Karthigai Lights and Christmas Deepam

In our house we have a tradition. On the day of Kaarthigai Deepam (the day we light oil lamps and pray to lord Kaarthikeya and eat Pori Urundai's), we also put on the Christmas lights. The Kaarthigai day in the US also coincides with my star birthday in India as they are around 12 hours ahead and overall turns out to be a great experience.

In summary, I get to eat pori urundai's every year for my Birthday!

The oil lamps come back in the next two days but the Christmas lights stay on till the New years!

This year daddy Narayanan aka limpy Narayanan was given an ultimatum by the kids. Either get on the ladder and put on the lights with help from mommy and the kids or go hire someone to put on the lights, NOW!

With a lot of help from the three of them, the lights were up after an hour..

We also celebrated with the kids lighting lamps (or switching on battery operated lamps that look like real lamps)and placing them inside and outside the house!

Good eats..

Notice daddy's slight paunch. 15 days of eating, limping and no calorie burning and trying on pants a tad smaller on the waist can do that!

A full moon night as always for Kaarthigai and this year it coincided with an eclipse in many parts of the world. The moon as seen at 400mm and ..

and back lighting our house..

We had one busy day. Children's party in the morning. Lighting up the house in the evening!




This special day was made possible thanks to isolation from the internet. We are now planning to cut the internet cable on festival days as a policy!

Hope those of you who celebrate Kaarthigai, had a great day yesterday!


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Kaarthigai Deepam - FAQ and JUFAQ

Let's jump right into the definitions here! First the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)

Kaarthigai Deepam :

The Tamizh version of the festival of lights to celebrate Lord Muruga's (aka Kaarthikeya, Son of Shiva) incarnation in the form of six children. Sometimes coincides with Thiru-Annamalai-Deepam, a large oil light lit on top of the Annamalai Hill for Lord Shiva.

When :

Tamizh month of Kaarthigai, full moon day

How long :

3 days.

What is done :

Light earthern lamps, burst crackers, eat rice crispy treats also known as "pori urundais" (Pori - puffed rice, urundai - ball).

On the second day, there is a general house clean up. When I was four five years old, I remember my grandma calling the second day "kuppai Karthigai" (Kuppai literally means Garbage). She would clean up the house and put lights in the corners.

The third day was "pee kaarthigai" (pee literally means feces in Tamizh!). This was a day for cleaning the bathrooms, drains, and there were lights pretty much everywhere in the house. We also used to light the lamps with neem oil on the last day. The neem oil has significant medicinal value (I read an article where Americans are trying to create Neem tree farms in Texas so they can harvest neem oil for medicines!). Maybe it was our ancestors way of disinfecting the house by burning lamps with neem oil.




Here are some pictures from yesterday..






















Now for the JUFAQ ( Jr.'s Unanswerable Frequently Asked Questions).

We were at the Livermore temple yesterday. Lord Muruga's idol was dressed up with a golden crown, golden Vel(spear)and lots of flowers. I wanted to meditate for a few minutes.

Jr. came sat next to me and says :

Jr. : Why is he all dressed up? Is it his birthday today?
Me : Yes.
Jr. : How old is he today?
Me : He is one more year older today...
Jr. : Is he a kid?
Me : Yeah (the idol here does make the god look like a kid)
Jr. : which school does he go to?
Me : (at this point, losing all hopes of any meditation). He goes to a special school for god babies.

there were more questions, no answers and we started back from the temple.


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