Listen to Nature

Wherever i look, i just see barren trees only. Trees without any leaves or any flowers. A few months before, this place was filled with so much of life. The same trees were covered with green leaves, small white and rose flowers. Gosh, the place looks completely different from what it looked before. Now, when I look at these trees, there is some feeling of sadness or loneliness in them.

Isn't there a similarity between transformation in these trees and our lifes? It makes me think about the ups and downs in my lifes, the happiness and the sufferings in my life. Like the season changes, my life switches between happy and sad incidents. During my happy days, it warns me from being overexcited. In the midst of my little worries, this inspires to beleive that my tree will be filled with flowers soon and gives me hope for the future. I love watching nature and its always my inspiration for life.

Planning for Sadhya

One of the sites which i browse frequently is the www.vietnamesegod.blogspot.com and the blogs regarding the delicious Vietnam dishes attracts me the most. Those writing inspired me to write about Kerala foods. The usual Kerala lunch consist of rice, a gravy curry, a vegetable dish(usually called thoran) and a spicy fish curry. The abandance of coconut trees in Kerala makes us use a lot of coconut flavour in the food items. We are specialized in making diverse and delicious vegetarian food and we prefer the non-veg dishes to be spicy and red hot. Beleive me, these hot dishes are really delicious. On festivals and special occasions, we prepare a vegetarian feast named 'Sadhya' for lunch. This usually consists of almost ten different curries and atleast one sweet dish named as 'payasam'.

I remember the last Onam (the festival of Kerala), when we prepared the sadhya at home. Me and my mother woke up very early to make all dishes without any flaw. We prepared aviyal(yellow coloured vegetable dish with gravy), sambar(spicy lentil mixture),parippu curry(peas dish),pappadam, kuttu curry(spicy mixed vegetable dish), cabbage thoran, moru curry(curd dish), inji curry(ginger dish), pineapple curry, kichadi(curd dish with cuccumber) and theeyal(fried coconut gravy dish with vegetables). Payasam is always the domain of my father and nobody else is allowed to involve in that. The whole cooking finished just before the lunch time and I was exhausted by that time.We had a great time while having lunch - serving food and sharing moments. As i expected, my family appreciated me for the great effort i put for it. I wonder why ladies take a lot of effort for preparing these many dishes. Is it for the happiness we feel while serving the family a great lunch? Is it for the joyful moments which we share in a family? Or is it the inner craving to get appreciated from the family? Whatever be the reason, as the days for the next festival getting closer, i have in my mind the list of variety dishes for making the Sadhya, the most special and memorable one.

My Dream came true

I have a list of things, which I wish I could do, but almost certain that it is not possible anymore.This includes my desire to learn swimming, skating and classical dance. Now, after being in Chicago during winter, i realise that one of my dreams is coming true. Skating.
My friend is an expert in skating and with him i went to the ice skating rink at Millenium Park. I rented ice skates for the first time in my life. I tightened my shoes and tried to stand up holding my friend's hands. Hmm, I felt comfortable. We walked towards the skating ground and waited while they polished the rink. Once they were done, everyone started racing onto the rink. I waited for sometime and then, I tried to stand on the ice holding both my hands on the side rails. It was not as easy as I expected. I was almost falling down even after holding on with both hands. Later, my friend told me to remove my hands from the rail and try to move forward, leaning slightly forwards while skating. I tried this technique by removing one hand and it seemed to be working.
During my second round over the ice, I was able to skate without holding my hands on the rails. Though, i fell down twice, loosing my balance i wasn't feeling tired. May be it was because of my strong desire to learn skating or the happiness i felt on realising my dream. Thinking about this later that night, I realised that there is nothing impossible in life. We just have to wait for the right opportunity and grab the chance.

Blizzard

"There is a heavy blizzard outside, looks like we will get around 6 inches today" Jamie told me while we were taking a break at work. Blizzard, its a new thing to me,because in Kerala the temperature doesn't even go below 20C. I got up from my seat to have a look at the Chicago crowd at the downtown. But what I could see was heavy snow swirling and twisting making a huge layer of snow in the roads. The roads were empty unlike the usual crowd you see at this time.
The way back to my apartment was really difficult. It took me almost an hour to drive home, instead of the usual 10 minutes. When I got down I could see 6-8 inches of snow covering the road. I almost fell down while I was walking to my apartment. After reaching home, I switched on the TV to watch my regular programs, but a flash news came up in between. I was shocked to hear that a flight at Midway airport had skidded off the runway. Fortunately, all the people in the flight were safe.
I took a glimpse through the window to look at the weather outside. It was still snowing heavily,but I saw some kids throwing snow balls at each other and playing around in the snow. It was really beautiful to see the trees and bushes fully covered with snow. I felt as if Chicago is getting prepared for Christmas way ahead of schedule.