A Day of Surprise! :)

Singapore has been like a home away from home for me with many of GSB community friends and having those frequent meet-ups which is always fun. By being an active member of the GSB community, the new families that you meet back from India always adds up to the spice 🙂 Its always that amazing feeling of meeting a Konkani person or for that matter anyone from India in some other country! The feeling that “Oh, our people are here as well” 🙂 Amazing feeling to get when you are far from your loved ones. 🙂

June being holidays for schools in SG, my friends here were planning to go on a vacation to India and a get together was being planned since quite long with various ideas of BBQ party, Pot Luck etc were flying and as usual I was just being informed on the developments by my friend or rather now I can say a sister(Ambica Kudva) and Bavaji (Vidhyadhar Kudva). Ambica is my best friend Namrathas cousin and hence ever since I moved here to SG they have been a part of everything 🙂 I was in middle of a project delivery with the roll out being planned for 28th of May. A get together was planned for 22nd May and I obliged with the dates as my roll-out would not interfere but little did I know the roll out would get pre-poned due to some month end freeze. There I was stuck with 2 events to attend to and none I could miss. I must say, 3 as the third one was a T20 game which I would talk about in separate blog post all together 🙂

It was going to be a touch and go situation for the noon get together as always these implementations are scheduled on Saturday night and running overnight until almost 9am. If no issues are found during the implementation then it usually ends up earlier. Lucky for me there were no major issues during the implementation (pats back :P) but the sign off did take time and went up to post 11am in the morning. Yes, from previous day 9pm to next day 11am! Ambica was really hell bent on me attending the get-together and little did I realize all through out that there was something cooking behind closed doors. This is what happens when you are in middle of a project deployment 😛 You tend to forget your very own existence but I must say, the amazing feeling you get post the rollout is absolutely mind blowing. 🙂

 

I reached her place around 11:30am to be greeted by the cute lil prince – Vinayak 🙂 He is such a darling with the amazing smile that he has and his love and affection towards me is immense. Its been like a second home for me with at-least 1 weekend a month I spend with them savouring some amazing Konkani cuisines which she happily prepares for me. [Remembering the stuffed karela when I am typing this 😛 Slurppp!!!] Sometimes there will be these bonus calls coming from her – “Come home for dinner, I have prepared something! If I say, I have some work and may not be possible, she starts giving me the menu list so that no matter what work I have I make sure I go and gulp those” 🙂 Yes, coming back to Vinayak – he is two and half years old and as I keep visiting them often the bond between us is super strong now. “BAPPA” is what he calls me – konkani word for uncle! Yes, I am an uncle now. (Aunt is on her way to SG :P) I don’t understand the language he speaks – doodle doodle wala cutie language, but the way he talks with all his heart you will get drawn towards him, such is his love 🙂 A moment here and there, he calls “Bappa, come”, “Bappa, doodle doodle doodle” 🙂  Every visit of mine, he comes and shows me all the new toys that he has got post our previous meet and the explanation about those toys – Don’t event ask me! You should experience it 🙂 – he is such a cutie.

The Big Fat Konkani Wedding :)

It was almost a month and a half earlier since I had applied for my leaves and getting back to India for a short vacation was just too exciting! Nah, don’t go by the title, I wasn’t going for my wedding 🙂 It was my cousin’s wedding. More than the wedding it was the full family get together along with time being spent with parents and brother that was getting me excited. Finally, April 30th,2015  – India did beckon 🙂

The to-do tasks on my cellphone were more and with wedding around, time was quite less in hand. When you have mom around you, then there is nothing to worry about! Forget everything and leave it to her. She knows what is the best. That’s why she is called mom 🙂

Family 🙂

The weddings in our Konkani tradition are usually a 3 day thing but with the introduction of Mehendi and Reception, it’s a big 5 days wedding!

Day 1 – Vadap – It is a very close family gathering wherein the elders who are no more with us are remembered and respected by keeping dhoti for gents and sari for women followed by lunch. Its kind of short ritual which is known as “Vadap”. The next day was the mehendi and hence, all cousins from our side had planned for a small dance program which as usual dint have any preparations done. It was almost after ages we all cousins were meeting together in one place and the happiness was beyond boundaries and by having our lil angel Nadantika( my cousins daughter ) amongst us, the happiness was beyond expression of words.

The practice for the dance started at around 8pm, with all contributing actively towards the same. As the guys side too had planned for quite a few numbers, we girls side dint want to stand back and watch. Humko bhi dikhana tha 😉 It was a simple stand and dance with a combination of various songs such as ‘Washing Powder Nirma’, ‘Jaane Ja’, ‘Bhaag dk Bose’ and many more with the final one coming from Ulidavru Kandante movie – The Tiger dance 🙂 the tiger dance is very famous dance in the south part of India where guys gets painted with Tiger stripes and dance to the tunes of various hit numbers as well as the typical tiger beat from the drums. We made sure, the brides dad too was part of this final act of Tiger Dance 🙂

