and this is one of the traditions that I have tried to observe for my family and friends as I moved away from India more than 23 years ago…

Last year on my annual India trip, I was very fortunate…I was in Kerala on the 1st day of Onam…that is when they start making the pookalams (floral decorations). They continue making pookalams for all the 9 days leading up to Onam and designs get more and more elaborate towards the festival day. I also had the extreme pleasure of celebrating the actual festival day with my parent’s after umpteen years…It was doubly joyful as my father had been in an accident and recovered within 3 days to be home for the festival. My kindergarten friend was our surprise guest for the Onam meal as well...

Getting familiar with critters in our new home...

After living for 6 years in Cincinnati and then Dusseldorf, Germany both in the temperate weather zone…we moved to Austin, TX earlier this year…We bought a house with a pool in the backyard surrounded by over 30 live oak trees…The month we moved in the live oak trees in our backyard were shedding their leaves…Even though we had a pool robot, I needed to clean out the two filter baskets beside the pool and the filter bag on the robot cleaner as much as twice a day and then use a long handled net to remove all the leaves which were floating on the surface of the pool…

Since the pool cleaner ran for half the day, every time I needed to empty the filter basket I had to manually shut off the cleaner on the pool control box before I began…One morning I went to open the control box and startled a snake at the base of the control box…I rushed back into the house to grab a broom and wear some closed pair of shoes…but before I got back the snake of course had long disappeared. I left the broom near the control box if ever there was a next time…

When the pool guy came for the weekly cleaning I told him about the snake and he said that every time I opened the covers of the filter baskets I should check if there was a snake there – because they often like to stay in cool areas. I almost had a heart attack as I had been blindly sticking my hand into the filter baskets to pull up as much leaves as I could before I could find the handle to lift the basket out and empty it. Since then I borrowed my husband’s long handled barbecue tongs to empty out the baskets rather than using my bare hands.

The pool guy also suggested that I pull up the large decorative grass growing near the control box. When the lawn people came on the weekend, I promptly got them to uproot more than 3 of these clumps and throw them away…

Next was seeing the bright green lizard on my back porch…the first time I saw him I thought of the lizard in the Geico ad…I had never seen such a bright green colored lizard before. I rushed to get a camera but as usual when you are searching for something you can never find it easily and before I got back to the porch – the lizard had gone. Since then I have seen him so many times that I am becoming nonchalant and just look to see where he is when I go out on the porch.

We needed to get some minor renovation done to our house and I had a contractor come to look at the work to be done. We were going to enter the shed below the deck when he stopped and said we should not go in there as he could see a Yellow jacket nest and that they are quite vicious. I had no idea what a yellow jacket was. Apparently it is a kind of wasp – with a bright yellow upper body – hence the name. I went to the nearest supermarket and went to look at sprays for the yellow jackets. The sales people told me that I should get one which I could spray from 8 ft away and also that I had to do it early morning or at dusk when the yellow jackets would still be in their nest and I had to be downwind from them when spraying the nest.

All these instructions were sounding too scary so I called the Pest control company and told them about the yellow jackets. They sent someone out the very next day and went all over the house and under the deck – they found and removed 4 of the yellow jacket nests – one was just beside the stairs we walked down to the pool area everyday and we had not noticed it.

We do have pleasanter visitors though – one is seeing the humming bird stopping on the live oak trees in the evening and now that we finally have some plants on the deck – they visit the flowering plants at dusk as well. Another is a kind of blackbird with a very long tail. I went on the native birds of Texas website to find a name – they are called boat tailed grackle…they have a very musical call, but are akin to crows and other pests…so far they have not bothered me much – I just hear their calling one another early mornings or at dusk…

Socks - the fourth member of the Prasad Family

I guess it is time to tell how Socks came to be a member of the Prasad Family. We had just moved to Singapore in July 1995 and one month later, Aditya and I were having this intense discussion. He wanted me to get him a brother one year older than him or one year younger than him. I was trying to explain to him that with all the advancements in medical science, I did not know how to get him a 9 ½ yr old brother or a 7 ½ yr old brother. Anand patiently heard us go back and forth on this topic for about half an hour and suggested why didn’t we get a dog instead and the thought excited Aditya as well.

