Its Birthday Time!!

Yes, my daughter turned 3 yesterday!! And the feeling hasn’t sunk in for me yet. It seems like just weeks ago we celebrated her 2nd birthday and just a few months ago she was born :). It seems as if time has just shrunk. We just had a small party at home with a few of my Japanese friends, her only friend K and her favorite dog, Non chan!! In fact we had two small parties………one along with friends and one after my hubby dearest returned from office with his colleague. Both low key affairs, but my daughter enjoyed it thoroughly, after all she got to cut two cakes. I enjoyed it too because my daughter was happy and also because I love cooking for occasions (please do not read as “I cook occasionally”). It was fun having my Japanese friends over. My hubby probably would have enjoyed it better if not for his cold and fever :( The menu for the snack party was Hot Indian Milk Tea, Vegetable Bajjis, a dish made out of sweet potato(because Japanese love sweet potato), gulab jamun, Homemade Mango Ice-cream and of course The Cake. And dinner was Vegetable Pulao with Raitha and the second cake. Cakes are expensive here and due to the global economy crisis which has led to reduced expenditure, I got two sponge cakes from the store and decorated it myself. My first attempt at decoration, without any equipment and no prior knowledge about it. Here are the pictures………. The one with the candle was the second cake and the one with Hello Kitty was the first cake ;-)

"Markazhi poove" - My Suprabhatham

During my working days as a software engineer, I used to listen to this song every morning like we Hindus listen to the Venkatesha Suprabhatham. Since I used to stay very far from office I used to take the 6:30am bus from my home and reach office by 7:45am. Our campus used to be at its best at that time of the day especially during the winter months. My walk from the bus bay to my building in the campus through the early morning mist, watching the dew drops on the lawn, the musical sound of the birds and the greenery all around me used to have an instant calming effect on me and make me feel fresh for the whole day. As soon as I reach my cubicle I used to play this song softly and listen to it repeatedly until my colleagues arrive at 8 am. I used to drown in the scintillating soft music and the lyrics of the song and feel rejuvenated and fresh to start my work for the day.

The song is from the Tamil movie May Maadham released in 1994 with Vineeth and Sonali Kulkarni playing the lead. I don't like the movie particularly, but I love this one song. It is picturised in a place like Ooty or Ooty itself, with Sonali Kulkarni walking through the early morning misty, green mountains. The girl is in her late teens and belongs to an upper class, high status society and is protected a lot by her rich father. This song is about her yearnings to lead a normal life. She desires to break free of all the restrictions imposed on her and see happiness in the simple things in life. She wants to sleep on the lap of the Markazhi flowers as sleep evades her in her luxurious bed ; She wants to smell the flowers, hop on the grass, walk alone in the dark and drink tea from the street side shop, walk on the banks of the river Kaveri, walk barefoot on the sands of the beach and on a rainy day she wants to feel the warmth of raindrops on her skin!! The song used to remind me in the start of every new day about the simple things I am blessed with, especially my independence, instead of complaining about the bigger things that I don't possess.

Somewhere down the years, the fast life got the better of me and I completely forgot not only about this song but also about music and poetry. There was a time, when I used to love to listen to the soft old Hindi songs, Malayalam and Tamil songs with wonderful lyrics and always be on the look out for songs with good lyrics. But its almost 4 years now that I stopped listening to this song or any other songs. It started off with the restrictions I used to have at the client's workplace. After I quit my job, there were no restrictions, but being a first time mother I had no time for music or rather I did not make time for it. I have been spending my time worrying about anything and everything and never found the time to sit back and relax. That's the reason why I stopped blogging too ;-) Yesterday, when my hubby dearest was humming this song, I suddenly realised how much I have missed it and from 8am today morning until now the song is playing in a loop on my laptop. Not that I can make up for the 4 years of my music less life in one day but its a start anyways..........

If you are interested (it would help if you can understand Tamil), listen to this song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXUGZfzP0Ao