Celebrating Mia

It was Mira's bday yesterday. With her dad away, celebrations went awry. But the kids anyway had fun at the church. A family friend had offered to take us to church in the morning.

The mass was followed by the church harvest festival, so there were a lot of auctions, food, stalls and games. Heated auctions for gold coins, wooden crosses, rosaries and wine from Israel brought by pilgrims to the Holy Land from the church; auctions for produce from the soil such as ethakula, drumsticks, kudampuli (kokum) and so on. I bought a pair of giant-sized vellarikkas (a cucumber variety that Keralites use in sambar) at the auction, my first accidental venture into auctioneering. The stalls had kota and organdy saris that the elderly Malloo Christian women like to wear to church, salwar material, second-hand toys (I bought one each for the kids while Mira got a pretty cow as a gift from Lijy) raw tapioca, Kerala goodies such as plum cakes, halwas and neyyappams, a naadan thattukada where appam and curry and other things palatable were made in a jiffy for the waiting devotees; and tupperware products where I bagged a complimentary fork. Before we peeped in at the stalls, we gulped down appam and chicken curry for a price, which wasnt as meagre as the parson had announced. The kids surprisingly enjoyed their second breakfast for the day. We sat and watched the auctions for a good while before calling it a day (not forgetting to buy kappa-fish curry for lunch) and squeezing ourselves into the car to visit Lijy's newly acquired and just renovated apartment.

On Ash's frequent query about when the happy birthday would come (he probably expected a birthday Santa to appear or at least the cake), we cut a Joecees plum cake that his grandparents had brought from Kerala. Propped the No. 3 candle on the cake and then Ash and me sang the happy birthday song. Ash blew out the candle before Mira could, so we had to light it again for her benefit. Topped it with vermicelli payasam.

Now that V is back, we hope to cut a 2nd cake today evening and call a couple of folks. Mira's birthdays have been jinxed so far - there were no celebrations in the first year because Ash was away in Kerala, she had a mild attack of chicken pox in the 2nd year, and this year her dad played truant. Anyway she had new outfits to wear - one for the church courtesy her aunt Renee, one for school today courtesy mil's tenant, while her first ghagra choli courtesy her granny awaits for the night event.