Day 2 – Mehendi Day – was absolutely wonderful with our simple yet effective dance winning us lot of appreciations! Job well done with just over 2hrs practice 🙂 Special thanks to our choreographer @hemukamath for all the in-depth details 🙂 more than anything else, the star performer for the day was Nadantika with her solo for the song – “Radha on the Dance floor”. She was looking absolutely gorgeous with her attire and her steps with expressions just made the day wonderful! I so wanted to post a video of our dance but I am yet to receive a copy of the same. Will happen soon, as I know you are super excited to see my dance 😛

Stand and Dane 🙂

Mehendi

Day 3 – Vade Tandul Dhuvche – This day, the whole family is invited wherein water is pulled out from the well and the rice is washed over in order to prepare a different type of vada(no, not the idli sambhar vada 😉 ) and is served over to all which is followed by Pooja and sumptuous Konkani lunch 🙂 Basically a women centric ritual where men just have the job of driving women to the destination and back 😉 After the noon function and lunch, evening we cousins played out a game called “TABOO” which was just too amazing! Haven’t heard about this game from funskool? Google.com is waiting for you 😛 Thanks to Pujan for introducing us to this lovely game. Taboo was followed by ‘Sweet Packing’ 🙂 It was just amazing to have all sit in one place, pulling each others legs and get the job done in a jiffy! More the people more merry it is.

Gorgeous Ladies

Sweet Packing!

Day 4 – Wedding day – Just suit up and pose for pics 🙂 That’s all we have to do as most of the work is for bride, the groom and their parents! The selfie stick from flipkart did the trick for me even though I did not get the one I had ordered for but the one I got too was good enough to click some lovely images during the complete ceremony 🙂 the photo booth idea was quite a nice one with various hoardings to hold and pose at! The heat was unbearable due to which, food consumption just went way too low with water being the only saviour. The best part of being at a wedding is that, you get to meet so many friends and family members who you can catch up with at one place! It was indeed a pleasant function with lots of memories to take away from. Good as well as bad 🙂

GentleMen 🙂

The Dudes!

Cousins with the Bride

Big Family 🙂

Handsome Hunks

Cousins!

Pretty Mom and Handsome Dad!

🙂

Bharath Mata Ki Jai 🙂

With my Angel – Nadantika

Day 5 – Reception – Mangalore was the place of reception. It was a very formal function marking the end to the big wedding. The only though running through out my mind was next day is the last day of my vacations and sooner I will have to get back to work!

After so much fun over a week time with family and coming back now to Singapore, it was just amazing to recollect in this post the super awesome moments I spent back in India. Family is one thing that always is by you any time of the day and any number of times – Just a phone call away! 🙂

Arun and Archana – Happy Married Life.

Wishing Arun and Archana a very Happy Married Life 🙂

India until next time 🙂

Cheers,
Muki

Out in the Open – Lovely Bike Ride

Thinking back of the 8 months I spent in Bengaluru with my brother, one of the many wonderful moment was that of the Nandi Hill bike ride with his group of friends. Must say, one of the beautiful ones till date, my write-up on #together for Housing.com.

It was suddenly planned ride over and we didn’t think much on what to do and what not to. Nandi Hills and the ride – It was a green signal 🙂 The early morning wake up and the ride was delayed due to some reason (read it as sleep 😛 ) but we managed to start off by 6 from MG Road.

The best part of the ride being the other 2 bikes which accompanied us. Enfield vs The Hunk :D. I know, it’s not even a comparison to make. I duly remember, on the roads towards the airport with not much traffic, the enfields just zoomed away and even though we were clocking around 110-120 kmph ourselves on our Hunk, it just felt like riding a TVS Luna which is going at a speed of  40kmph 😉 At such speed, my brothers hat went for a toss 😛 and he had to walk back almost half a km to go and fetch it amidst the traffic. It was indeed funny.

The bengaluru weather added on the beauty of the trip with all of us literally shivering by the time we reached Nandi Hills. The  tea stop just before the turn towards Nandi hills from the highway with Pancakes was really out of the world. Sometimes, it’s just these small shops which are the ones which serve food with utmost love and care to its customers that it makes it stand out from the rest and also does add-on the flavour somehow.

The only person not shivering and fully energetic even after riding around for 2 hours plus was none other than my HUNK 😛 His body had heated up so badly and he just was not in a mood to cool down despite of my extra efforts. On the other hand there were these 2 royal enfields just laughing away at this poor guy who just could not live up to the name HUNK 🙂 I still have the HUNK with me, even though I rarely get to ride these days and I must say, even though it’s not for the long rides, the comfort that it provides is absolutely classic.

The scenery up there, even though the sun was already up and shining was so mesmerizing and with the cool breeze hitting up on us, it made the visit even more blissful. Sometimes or rather most of the times I must say, we tend to indulge ourselves into all the fake things surrounding us that we forget to enjoy the real beauty of nature.

Its been over 2 years now since that trip happened and I just am planning one more around April but this time on a new devil – Pulsar 200 NS 🙂 If the bandwidth of people around you matches well then there is nothing like having a road trip.

Now that you have come so far, do take some time to watch the video below. The music is catchy. –

Cheers,
Muki