Aditya then had another stipulation – we could not buy a dog, but we had to adopt one. As I mentioned earlier we had just moved to Singapore a month ago and knew just one acquaintance there and was not sure how we could go about adopting a dog. Thankfully the Straits Times Classifieds came to the rescue and after perusing it for a few days – we found an ad – Puppies to good home. We called up the advertiser and she asked us to come to her house to see the pups. One Friday afternoon when Aditya returned from school we drove off to find the advertiser’s home armed with a Singapore Street Directory.

We drove and we drove and we drove. At one point Aditya asked if I knew where I was going as we had been driving for quite a while. I told him the Street Directory showed that we needed to drive further. When we finally reached the advertiser’s residence it was at the Seletar Camp and beyond the camp was a narrow stretch of sea and across the sea was Malaysia and we could actually hear music from a radio playing in Malaysia. The advertiser was a humanitarian who rescued dogs and cats in distress. When we visited her home she had 7 dogs 3 pups and innumerable cats. Of the litter of pups two were male – one all black with white spots, one like a Dalmatian and a female – almost all black.

Aditya was very sure that he wanted a male pup – but the lady told him that was not how to decide on a pet to adopt. She asked him to pick up each of the pups and see who bonded with him the best. He picked up the two male pups first and put them down and then picked up the female pup – she gave him one look with her melting eyes and Aditya did not put her down at all. He carried her all the way in his hands to the car and both of them sat in the back seat all the way home. We did not have any dog paraphernalia – no leash, collar, food or water bowls, food etc., We stopped at a pet store near our home and walked in and told them that we had acquired a puppy and they sold us the needful.

When we arrived home, we knocked on the door of our neighbor – a Swiss German family who had a dog and told them about our new puppy and Judith was kind enough to tell us how to take care of her. Our new pup was all black except for four white paws, white on the tip of her nose and tail and a big white patch on her chest. We named her – White Socks – (after the Chicago White Sox baseball team,) but no one called her by her full name – everyone called her Socks and I called her Girl. She had the most pleading eyes of any dog I have seen – as though she had not been fed for a week and we all had to take pity on her. Socks did not know how to bark at all for the first six months – the most that she could manage came out as a strangled cough. We finally heard her bark during a severe thunderstorm which is quite common in Singapore and found that she was terrified of loud sounds. Ever since then whenever Socks barked everyone at home who heard her would go to check what it was that had frightened her.

When she was less than a year old – she ran through the house one day to greet me when I was sitting in the study room with the sliding doors closed as the airconditioner was on. She did not see the glass doors and ran right into it. The door of course came crashing down and Socks ran away. We ran to find her and there were blood drops all along the way. I somehow bundled her into Aditya’s bathrobe which was drying on the clothes line and rushed her to the vet. She had to get about 14 stitches on her chest and paws but thankfully escaped with no damage to her eyes or face.

The vet said I had to run her everyday and I hated running, so I taught myself to ride a bicycle for the first time at 35 and then taught her to run beside the bike. She loved doing that – except when she saw something which frightened her. Her reaction was to sit still and since I was in motion, I would fly over the handle bars of the bicycle. To this day I have scars on my legs from my initial ventures with Socks. Once I had trained her to run along with the bike, Aditya had this bright idea of taking her for a run while he was rollerblading. She took off with all her enthusiasm and Aditya could not keep up with her pace at all and shouted for me to rescue him. If we all went out together on the bicycle, Socks had to be in the lead, no other bicycle could go ahead of her…

After three years of living in Singapore we moved to Kobe, Japan. Socks was extremely friendly with everyone she met and also all other animals. Other animals did not return the favour though. Our very first week in Japan, on our evening walk, we could hear some animal rustling in a small wood near our home and Socks of course went off tail wagging to say Hello. The ‘Eno Shishi’ or wild pig was not at all pleased and came charging at us and Socks and I ran all the way to our gate and shut ourselves safely behind it. We stayed in Kobe for just one year and returned back to Singapore. Strangely though she was born in Singapore and was returning there, she needed to be quarantined for 30 days. She had never been in a closed room ever since she was born and when we brought her home after the 30 days, she wanted to see us all the time and chewed down two doors – when we were away from home running errands.

