Janaki's Blog

I have happy news. Yesterday uncle Biju’s wife aunt Deepa gave birth to a baby boy! I am really excited to see him. But I am also sad that they are in India now. Today I had seen his photos, he is soooo cute! Now, let me tell you about my Dad’s home at Manakad. Manakad is situated in a town called Thodupozha in my motherland, Kerala. Manakad has a river too.   And there are lots of trees, different types of flowers, insects and lots of farms. I like the river most. It is only a 5 minutes walk from our home. The river itself is very outstanding as it seems to have shades of green because of the plants on its banks. One day on our way to the river we saw a goat, the goat was eating some juicy leaves and it did not look at me even when I tried to give another juicy leaf. It ignored me all the time and soon I had to leave it, chasing another cow. It had the same habits as the goat and I had to leave it too. Our house is very large. Squirrels could be heard running on the roof and c

Today the weather was really bad! It rained the full day. And it is STILL raining now. Who knows if there is rain tomorrow. When we were going to school there was rain, hail, thunder and lightning. We all got really scared. But we pretended that we were smoking when we went outside because smoke would come out from our mouths. And the teachers didn’t teach us anything too because they did not come to our class. School was only till 11:40. We all danced in the class when we heard that news. Some children had even brought umbrellas.  Tomorrow is a holiday for us all because of the rain.

Last Saturday was sports day.   We had to do our drill that day.   W e had to do marching, wishing and some other exercises in front of the whole school. We were happy when we had drill practice before the sports day because we could miss a few classes. The pom-pom dances were great.   I heard that the house Hejaz (I am in Hejaz) got the 1st prize in dance and 3rd prize in relay race.   Yippee! But when all the pom-pom girls were dancing, some of us spotted a small camera under the gate, spying on us all. The principle climbed a tree and saw a boy outside the gate sitting beside the camera. It was the principal’s turn to spy now! The boy however must have felt the principal’s eyes following because he suddenly ran away, taking the camera with him.    

The next day we went to the Ayyappa temple since there was some pooja Balaji Ammavan had planned. Our lunch was the prasadam from the temple. In the evening we went to aunt Paromita’s house because there was another pooja too. Uncle Arvind was present. He and Aunt Paromita sat on a carpet on the floor. All the elders blessed them. A priest was there, doing the rituals. We were given some tasty laddoos to eat during the pooja.   Yummy!   And not only that, after the pooja we all went out to the garden where a buffet was waiting for us.   There were lots of tasty food like vadapavu, alu tikki, pani puri etc..    I don’t know the name of some. Double yummy! When we were taking our food, we saw an amazing sight. There was a peacock near our neighbor’s house! After that we all went back the guesthouse, but we had to go to the gardens again because there was going to be a feast both Uncle Arvind and Aunt Paromita had planned. Triple yummy! The next day was the engagement. It was coo

I will continue to write about our Delhi trip.. There were still 2 days left for the engagement. We went to a restaurant called Kareem’s restaurant. You might think it was a small restaurant, very congested too and that I was silly enough to go there. Well, the ancestors of the chefs were cooks of the Mughal kings. Thankfully now you know that I am not silly. We went there in a cycle rickshaw. Kareem’s restaurant is near the Jama masjid so we saw it on the way.   Kareem’s restaurant is a non-vegetarian restaurant. The food there was great. I must tell you that we saw the Qutub Minar BEFORE we went to the Kareem’s restaurant. The Qutub Minar was REALLY tall! And I think there are 365 steps inside. Then we went to the Humayun’s tomb. I believe that some kings were cut into pieces since in a room where a king’s tomb there was lots of other small tombs. We also saw the Rashtrapati Bhavan, India Gate and the Parliament house. We saw Rajghat too. It is the place where Gandhiji was