Diwali

Happy Diwali everyone. It's Diwali this saturday and I figured no matter how busy I am I had to write about Diwali. Diwali aka festival of lights is one of the most important festivals in India. It's my most favorite festival, it's kinda sad that I won't be home to celebrate Diwali so I guess the next best thing to do is celebrate it here and reminisce those good old days.

I went to a christian school, so we still had to go to school the day before diwali but then the school would close early :). For the most part, I remember celebrating diwali with my cousins :). I don't have any siblings and it was always great when my cousins showed up. After I get home, I normally start firing crackers with all my friends and my mom and granny would be making sweets. Now that I look back, I cannot believe that they managed to make that much sweets and savories at home. My mom's an excellent cook and its needless to say how much we kids devoured the food :). Badhushah was my favorite, I've never seen anyone else make such wonderful badhushahs. Later in the evening my cousin and aunt would show up, then we all would show each other the clothes we got for Diwali :). Then it was my job to take all our new clothes and keep them in the pooja room.

My cousin and I really loved firing crackers and he taught me how to hold the cracker in my hand and let it off in the air at the right moment so that it would burst in the air :). Once it gets dark, we usually start the rangoli. I guess everyone wants their rangoli to be bigger and better than all the others in the neighborhood. I kinda too a liking towards rangoli and my granny had left huge books in which she had meticulously drawn all these. I always picked one of her nice designs. I am poor with coloring so my mom usually helped pick the right combination.

I remember staying thru the night for some diwali's but even if we went to sleep, we all woke up around 4 am, got ready said our prayers and wore new clothes. My cousin and I would go for some more fire crackers before everyone else gets ready. Once the morning prayers are over, we were allowed to have all the sweets and savories...it was just amazing (food everywhere). Then we have a breakfast (pongal, idli, etc...). It was usually my job to distribute the sweets to all our neighbors. Each house had a kid like me who would bring sweets from their home to ours.

We kinda rest up a little bit after a really lavish lunch, there would be tons of TV programs to watch, the elders usually are watching TV or wishing other relatives on the phone. My cousin and I would normally play chess around this time. We thought we were so good at it and we played it so often :). Usually around this time my maternal cousins would also show up, and around evening we'll start firing the mathappu, flower pot and rocket. The rocket was the coolest. No one knew where it was going to go :). Normally there's one trip to the temple as well. We usually fire crackers till late night and then save some for kaarthigai :).

When all the kids in the neighborhood decide to stop, we usually put all the remaining crackers in a big pile and set 'em on fire. It's really dangerous and I don't know why we did that. The last time I saw these three cousins of mine was at my wedding and that was a year ago. I'm sure none of us can forget how much fun we had. Later on the diwali night or the next day morning my cousin's would leave and we all had to go back to school :(. To me Diwali means getting together with friends and family and having a great time. My cousins and I would usually share stories about our schools, kadi jokes :). I really love my cousins and my parents loved them too and thats what really made it special and memorable :). I guess all festivals are about sharing, loving, giving and there was plenty of that :).

It's always during Diwali that I get maximum number of clothes, I remember once I got 10 different dresses :). Mom was always generous when it came to me. Dad always got me nice crackers, I used to go through the list with him and pick out what I want :). No matter what age I was, Diwali was always fun one way or another :).

I wish everyone a very happy diwali :)

Shopping in Chennai!!

I have been wanting to write about shopping in Chennai for a long time but never really found the time. Last year when I was in India I happened to a lot of shopping before and after my marriage. Normally, I like to buy most of my clothes and accessories here in the USA but then this time my husband insisted that he take me out to some of the malls in chennai and see if I like something.