We stayed in Singapore for 6 more years and then moved to the US. Socks had always been an outdoor dog – (she has short black hair typical of Asian dogs) till we went to the US – when she became an indoor dog due to the drastic change in weather…I would say US was the place she enjoyed the most for many reasons – she had so much room for herself. Our house was on a 1 acre lot and none of the properties have boundary fences. So we put down an electronic fence at the perimeter of the property – and she wore a collar which detected the electric charge if she ventured within a couple of feet of the fence and she stayed well within the fence. Everyone who came to the house – friends, workmen, service people, and delivery people – all of them would make a fuss over her – pet her and talk to her. This was a strange contrast to the 9 yrs she had lived in Singapore – where most people would first ask to leash her up when they came to the house as they are all terrified of dogs…

She had the largest number of beds in our Cincinnati home. Her official bed was in the butler’s pantry but she slept there only when we went to our bedroom at night. If we were in the kitchen, then she had a mat under the kitchen island. If we worked in the study, then she lay down on the carpet in the foyer so that she could keep an eye on us. When we sat in the family room, she had a huge 6 ft 12” thick furry pad in which she was almost lost. Her fifth bed was her travelling cage piled with her blankets in the garage when we were away at work.

She was diagnosed with arthritis about 6 months before we came to Dusseldorf so she was put on pain medication and glucosamine tablets for her joints. When we moved to Dusseldorf in end March last year, she was fine in the service apartment. Two months later we moved to our present apartment and this apartment had two balconies which literally hang over the pavement below. Since she used to like the outdoors so much we put her travel cage which was her bed again in the balcony, so that she could see all the people walking below and in the park across the road. But one of the very first times I left her alone at home and returned, I heard like a child crying and was wondering who was not picking up their little child.

On entering the apartment I found that it was Socks crying, she was sitting inside her bed in the balcony and crying like a human child. Ever since then we found that she preferred to stay inside the apartment when we were away rather than in the balcony…

She also had the maximum number of visits to the vet since we came to Dusseldorf. She was losing sight and hearing and was put on another medication to help build up the blood vessels to her eyes and ears. Just this year she had been X-rayed twice, had a full sonogram (it was the first time I saw images so clearly on a sonogram), steroid injections on both her back legs at regular intervals after a bad fall in July and protein supplement in her food everyday to build up the muscles in her legs in addition to her arthritis & sight & hearing medication….

The end came very quickly. The kennel owner rang up Anand on the 22nd of Dec saying that she had licked clean a 2 cm patch on her left foreleg and pus was oozing from it. They took her to the Emergency clinic the same evening and cut open the abscess, cleaned and bandaged the foot and put her on antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. By the 25th she had licked clean another patch on the joint of her right hind leg and by Sunday she had done the same to her right foreleg and pus was oozing from it too. The vet at the Emergency clinic told us that if it was just one abscess they would even amputate her foot but it looked like all her joints were hurting her too much and she was biting them in order to relieve the pain – so we decided to let her go…

Not at all an easy decision to make after having her for 15 ½ years through 4 countries and 9 homes, but we could not bear to see her so helpless or in pain. We are hoping she is happily running around in doggie heaven somewhere…

Winter has come early to Dusseldorf this year.....

