Pongal Holiday Fun

We aren’t a hugely festive family, which is slightly disappointing for the snubnose. She always wants bigger, better celebrations, but honestly an ideal holiday for me is just lounging around the house – a little (only a little, mind you) cooking, reading books, and general chilling out.

This year we attempted something different for Pongal. For those who aren’t aware Pongal is a widely celebrated harvest festival in Tamil Nadu (where I am from). It is celebrated over four days. However, at work, I only get a single day off and our celebration (generally) is reduced to making a dish of pongal (a very simple boiled dish made of rice and lentils), eating heartily, and then sleeping it off 🙁 . I warned you, we aren’t festive at all.

This year, we decided to do a bit extra. On the Sunday preceding Pongal, we went off to do some kite flying with our neighbors. I never imagined that it would be so much fun. Snubnose had a ball trying (and not quite succeeding) getting her kite up in the sky.

Piglet went ballistic. After a few moments of awestruck silence, he went into peals of laughter seeing some boys struggling to get their huge and cumbersome, but very beautiful kite to fly.

Here’s a shot of a wide-eyed and open-mouthed Piglet. He was really nonplussed by all the kites for the first 10-15 minutes or so.

I felt a little sorry for those boys. They looked horribly embarrassed that their efforts were met with so much hilarity.

After the kite flying, there was a huge bonfire, and we all stood around getting warm. By this time Piglet started getting restless and so K arrived to fetch him home and feed him his dinner. Snubnose and I lingered for a little more time watching the bonfire and doing some rangoli.

Good times! Unfortunately, we were having so much fun that I forgot to take any photos.

Pongal day itself (today) was a slow one. K had work while I was off, so no major celebrations.

The littles and I woke up past nine and lounged around the house. Snubnose again started to get restless with complaints of being bored. I really should spend more 1-1 time with snubnose. What with school, homework, play time, and extra classes, the weeks seem to whizz by. With a cute but demanding Piglet at home it is not always easy to give her the full attention she needs.

Anyway, this time I was prepared for her Mama, I am bored anthem.

I suggested we do an art project together to surprise her dad when he gets back from work. I had found this simple little template to create an elephant during a late-night Pinterest browsing session and saw that it was easy enough for even clumsy ole me to replicate. I saved it up for a rainy day and there you go, a couple of hours just whizzed by for the snubnose.

Of course, snubnose wasn’t going to go with simple and elegant like the above picture. She went all out with her new oil pastel set and made a multi-color patchwork elephant.

Here’s a shot of her hard at work.

And the finished product waiting for K to spot it on his desk in the evening.

Oh, and that wasn’t the end of our day.

We made an expedition to hunt out some new curtains for the house. We found some good (not great) stuff and I am not super-enthused about the design decisions we made but for now I am okay. Some curtains are better than no curtains.

And considering we took Piglet and Snubnose with us, it’s amazing that any decision was made at all.

I find that as I grow older, it is less important for things to be perfect. The yen for perfection (at least in my case) was that it paralyzed me from taking decisions.

At the end of the day, it’s only curtains. They look decent, and if they don’t, well I can always change them up again. Plus, we really needed to book something today to take advantage of the festival sales.

So, that was our day people. It’s almost 9pm now, and time to round-up the littles (who are still downstairs riding the wave of that second wind of energy they seem to get as soon as bedtime approaches) and try to get them into bed.

All in all, a long and satisfying Pongal 🙂