Food for thought!

Although I love celebrating my Hindu festivals, sometimes it is exasperating. As it happened today.
Today is our Varsha Porappu – Tamil New Year. Happy New Year to one and all. May the year be filled with everything happiness. Apart from the usual vadai and payasam, we are supposed to cook a special delicacy called manga-pachchadi. It is special because it has all tastes in it – sweetness of jaggery, sourness of mango, salt, spice and bitterness of neem flowers that we need to add to it. By eating the same, we are preparing for a year which is full of sweet, salty, bitter, sour etc moments. Then paanagam (jaggery mixed with water) and neer moru (buttermilk) also has to be prepared and offered to the Lord when the panchaangam (the years predictions) is read. Over and above all this, a full fledged lunch needs to be cooked – with rice, sambar, rasam, one dry vegetable and one kootu (wet one).
So, I had to get up an hour earlier and being a Saturday and that too a full working one for me, believe me I had to muster all my courage to do so. I took head bath. Even though my MIL is there with me in all the effort, I started the day feeling “why o why cant I sleep a bit more?” Anyway, the morning hustle bustle soon got over and lunch was partaken. I rushed to my work.

Looking back now I feel, that sometimes it is good to look beyond laziness and lethargy. We do need such occasions for many a reason. The festivals call out for family unions where we need to take blessings of our elders. The festivals give us reason to think of Him. The festivals break the monotony by giving us wide variety of delicacies. Would I ever think of making manga pachchadi if not for varsha porappu? Similarly would I ever make seedai (the round spherical rice-flour crispies) if not for Janmashtami? Each of our festivals has something different to offer to our Gods. And taking His name, we relish the same.

At the end of it all, I wonder why does our life revolve around food?