We had our first snow on 27th November. Just for a couple of hours everything looked like it had been dusted with icing sugar and then it all melted away. We had our first serious snowfall on Monday, 29th Nov. I had gone to German class as usual and when I came out of class 4 hrs later there was snow all over my car. We get such little snow here (last year the car was always parked in an underground garage when Anand was at work and in our cellar while we were home), that we did not feel the need for a snow scraper at all. So when I saw the car covered in snow, the only thing easily available was the cover of my mobile which I used to scrape the snow off the four windows. I used the car’s heating and wipers to get the snow off the front and rear windows and drove off.

Since I had the car, I had to go pick up Anand after work – this normally would take me 15 mts, but that day it took me double the time to get there and of course it took twice as much time to get back home too. Since the snowfall had come so quickly the roads were not cleared at all and that makes for very slow driving….

Throughout last week the temperature stayed between 0 to -5C (between 23 -32 F), so the snow did not melt away. Then on Sunday it began raining which of course melted the top layer of the snow and then promptly overnight the temperature fell below freezing and of course now this has turned to a thin layer of ice – this is most apparent in the park where Socks and I have to go for our walk at least three times every day..

We make quite a ridiculous sight walking in the park as I am bent over and walking as low as Socks – as I have one arm under her belly in front of her back legs to support them as her back legs keep sliding apart in two directions when she encounters ice. We only have to take about 20 steps to cross the road in the park to get to the grassy area area. But we have to do this twice once on our way into the park and on our return.

Yesterday I had to return my library books – I normally take my bike and go across the park to the library and decided to do this as usual. I had not even travelled 500 ft into the park and saw the entire path covered in a nice sheet of ice and was congratulating myself on having taken the bicycle rather than attempting to walk when of course my bicycle slid and down I fell. Another bicyclist stopped and asked me in German if I was alright and I replied to him in English – Of course, except my pride. I attempted to do this a second time and promptly fell down again. Because I was taking the bicycle I had not put on my heavy snow walking shoes, but half boots like I would normally wear to the office and these were no help at all on the icy surface…

Finally I walked on the ground adjacent to the path till I got to a major road going through the park which they had salted in the middle. Since I was wearing my thick walking jacket and heavy pants with thermals – I did not get hurt much except for knocking my elbow hard when I fell. I also knocked off the rear warning light on the bike and one of the reflective strips on my rear tire.

While returning I stuck to center of the major road even though it was a more longer way of returning home. People use the park everyday to go to work, for their errands, mothers with children in buggies, school children going to and fro to school. School kids especially have a great time; they can skate across the park just using their normal shoes. I guess I am growing old and afraid of falling and it gives me the shivers just looking at the ice all across the paths or I am sympathizing too much with Socks….

Onam - a South Indian Harvest Festival

(This blog post of mine was just published in the American Women's Club newsletter - Radschlaeger - thought I would share with all of you too)

I think most of you would be familiar with the Thanksgiving festival celebrated in the US which is a harvest festival . Today I am going to tell you about a little known harvest festival from my home state in India namely Kerala – called Onam…

Legend goes that Kerala prospered during the reign of King Mahabali and everyone in his kingdom was happy and prosperous. There was only one problem - the Gods became jealous that the people liked King Mahabali so much and decided to teach him a lesson. They sent down one of the Gods – Vishnu disguised as a monk. When the monk was admitted to the king’s audience, the king told him that he would grant whatever the monk desired.

The monk told King Mahabali that he did not wish for anything much - just enough land that he could measure with three of his footsteps. The king readily agreed to the monk’s request. On hearing this, the monk who was actually Vishnu in disguise grew larger and larger in size. With his first footstep he covered the earth; with his second footstep he covered the sky. Since he still had to take his third footstep, the king offered his head and Vishnu placed his third footstep on the king’s head and pushed him into the underworld.

Since the king was so loved by the people in his kingdom, the Gods allow him to visit his people once a year for 10 days. And so the people of Kerala celebrate the festival of Onam, just after the harvest to welcome King Mahabali ‘s time on Earth which usually falls between the months of August and September.

Some of the following customs and traditions are observed during the 10 days of Onam celebration. The ladies of the house make elaborate decorations in front of the main entrance of the house using different kind of flowers called pookalam.



