During my school -college days like every one we also used to have Sundays only as holidays (now they have hartals 😉) .Most of the sundays there used to be some functions like wedding,house warming etc. And in between there used to be some sundays which were the real fun days and family days.
On such a fun day especially during March,April after breakfast, and finishing reading news papers and Sunday supplements Pappa would go and check if there is any jackfruit ripened or raw in our property and asks umma if it is ok to bring jack fruit (Pappa wants to make sureUmma is ready to cut,clean and cook them) and once umma says yes Pappa fetch some long sticks like that of a coconut stem etc and fixes the knife on its end and pulls down a few jack fruits! One we will take one for our neighbors and one Pappa would take to tharavad and rest to his brothers. Then the fun begins..me and Pappa would sit and clean the jack fruits..I love to see Pappa cut the jack fruit in to four pieces and then cleans the jack fruit gum (velanji in local dialect) using a stick and he recollects how his sisters(my aunts) used to keep this gum to put henna on Eid,as there were no henna cones etc those days. They used to melt this gum and draw some designs using it on palms and then cover the entire palm with freshly ground henna..and when they remove the henna the palm would be bright red except the designs they drew using the jack fruit gum!!
And thus we clean up the entire jack fruit ,while Pappa recollects his childhood and in between Umma makes a yummy "Chakka upperi" (usually we take the raw jack fruit) and we have a delicious lunch with Chakka upperi,fish mulakittath and fish fry!! After lunch Umma makes hot jack fruit chips (Chakka varutthath).Umma is a specialist in jack fruits chips making. We have to thinly slice the jack fruit and give it to Umma. She places an iron kadai on the stove ( not on gas but on fire) and deep fries it in hot coconut oil and pours in salt solution and we eat that hot fresh jack fruit chips with Umma's special black tea in the evening. The rest of the chips Umma will keep in an air tight jar and we have it on every day as evening snack.
The rest of the Sunday's Pappa and Umma would be in a mood to do some farming. So me,Dada and Kunju will assist Pappachi with some work,tapioca ,arvi ,elephant yam etc are the usual crops. The harvest of all these crops are also fun, because on the harvest day Umma will be cooking the crop we harvested that day. Kunju will make some refreshment drinks while Pappa and Dada are on field, usually the refreshment drink would be some butter milk with shallots,curry leaves and ginger grinded in it or hot kanji vellam( rice porridge) .
In short ,we all had a an awesome childhood ,and it was the most happiest time of our lives. When I see my daughter spending her time only in front of TV and mobile I feel sad because I can't gift her such an amazing childhood !!
Note: This blog should be written in Malayalam because I find it very difficult to translate and transliterate many words in to English and I feel the nostalgia is lost some where in this post. I did not try it in Malayalam because I still do not have Malayalam font in my IPad. So sorry I couldn't bring out the real feel.
Love
Hash
And thus we clean up the entire jack fruit ,while Pappa recollects his childhood and in between Umma makes a yummy "Chakka upperi" (usually we take the raw jack fruit) and we have a delicious lunch with Chakka upperi,fish mulakittath and fish fry!! After lunch Umma makes hot jack fruit chips (Chakka varutthath).Umma is a specialist in jack fruits chips making. We have to thinly slice the jack fruit and give it to Umma. She places an iron kadai on the stove ( not on gas but on fire) and deep fries it in hot coconut oil and pours in salt solution and we eat that hot fresh jack fruit chips with Umma's special black tea in the evening. The rest of the chips Umma will keep in an air tight jar and we have it on every day as evening snack.
The rest of the Sunday's Pappa and Umma would be in a mood to do some farming. So me,Dada and Kunju will assist Pappachi with some work,tapioca ,arvi ,elephant yam etc are the usual crops. The harvest of all these crops are also fun, because on the harvest day Umma will be cooking the crop we harvested that day. Kunju will make some refreshment drinks while Pappa and Dada are on field, usually the refreshment drink would be some butter milk with shallots,curry leaves and ginger grinded in it or hot kanji vellam( rice porridge) .
In short ,we all had a an awesome childhood ,and it was the most happiest time of our lives. When I see my daughter spending her time only in front of TV and mobile I feel sad because I can't gift her such an amazing childhood !!
Note: This blog should be written in Malayalam because I find it very difficult to translate and transliterate many words in to English and I feel the nostalgia is lost some where in this post. I did not try it in Malayalam because I still do not have Malayalam font in my IPad. So sorry I couldn't bring out the real feel.
Love
Hash
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