Pongal is on Monday. The deadline for buying new clothes has been set to Saturday evening. Father has been specifically warned that new banian does not meet the criteria of ‘new clothes’. No, not even two new banians. Not looking forward to spending the first three-day weekend of the year shopping for ‘new clothes’. You don’t understand, ‘new clothes’ does not just mean new clothes. It means clothes that look new, are not distressed, ripped or abused in any form, are not of an objectionable colour (including but not limited to colours like moss green which my mother would blatantly abuse with politically incorrect names), of the nature of clothes you can wear to someone’s wedding reception, and in short, wholly inconvenient to go shopping for. The vadai and pongal is like an award for managing to meet expectations.
When I was younger, I did not feel so sheepish about going to the terrace with vadai-pongal and shouting ka ka ka. I used to be more excited about leaving food for the crow and sneaking back to the terrace later to check if the crow had eaten or not. Now when I go to the terrace to leave food and have to shout ‘ka ka ka’, I try to keep my voice as low as possible, ashamed at my inability to mimic a crow. Adding to that, there are no crows near my house; only pigeons.
Ever since I was a kid, I have hated pigeons. For the large part of my childhood, I lived on the top floor of an apartment. I would always keep my windows shut tight lest a pigeon should hide in my room and scare the living daylights out of me later by nonchalantly emerging from under my desk. Not to mention hearing me scream and shitting itself when simultaneously flying in circles above my head.
I summarily hate pigeons and I refuse to feed them vadai-pongal. They even shit shat on my ‘new dress’ last Pongal.