Most of the shopping that was done prior to the marriage was for stuff that I had to wear during the ceremony itself. I had a tough time when I was trying to pick a silk saree for my engagement as there were too many people trying to convince me to get what they liked. So, this time I took my parents alone and it made a real difference as I really could pick anything that I wanted. It was a lot of fun to actually go shopping for silk sarees. I went to different stores and found lots of varieties in different price ranges...even though it was a saree that I would wear for my wedding I didn't want to spend too much on it considering the fact that I won't be wearing them that frequently. I finally ended up picking two sarees around Rs.7,000 each from Kumaran silks and chennai silks. Pothy's was really terrible for my taste!!! And the sarees from some of the other stores looked too modern!!! (apparently thats the trend). Silk saree shopping wasn't over with that, I still had a 9 yards saree that I had to get and I ended up getting that at Nalli for about Rs. 12,000. My husband and I picked the 9 yards saree together :). There were sarees that were upto Rs. 30K - 40K but I stuck to moderate range as I won't be wearing these sarees frequently.

After all the silk saree purchase, I then had to buy mysore silk, I should confess that on any day I would prefer mysore silk over silk. As its a lot easier to wear and manage :). There was a specific brand called girija silks that my mother-in-law suggested that I get. I found good mysore silk sarees in Kumaran, Nalli and another store in Mount Rd (I forgot the store name).

My mom saved me some time by getting a few silk sarees ahead of time and since I happened to like them, things just got a lot more easier. Since, everyone told me that my sarees looked great I'm gonna assume that my mom and I did a great job in selecting them. I had to buy some churidars as well and I picked them out from some stores in T.Nagar (It's very important to have good casual clothes when you get married, cos my aunt still tells me how her DIL didnt have any good clothes to wear). I wore new clothes almost every other day :) :). In addition I did some salwar material shopping as well and by far I liked Chennai silks the most.

Now comes the fun part, shopping after marriage. My husband did tell me that I could get brand named apparel in India for a lot less than what I pay here in USA. Even before we got married my MIL did some searching to find out where I can get Ralph Lauren jeans and apparently you can only find them in Delhi. So, jeans was ruled out right there. Now the shopping was more for tops, footwear, etc...

Before going to India, some of my friends recommended that I go to Fab India for buying salwars and kurtis. But I didn't have any time to visit that place before marriage. But, luckily my MIL who was also keen on taking me for shopping had seen their ad on newspaper and showed it to me and asked if I was interested. I was excited and we all went shopping together. My MIL picked up salwar for herself and that one was very good. I got kurti tops and I really love to wear them here and a lot of ladies at work tell me they look very good. They even sell Men's shirts there and my hubby and FIL got them and they told me that they liked the stuff there. I thought Fab India was cool, because they had so much stuff and none of the tops shrunk that badly or faded. If you have the patience to go through their collection you can easily find a lot of tops in Rs. 300- 400 range. That's a pretty good price for good quality cotton tops.

When it came to Tshirt shopping, I totally liked shopper's stop and there the T-shirt variety was good and price ranged from Rs.300-400, sometimes even lesser. I think we should buy a larger size than our correct size as most of these tops ended up shrinking. Nevertheless some of them were good and again I got compliments.

I didn't like lifestyle (store at the city center) that much the first time I went there, I didn't like the clothes there at all, and I really wanted to get out of the store asap but my hubby convinced me to take a look at the sandals, which I did so that he wouldn't be disappointed. I bought one sandal and I totally loved it once I started using it. These sandals were exactly the way I wanted them, moderate heels and very light weight. I think I got a few pairs of sandals there.

In addition there was some fashion jewellery shopping that I did, I got some sets done at Narayana Pearls but most of these look more or less traditional. If you really want some fashion jewellery then you have to shop elsewhere. I found good stuff at Landmark (that was the only piece of fashion jewellery I got). But my husband's aunt had gotten me stuff from a store called Damini in Kotturpuram and we later went there to check that store out and found out that the stuff there is in high demand and that they sell out very fast once the new stock arrives!!! Other than there was a diamond pendant gifted to me and I found out that it was bought at Lifestyle. I never really got time to look around for similar stuff in Lifestyle store.

Thanks to my loving husband who had enough patience to drive me around town and get me all this stuff ;). Next time I go to India, I really know what's good there and what stuff should be got there and what stuff I should get here in USA!!! If you do have the time, then do checkout these stores. Happy shopping!!