Phool Gantuche !!

...not an adventure really, but something of an adventure, if a person doesn't know what he / she is doing.

It has been a long long time since I wrote in my blog, around a month or so since I am visiting India right now. And once I got here, I got super busy, housework, visiting friends, visiting relatives, functions and the like. Currently I am in Mangalore. Its a bit of a relaxed atmosphere here and I am enjoying the free time. Phew !! This is going to be a long long post...

I guess only people who know Konkani will have understood the title of my post. It means - tying flowers into a garland shaped thing. Well, I am glad to say I am pretty good at it. So many people of our generation do not know how to tie flowers. They would rather use a needle and thread and sew through the flowers, which will look good - but thats not the traditional way of doing it. And this method looks so much more prettier.

There are a bunch of flowering plants in my parents' garden. My dad is a big fan of gardening and he takes care of and tends to so many flowering plants. Every morning, he picks flowers that have bloomed  for pooja at the house. Apparently priests from nearby temples and other neighbors come to our house asking for flowers to keep in their God's abode.

Anyway, there is a type of jasmine called "Jaai Mogare" (in konkani) or "Jaaji Mallige" (in Kannada). Its a beautiful white flower like the other jasmine species, but has these pinkish streaks on the petals making it all the more prettier. These jasmine flowers are also thin and long unlike their more famous Mysore jasmine counterparts. They also have a very sweet smell which is not as overpowering as the Mysore jasmine flowers. Heres a pic of a few Jaai jasmine flowers from our garden.

Starting the garland

I remember when I first learnt to tie flowers together. My grandparents were living in Kavoor at the time. Kavoor is a small town near Suratkal / Mangalore, more nearer to Suratkal than to Mangalore. We used to visit them for holidays. At one of these times, my grandpa taught us how to tie flowers. Yes, my grandpa (my mom's dad). It was he who taught us all grandchildren (atleast me and my sister) how to tie flowers, how to ride a cycle, how to ride a moped etc., Its surprising isnt it ?

Anyways, if he had given us flowers for the first try, we would probably have heaps of torn flowers, because we need to have proper tension while tying the flowers. The stems of flowers are very very delicate and if we pull the thread a little bit tighter, they cut through the stems and the flowers are not reusable. So he gave us mango leaves for our first try and a roll of thread and showed us the procedure. Mango leaves are so rough. At times, we pulled the thread so hard, that we cut through even the thickest of the leaves... LOL. Well, practice makes man perfect. He would not let us touch a single flower, until we got the leaves right.

The next step was withered flowers / flowers which are slightly rotten (a single rotten petal and the sort), which wont be used in a fresh garland made for God. We had to get those right. Once we got through this step, we were allowed to tie a few good flowers. We could remove them from the garland just by pulling the flower slowly and then retie them. We had to do this until we got it all right :) / until the flowers were so weather-beaten that they could not be reused again. Anyways, the result of all that hard work is what we have now !! A superb beautiful garland.

Completed garland

Looks like another flower in itself. Beautiful isnt it ?

Its funny what all man has developed for his needs. Tying flowers to keep them together is one such thing. Moreover it increases the beauty of the flowers (lots of colorful flowers can be tied into 1 colorful garland). And its a lot less messier when the flowers dry up and the place needs to be cleaned / the flowers need to be thrown away. Women can take a piece of the garland and place it in their hair (its a tradition to do this in India) instead of a few separate flowers, which cannot be pinned into the hair on their own. Whatever is the necessity, the solution to all that is Gantilele phool (tied flowers).

.... but I survived !!

Ever imagine life without the internet ? For us tech savvy people, it kind of feels that we are handicapped if we dont have internet for a few hours in a day. I read somewhere that a human body can go for several days without food and water, but can hardly stay 11 mins without internet. Well, I survived for 10 hrs without internet and it was not pleasant, but I survived.

Yesterday the router here was spoilt and I was not able to connect to the internet. It was a totally weird experience for me. Not knowing what to do. The major part of the day was spent in trying to get the internet to connect, trying on and off by switching off the router and switching it on again, restarting the laptop again and again just to confirm it is not a problem with my laptop, and then changing the wi-fi settings on the laptop. It was living hell, but I survived.

Finally I realized that the internet was just down and I wont be able to do much in this case. So, I just picked up a book regarding interview questions and began scanning through it just to pass time. At-least some of what I read there will help me during my interviews hopefully. I then watched some TV - not Netflix - god knows it doesnt work without the internet :) - just watched some TV shows while having lunch. I then settled down for a nice siesta and enjoyed every moment of it. Well, I did not have much to do anyways. What else was I supposed to do ? Anyways, it was ok, but I survived.

In the evening, my uncle was back from work and when he tried to correct the damn internet connection, he realized that the router had gone bad and he immediately bought another one on craigslist, picked it up from the seller's house and set it up. Lo and Behold, we had internet connection again. So, thats my 10 hours of agony time without internet connection summed up into - lets see here - 3 paragraphs. So, just goes to prove that internet is not everything in life. You can still do other things in life. Dont be glued to the laptop / computer all day peeps. Learn to enjoy other things in life, and you wont regret it later on. All in all, it was a good day, and I SURVIVED !!

- So