Reminiscence of Academic Days

Those were holidays, the months of april and may used to have fascinating festive spirit all over the place, accompanied by close circuit relatives and friends. The mood starts mid of april when all the cousins, arrive to Kulitalai the popular bank of aganda cauvery, where the festive mood creeps normally at this time. People, out there being quite religious start off their day with a bath at the cauvery at 6:00 AM, complete their daily duties. The spirits (non alcoholic) made people more enthusiastic and we also enjoyed bathing on cauvery beds.

I used to spend enough time at cauvery and every one in the gang used to visit the mariyamman temple with a pot of water. Every one used to carry their own kujas & kudams to fill up water and pour water in the temple. The mariyamman temple will host a strong heritage with the alangarams and the neem leaves decorated all over the place. There used to be a common kumbam decorated with neem leaves where every one pours the water collected from the cauvery river. The cauvery banks are about a kilometer far and every day we used to walk all the way with our friends and relatives. By the time we start for bath at the cauvery, every one would have completed their duties and back home.

We used to get up at 7:00 AM and with full of haste we brush up and rush to have the filter coffee (degree coffee as popularly termed in south). After brief quarrels for the news paper sports column with cousins we head towards cauvery for bath. All of us carry our own personal vessels to carry water from cauvery and pour it in the kumbam which is kept at the mariyamman temple. Then after drenching ourselves for a couple of hours in the cauvery, we feel satisfied and start for the temple. Before a week of the car festival, the excitement starts as the market place gets occupied with ranga ratinams, and other fancy shops with lot of fancy items which create a center of attention.

Every day of that week we used to spend most of our times, in the market street looking at whats new that has come up for the day. We used to get carried away with the tiny shops selling items like whistles, balloons, prankies and other fun stuff. Being from a well known family from the village, the shop owners never charged us for the stuff and they used to typically call us “Iyer oottu pasanga”. We used to take rental cycles and get away with not paying up the money, riding in rattinams and there used to be a jallikkattu function also in the same week. A lot of men who possess good marketing skills bump on us during the seasons selling sweets, bar icecreams etc. Every day we enjoyed the pal ice, rose ice and mango ice each one of has had our own choice to make and the ice wala never quits from our house since there were a lot of members, one or the other goes to him and gets one.. After this episode my father or my uncle comes up and settles the check with him and saw him off…

At the day of the car festival the entire village will be charged up with a lot of crowd, we used to play cards on the first floor of our house, the place which seemed to be typically designed for that. We were juniors at that time and after evening the senior batch started their play displaying passion towards the game by playing hours and nights together. It used to be a fun packed experience at times when the senior and the junior batches were playing in parallel. We had a lot of friends who used to do lot of pranks during the festival and normally we try to avoid those situations.

Since the festival starts in the mid of may, the floor used to be like a heated oven, people frequently splash water on the road opposite their house since it will be difficult to walk during the time of the car festival. So it was normal practice to pour water on the ground in that month. Since lot of people pour water on the ground it used to be muddy during those days, and our folks play by pushing one of our friends on the mud.. One after another, as my favorite pal calls our identity gets lost that time… So much of mud on ur shirts. They also used to have this obsession towards holy festival, used to play their own on the day…

Each one of our friends used to carry a lot of color packets with them, the people normally reluctant to come out of their house, gets this treatment with colors… Normally as cowards we don’t come out of our homes, as my father was a short tempered person our friends used to hesitate to play pranks with us… But still they managed paint our faces with colors and we too used to enjoy such things… After this small event the joy of the big event starts.. The holy car actually passes through the streets in a prathakshanam mode (clock wise circle). We never come out of our terrace till the time the car passes our house and we used to get a pavilion view from our terrace.. We were not only the only family who had so many members who assemble during this period, every family in the taluk had this kinda guests coming in. Once the car gets to the vicinity of our home, our uncle (father’s elder brother) takes a thambalam filled with decorative flowers and broken coconuts (Thenga Moodis) and some fruits and gives to the pundit who is ready to collect the same sitting in the car. Once given we go near the holy car and every one of us offer our worship & obligations to the holy deity and rope pulling the car (Vadam), we come back & have our lunch. One more scintillating event which comes to my mind during these days is the thanneer panthals which are hosted by the members of every house offering panagam and neer more (Butter milk) to public… We used to volunteer during that time and we used to serve people with the above mentioned any time during the day of that week..

Amidst all tight work schedules, and cosmopolitan culture these recollections are very special for every one of us and feel delighted to blog these…