homecoming

It is a long time since I blogged last. We had been very busy putting the house in order on our return after our overseas tour of 5 months.

The house was covered with dust and it took almost 6 weeks of dusting and swabbing to get the house 90% dust free. The dust brought its own allergy problems like, skin irritation, throat irritation, etc. So much of dust had collected in house which remained closed fully for over five months during one of the heaviest monsoon season. I am at a loss to imagine the condition if it were to bo closed during the summer months. It was a shocking realisation to what extent we have brought destruction to our atmosphere in utter disregard for our own health and that of our children. I strongly doubt if we continue the uncontrolled destruction of our health and the health of the generations to come whether we will be able to retain the global intellectual superiority we enjoy today.

And, we had a lot of mails to be opened and looked into, which led to visits to banks and other places.An affidavit for Anand had aslo got to be done in between.

We reached back on the 8th December and on 13th we had Karthikai festival. We had to get the house ready for that by cleaning and getting all our "vilakkus" (lamps) out and preparing them by putting oil and cotton wicks. I still stick to the old rural tradition of lighting earthen lamps with oil and cotton wicks in front of the house , while many families in the cities ( I don't know if the present generation at the villages still use earthen oil lamps ) have long abandoned this practice and have turned to the much easier option of lighting candles.

More about the festival and the naivedyams (prasadams) to be offered later.