Tamil New Year day always, in my school years, meant the end of Annual Exams and the beginning of Summer Vacation. I always loved this day, only for this fact and nothing else. And so, I thought.
So it is another Tamil New Years and am stuck in Jodhpur which is getting hotter by the minute. You can’t escape it even with an umbrella. All that heat wave hitting you, like a butcher mincing meat. Coolers breaking down in every room, my own motor had to be repaired twice. With 9 outpasses this month, I doubt even 1 will be spent on a morning.
Anyway, chucking all that trash about Jodhpur.
I remember being woken up every Tamil New Year’s day by my mom, who will give me new clothes to wear. A quick bath early in the morning (Even though Annual exams were over and Summer vacation just began), adorned in new clothes, a quick prayer to God, the rest of the day spent hogging various South Indian delicacies and watching Sun TV which played-Vishu’s NY special: “Aratai Arangam” or some melodramatic Tamil movie. Of course, a visit to Gran’s was a ritual. First my paati-thatha in Nanganallur and then Mylapore paati, Latha periamma and Vivek. I remember cribbing about the mundane routine but now, stuck in the middle of nothingness and a plethora of desert snakes and insects, I terribly miss that routine. I miss having relatives around. I miss that puliyodhare in human temple. That aroma of payasam that woke me up with my mom on these morning. That feeling of relief (that there were no more exams until the next academic year). The lack of responsibility. The utter lack of it.
And now, I have no one to yell at me to do my work.
Nobody to wake me up with a smiling face to wish me a Happy New Year.
A whole set of assignments waiting for me plus a test tomorrow.
Now that I am done cribbing. We did make Payasam on the floor. Pallavi and Nayanthika did. And it tasted yummy. 
Iniya Tamizh Puttanmdu Nal Vazhtukal.
