Ring in the new

It was Tamil New Year yesterday and we did all that we remembered we should to bring in the new period and gently send away the old. For me, it was a time when things needed to be cleaned, from fans to memory banks, with the old and fairly useless being ruthlessly eliminated to make room for what I hope will be new, improved, fresh and happy. The last year, whether measured in the conventional January 1st time-frame or the more ‘Indian’ version that slides according to the phases of the moon or however it may be calculated by whichever community is calculating it.

But life feels fresh and new for now. It could be that the fans have been wiped free of the accumulated dust, it could be that Small Cat has had a bath and been given a new collar. It could be the fact that both Father and I wore new clothes yesterday or that the fridge is nicely restocked with interesting stuff to eat. It could also be that I finished all the laundry instead of needing to wait for another day to run another wash. Who knows. All I know that is that it all seems to be gearing up to take off from a starting block that I have not known before. And I hope that it is a good one, a fair race, a happy ending.

Perhaps the best part of any celebration is the food that announces it. For us, it was about payasam and paanagam, neermor and hot, spicy veggies that went well with fresh toast and homemade mayonnaise – so who said Tamil New Year had to be conventional? New Age cuisine also makes it all happen, you know! Somewhere along the way, even in the traditional cooking, there was a sense of adventure, a dash of something that may not have been deemed acceptable by the pundits who set the menu so many aeons ago. In the payasam there was a dash of nutmeg; in the paanagam there was a pinch of clove powder and in the neermor, an added sprinkle of jeera powder that may not have been in the list of conventional ingredients. But it worked, never mind that I sort of forgot the lemon squeeze into the jaggery water, the whipped curd was thicker than it should familiarly have been and the rice pudding was thicker and less sweet than was the norm.

But isn’t that the best part about celebrating? To take a festival and make it your own, something that is special to your family and circumstances, be it new clothes in the form of pajamas or a T-shirt, a puja in the shape of a direct communication with a parent now in a different plane of existence and a prayer in the words of perhaps one of the Simpsons – praise the Lord and pass the pudding.