'Tis the Season!

This is the week of Christmas and I am loving the spirit of festivity. It’s that time of the year when there are Christmas trees and decorations everywhere, and an air of cheer all around. The office wears a deserted look as most people are either working from home or are on vacation. I have an off for the whole of next week :)

Angel had a concert (*gulp*) at her day care where the children from her class performed on Jingle Bells. It was lovely to see the little tots sing the carol song. Yeah, I just got to know that it’s not a carol, it was not even meant for Christmas.

Here is Angel’s version. The link has the audio of her singing the song.

I love the way how the children sing the songs without getting bothered about the lyrics.

Angel got this in the mail. 

This is the first letter we got which is addressed to her! 

I also baked these beautiful (whatever happened to modesty!) candy cane cookies inspired by my friend Bhawna. Mine were the eggless version. Thanks B for the inspiration :)  The four cookies on the left most end were made by Angel, she rolled and twisted it all by herself. I think she did a pretty good job and she got better with every attempt!

Below are the gingerbread cookies decorated by Angel. She loved doing it as "The Gingerbread Man" still remains one of her favorite stories.

And finally, some of the most gorgeous Christmas trees amongst the many many more:

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! :) :)

Different

Last week, while aisle hopping in the supermarket I came across this 

It immediately caught my fancy and this goes in the “Weird Different Exotic Foods I have Tasted” list. We tried it together – J*, me and Angel and we found the chili content in it quite okay – even by Angel's standard who I think was happy to just eat the chocolate without going into the nitty-gritties of it :P We could taste some spice towards the end of the bite.

Will I try it again? Maybe, I am not too eager for that because I like only milk chocolate and to some extent dark chocolate. However, I will let some time (and some chocolates) pass before I decide on that. Who knows, I might get addicted to differently flavored chocolates.

Talking about different food, I loved the paan ice cream and gulkand ice cream which I first tasted in Pune. I am not a very big fan of paan, so just tried it on a whim. I am not, for the life of me, able to recall the name of the ice cream parlor. It was located near my training center. I asked some friends too, but sadly, none of us remember the name. I have had these two versions of ice creams at some other places too, but none could match the Pune ones.

I come from Ahmedabad, a place where alcohol is prohibited and most of the people follow vegetarianism, so it’s not uncommon to find “Pure Vegetarian” restaurants, however when we found something like below, that was different in Toronto :)

It was owned and managed by a Gujarati. They just serve some pre-prepared snacks like samosa, kachori, aaloo tikki, pizza, khaman, jalebi, fafda and some other sweets. We tried everything other than the sweets which did not appeal much to our eyes. The food was strictly okay, but to get something like that here gave us a high :) Apart from that, the place had a lot of Guajarati farsan, Indian spices and condiments, needless to say we bought a lot of stuff. The other items had been devoured before I remembered to click the pics.

They even had multiple copies of Gujariati newspapers like Divya Bhaskar and Swadesh kept at their entrance for people to read and take along. I then got to know that they are the weekly editions that are printed for Gujarati readers abroad

So what's up different with you all ?

Angel Tales!

When Angel was not completely settled in her day care, J* sometimes used to give her a toy right at the time of dropping her so that her mind is drifted from the separation. So once while J* did this, her teacher remarked “You have been to IKEA again”.When J* narrated this to me, I asked what does she mean by 'again' (meaning how does she know that we have been there twice) and Angel comes to my rescue and tells me “Mamma, again matlab phir se”

She sure is picking up a lot of Engilsh, accented at that!

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I had to travel to another branch of my office due to some technical issues in my regular branch and I was telling Angel about it. And here is our conversation:

Angel: Is that office far mamma?
Me: Yes baby, its even farther then my regular office (I have a long commute to my office)
Angel: Oh, then you will be so tired mamma, you find a garden on your way and sleep under a tree. And when you get up remove the leaves that will be stuck in your hair (it was autumn then) so wash your hair once you are back.
Me: That’s a good plan
Angel: Mamma, also beware for monkeys on the tree (She was definitely thinking of “nakalchi bandar”)

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The public library here is spoiling us. It’s such a delight to be able to borrow more books than you can read. It’s as if the books on the shelves wink at me and say “Me! Pick Me!”