During the festival days young girls and women perform a traditional dance called Kaikotti kali dressed in a special costume.



Snakeboat races are held in various locations called Vallamkali.



We often have all night kacheris – traditional Kathakali dancers in elaborate makeup and costumes reenacting the story of Onam through story and dance.



Growing up as a child my favourite memories of Onam was the beautiful meal that my mum made – it had to have three main ingredients: papadam – traditional Indian flatbread or cracker made from lentil flour and spices, pazham –the small sweet bananas (sometimes referred to as honey bananas) and payasam – a sweet dish made from rice, broken wheat or lentil boiled in milk with sugar. All the items in a traditional Onam meal is vegetarian and most exciting of all the entire meal is served on a banana leaf.



The Onam sadhya (meal) can have up to 24 dishes. My favourites of course are
Erissery – made from yellow pumpkins and red karamani beans
Injipuli – made from grated ginger, red chillies, tamarind and jiggery
Aviyal – mixed vegetables cooked in a coconut yoghurt sauce
Kaalan – green plaintains cooked in a coconut yoghurt sauce
Thorans - vegetables in grated coconut – a dry preparation
Mezhukupezhati – vegetables steamed and stir fried in oil with mustard seeds, chilli etc., again a dry preparation.

My mouth waters just thinking of the various goodies of the Onam meal and this is one of the traditions that I have tried to observe for my family and friends over the 21 years that I have lived outside of India…

A Tale of Service in two cities

I needed to go to a pet food store within two days of arriving in Germany as Socks was arriving that evening and I needed to buy her dry food before the pet couriers delivered her. I have been patronizing the same store for the last 17 months that we have been living here…for replenishing pet food, treats, new collar and leash, two dog beds, doggie bags etc., They had a loyalty card which they would stamp for every 20 EUR purchase and when you had made EUR 200 purchases in all – they would give you a 10% discount on your next purchase. On one such visit of mine I had forgotten to take my loyalty card, so I asked the cashier in my broken German to write on the back of the receipt that they had not stamped my loyalty card and I could do so on my next visit with the receipt in hand. They flatly refused to do so.

We visited Palm Coast, FL almost a full year after staying in Germany and went to CVS Pharmacy to stock up on out vitamin tablets. They had a promotion of Buy 1 Get 1 free on their own brand of vitamins. I did have a CVS card when I lived in the US, but had not taken it along with me on my trip. The cashier at the checkout said it was not a problem – to give him my address and zipcode and he would find it in the system. I gave him the details, but he could not find it in the system as our house is rented and we have new tenants living there with a new telephone no. The cashier immediately said that it was not a problem and issued us a new CVS loyalty card and scanned the new number to give us the store offer.

During our trip we also went to an Outlet Mall in St. Augustine and visited the Jockey/Lee stores and the cashier at the checkout asked us if either of us was over 55 and she could give us a senior discount – my husband said not yet – but in two months and she said not a problem and still gave us a senior discount.

And the strangest thing was that the cashier who served us was a German who had been living in the US for the last 20 years….

A recent bag I purchased....

Nordstrasse is one of my favourite shopping streets in Dusseldorf, there are quite a few stores which I love popping into, even if I do not want to buy anything. On one such foray of mine I spotted a handbag in my favourite colour – maroon. I immediately picked it up from the shelf and was quite astonished to find that it was very lightweight. The bag surface almost felt like parchment. I did not quite like the idea that it was so light, but then I opened the bag and looked inside and found this stitched into the inner zip pocket – genuine eel skin, Made in Korea.

I gave in to the temptation and purchased it and have not regretted my purchase. In addition to finding a bag in my favourite colour I found it had some really nice features. The zip of the bag does not just stop at the handles like most bags do but goes up all the way up the handle as you can see from the photo below:




On one side of the bag is a pouch in which I can safely store my handphone



and on the opposite size a zip pocket which is large enough for my keys or a small coin purse