Its Diwali Time!

After a really long time.. 5 years to be exact, I had the rare opportunity of my parents being with Priya and me for Diwali. We missed having Priya's parents around! It would have been a blast!!!

It was our first family Diwali together! Missed Priya's parents and my brother though...Mom made sweets and batshinams at home.

We got up early in the morning, started the Nadaswaram MP3's :-), Sat in our puja room where mom gave Priya and me a liberal dose of kaachina thenga yennai, had our head / oil bath, wore new clothes! looked trrrrrrrrrraditonal in attire!

If only we had Sri, Leela, Karthik and our 1000,000 wala sarams!!!!

Kutlu's 9 Lives

Our Kutlu has a life of its own... wonder what ever goes on into its teensy weensy mind.
I have captured 5 of them here.

Yes yes, keep taking all those photographs and let me prep for my
long afternoon nap!!!












Aaaaaaaaaaaah! Life's fun when all I got to do is zzzzzzzzzzzzz










I am dreaaaaaaaaaaaaamin Dead Rats!!!!








Morons keep yaking away blah blah blah.. let me catch my teddy winks!!!






Nothing like a siesta after a nice meal in the afternoon!!!!

We recently went for a Chicago-Niagara-Syracuse-New York - Cincinnati trip before Karthik departed to Sweden for his office trip. One of the pictures that really stood out was this one.

My Birthday Cake

Priya baked this wonderful cake for my Birthday.






I was stuck in Cincinnati on 10th, so we celeberated it belatedly last weekend.



The challenge priya had was to get a really good taste but avoiding the calories that come with a rich cake.





In the end, it came out really delicious, and much of the cake was consumed by her friend than me or Priya.









The cake had only egg whites, the icing fat free cream, sugar and splenda mix. On the whole, a really delecious cake with less than 30% of the guilt ;-)

Intrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooooducing Kutlu!!! (Drumroll...)

You must be wondering why this weird name for a kitten, but
funnily enough, it does not answer to its actual name! Sheeba! Kutlu a.k.a Sheeba came to our house about 3 weeks ago, when

Priya picked it up from the Kalamazoo Animal Shelter...
She used the age old trick of convincing me of getting this kitten... "Neenga Cincinati ku poita, veedu orey soogama aidarathu..." and had the expression that Puss in Boots had in Shrek the Third.

I didnt really have a lot of choice you see....

If I had refused.. "Kaapi tumblera NUNG!!! nu veppa", "Rasathula uppu jasthi", "Dosai ketta, idli thickness ku varum!!! In order to survive such a calamitious lifestyle, I decided to do what all husbands have been doing for ages for survival...knowing that "words are mightier than dosai kallu", we use deft and skillful wordplay to avoid WW-III .

Famous words of yesteryears came to play...

It took just two words to maintain world peace...

"Yes Dear" ...was all I had to utter.

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Kutlu finally came home after her 1st batch of shots and deworming,

first thing it does, starts chasing its own tail, runs around in circles furiously!!! "Namma ooru pamparam nyabakam than vanthuthu!!!" then looks up with giddyness and goes flop! It was a hilarious moment, and became a part of the Pu-Plux-Palghat clan ever since!

Kashi Trip

My parents, moms cousins from Mumbai and their respective families decided to embark on a pilgrimage to Rameshwaram and Kashi. This trip was to pay respects to our forefathers, our ancestors.


The trip started with going to Ramaeshwaram, initiating the pujas there, going to Kashi. Collecting the sand from the banks of Ganges, coming back to Rameshwaram and dissolving it in Rameshwaram waters. The journey signifies the life and death of all our forefathers and us paying respects to them.





Lingams were made from sand from Rameshwaram and carried over to Kashi to be dissolved at banks of Ganges.










The trip takes us to Prayag, modern day Allahabad, where Ganga (Ganges) , Yamuna and Saraswati meet. This place is considered very auspicious in Indian mythology.

The cat's out of the bag!

We got a cute kitty cat, Sushi at our home.


Priya's friend Catlyin had to shift apartments and loaned her cat to us for some time. We had an intersting episode where we visited an emergency Vet ward as it got sick in our house.

The cat simply got dehydrated, like a small baby, that she is! simply refused to drink water!!!

All she liked doing was much on her karvadam like Cat food and not drink thy water.

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