Angel loves it too. In her own words: “Mamma, this library is so much better than Bangalore library as I can take more than one book”

I wish India had public libraries.

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She once came to me excitedly and said : Mama this toy is so cool!!
Hiding my surprise (since I had never used the word ‘cool’in that context with her), I asked : Cool matlab thanda? (Does cool mean cold?)
Angel: Nahi, cool matlab achha (No, cool means nice)

This is something she has picked at her day care, so now we have a lot of‘cool’ stuff around :)

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Angel loves pretend play and she can carry on with the stuffed toys for the whole day. She loves to talk to them, solve their problems (yes, they do have problems), hug and comfort them. She has names for all of them too.

I was overhearing one such session and she was instructing Ellie (the elephant) to hit bad children. I asked her if hitting is good. She immediately replied that "Spiderman hits others" (She is a huge fan of Spiderman – thanks to the merchandise)
I asked her how does she know as I have never watched Spiderman with her. She said that she had seen it on the TV while we were staying with our friends when we had just landed in Canada. This re-affirmed my belief of no-TV for her as long as I can. I then said that Spiderman doesn’t hit children and she confidently said that Spiderman hits bad people though. She then turned to Ellie and told her (yeah, the genders of the stuffed toys are decided too) to hit bad people.
This was one of the moments of contradiction – where we teach something to our children and they get some entirely opposite view of the same thing by watching their favorite characters – cartoons and people do that.

I then explained to her that it was just a movie and its all unreal and hitting is NOT an answer to any problem. I am not sure how much of the film making part of it she understood but she agreed to me nonetheless!
 

 

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People

 

I picked this book on a whim. I usually go to the library with Angel and she doesn’t want to leave the children’s section even for a minute, so I have to coax her to accompany me to the adult section where she is very impatient and wants to go back to her area of interest (pun intended).

I loved the cover of this book (yeah, I am naïve like that). Reading through the covers, I got to know that it is about weddings and is set in a small town of eastern India named Vizag. I had read a similar book earlier named The Wedding Wallah and had enjoyed it so decided to pick it up. I later did some research came to know that it is in fact a series of books where this is the first book and Wedding Wallah was the third installment of the series.

Coming back to The Marriage Bureau for Rich People, it is about Mr. Ali who is retired and interfering with her wife’s daily routine and needless to say, irritating her. He decided to make use of his time and started a marriage bureau with the name of The Marriage Bureau for Rich People which forms the title of the book. We get to meet various characters who happen to be the clients of the marriage bureau. There are two subplots – Aruna, the efficient assistant of Mr. Ali and Rehman, the son of Mr. Ali. Aruna is the girl next door very likeable character, her friendly relationship with her sister, how her father does not want to get her married as she is the sole bread earner of the family, how her love story with Ramanujam (the client of the marriage bureau) unfolds and how they overcome the family and caste barriers. Rehman is the maverick son of the old couple who cannot stand injustice. Even though he has an engineering degree, he doesn’t have a full time job and he is more into protests for the rights of the farmers much to the dismay of the couple.

The author has touched some social causes which are prevalent in the Indian society like –

  -Divorce
  -Divorcee remarriage
  -Dowry
  -Inter caste marriage

The story is quite simple and written in a simple, lucid style. The characters are very realistic. I loved the character of Mrs. Ali who is very motherly, grounded, witty and kind. The book has an old world charm to it which even made me nostalgic. There are some places where the author has written detailed recipes which run into paragraphs. There is an Andhra wedding sequence described in detail, so those who are aware of the ceremony will enjoy it.

All in all, it was an enjoyable, nice and sweet read. I will definitely read the other parts of the series.

PS- A book review after a long time it was! I loved doing it. I plan to write about each and every book I read in the future, just to keep a tab of the books I read and keep this blog going!