My mother in law celebrates pongal still in the traditional style – by keeping viragu aduppu and using pithalai pongal paanai.  We lit the mud stoves by keeping karpooram and wooden sticks and added milk in the vessel.  Once the milk boiled, she added water and waited for it to boil. And when it boils and makes it way out of the vessel, who ever notices it first, shouts pongal o pongal, and there is always this competition – who shouts first.

This time it was my father in law who won and shouted pongal o pongal, and we all joined in the chorus. Akhil had a nice time watching these scenes, and giving poses for his father’s camera. Though we did not do any work, we took nice photographs with pongal paanai, giving an impression that we managed the whole show 🙂

Then put padaiyal to gods, and akhil was good boy, helping to serve every thing in the leaf. What follows next? a tasty delicious meal.  My mother in law brought sugar canes next saying that, once you eat the pongal feast, you must have sugarcane to digest it. Wow, such a convincing reason to eat sugar canes. Akhil is tasting sugarcane for the first time, and was little inhibitive. To relax him, i said, “It is like a chewing gum akhil, you have to just chew and then spit it out.” Though he didn’t enjoy it much, he just tasted few pieces.

The best part was in the evening, we picked up my sister and on our way to book fair, she started to eat the sugarcane in the car. Akhil turned back, and gave a timely advice :

“It is just like chewing gum periamma, chew and then spit it out. ”

Jaya.