Kup's Choroonu

  Last day was an important day in Kupdom. The Queen Mom decided it was high time, her little one was
formally initiated into the finer aspects of gastronomic delicacies. Simply put, they started her on solid foods.
But since nothing is quite 'simple' with Kup's mom, she had to have a traditional function for it.It didn't matter that there were only 3 of them and they were not required by faith to do ...The SN agreed readily probably because it gave him an excuse to finally open the long awaited bottle of Laurent Perrier(hey,we live in Champagne-Ardenne after all). Now over to the Kup Mom for an insider's view on the whole affair; read
a whole long rant.
  It was fun to actually look up the dates for an auspicious day for the ceremony. Being Christians ,we have never bothered about the so-called auspicious timing for any joyful event but since this was the first time i actually planned something like this on my own,i just wanted to be sure.What can I say I'm a little bit silly when it comes to Kup. "Why displease some hitherto unknown higher power?", I told my husband's raised
eyebrows.

  Apparently the even months are good for girls; whereas for boys odd month is better,also seven is considered unlucky..anyway we, ok ok I decided to have it on Sunday afternoon. Also we were not able to celebrate Onam,, the harvest festival of our native state, Kerala which was the previous week. Traditionally 

the feast or Sadya, as we call it, is vegetarian, but to humour SN, I added non-veg  items also. I made the

kottayam fish curry, thrissur pork curry, SN's spinach curry and thoran so it was a meal balanced between our 2 native places.Believe me,though only 140 km apart, the cuisines are on either end of the spectrum. But more about that in another post. SN made the parippukari, apparently from some secret recipe(sigh).

 The star of the day was to be given rice in 2 ways: one mixed with milk and sugar, the other with butter

and salt. We decorated with balloons,streamers(he) and candles(me).



foodings



  No festivities without traditional costumes..After much persuasion SN changed into mundu and jubba.(I was holding his precious bottle hostage).I didnt bring the stuff all the way from home for nothing.Next came

the most dreaded task: getting the little madam to wear the kasavumundu. It consists of a single piece of cloth, folded into layers and worn as wrap-around. Hence Kup didnt think it fit into the category of clothes and started to play with it..also me and her dad had various loose ends dangling around, just waiting for her to pull loose.


papa's darling

   An hour,a lot of struggling,wiggling and squiggling later,somehow we managed to get her still. The proud papa held her on his lap(trailing mundu and all) ,recited a short prayer and fed her a little morsel  from each plate.Yours truly was resigned to post of videographer.
Needless to say, the sweet one was preferred over the salty one..
After the first mouthful, we got a nice surprise: the in-laws called up and they were able to view everything over skype.So much for live
telecasting. As for my parents who are still coming up with excuses
for not repairing or replacing the system at home(double-sigh), they
were getting the live feed-backs via phone since morning. That covers
the radio aspect. Kup was generally on model behaviour. She loved playing with the balloons but got the shock of her life when they burst. An hour later Kup had enough of the play-up. Her basic


fingerchen

attitude towards traditional attire can be seen here:

This is how it looked like at the end of the day:
By this time SN and I were exhausted.. Hungrily we devoured the
food which was very good ,even if I say so myself. After a much deserved rest
(in our regular clothes) we felt released from the zombie state..(partially thanks to dear LP)

Therefore I am including his picture too. One funny thing was that we realised we had no matches or
lighters,as we were about to light the candles(yummy scented ones too).In India no decent household being without them..Since it was Sunday, all shops were closed. So we had to to with unlightened ones..Thank God it wasn't her birthday!
  On choroonu day a baby is offered a pen, some gold, some sweets and a  tiny clay pot in a tray. According to which thing baby reaches for, his future area of interest will be determined. Pen stands for
education, gold for wealth, sweets for foodie and clay pot for property. Just for fun, we too gave it a try.
Since we din't have a clay pot,we substituted it with one of those yet unlightened candles.This was the result:





 
                    Attagirl, you seem to be a true-blood malayalee after all..
We had a lot of fun that day. I am really thankful to my Ichayan /SN that he gave me full reins probably
against his better judgement, though he is not exactly the party kind of guy. Since he is unlikely to read this post, I am dedicating it to him.  Here's to you sweetheart.........