Sankranthi

After vacation for couple of weeks in last October, it wasn't easy to take off another week for this Pongal(Sankranthi). However, I took my chances and decided to take a week off starting 10th planning to do the 550 km to home by car. Come 9th, the petrol scarcity hit the country with most of the oil companies going on a strike. Luckily, i filled up the car on the previous day or else I would have been in one of those long queues for Petrol or more probably i would have just muted the idea. Even with full tank, we would be short by 100 km. Plan was to go as close as possible to home, abandon the car and do the rest of the journey by bus. On 10th, we (Sreeni and me) woke up in the early morning at 4:30 A.M. After leaving Sreeni's bike in the office, we were out on the road by 5:30 A.M with the hopes of getting out of the city before the sun rises. With the diversion to pick up my brother in law and heavy breakfast at his place, it was 7:30 by the time we were out of town. Just out of his driving lessons, Sreeni sitting beside me was getting anxious to get behind the wheels. At the sight of the gas station, I filled up the car and handed it over to Sreeni spending most of the journey in trying to capture some shots from the moving car.

Living in a cricket frenzied country, it's no surprise that playing cricket is one the major pastimes and more so in the villages. With vacations for most of the folk, there were tournaments held at many places around Pongal time. As these happen between villages, we registered a team from our village. Having shed playing the game for years, our first task was to buy a bat which we did on the day before our match. The whole intent was to have some fun and so we did losing ourselves to the opponents in the first match.



Having seen good reveiws for "Nachavule", i wanted to watch it for long time. The fact that it wan't released in Bangalore only increased my interest towards it. With the show scheduled for 2:30 P.M, we decided to go for it at 2 P.M and by the time we did the 30kms to Ongole from our village and reached the theatre, we missed half of the first half. Post interval was when we could get into the movie. It was very well made and a very different attempt from the director RaviBabu. The music is a major asset to the movie and it suits well to the story line.

Bhogi, the first of the three days of Sankranthi festival is the day when people wake up very early in the morning and set a small fire in front of their houses with all the useless stuff that got gathered over the year. As a kid i used to very eagerly wait for that day to come. Thanks to my laziness now, i wasn't even awake for the event. That evening, I spent a while helping my sister in finishing the Rangoli for Sankranthi.

The thought of doing a trip with friends from village has been under discussions among us for over many years and it turned true this time. On the evening of Sankranthi, seven of us (Seshu, Vasu, Kishore, Saagar, Jaipal, Chakri and me) started on a trip to Papikondalu in the East Godavari district. After dinner at the 'Tasty' restaurant in Ongole, we drove straight to Rajahmundry and checked into the hotel at 5 A.M. The boat that we booked for the day was canceled and we decided to visit Yanam on that day postponing the boat trip to Papikondalu(Papi Hills) for the next day. After resting for few hours, we started to 'Yanam' after breakfast at 'Adiyar' bhavan. The way to Yanam was just splendid with greenery on both sides of the road. With plenty of water available for farming, the green paddy fields separated by the coconut trees and the stream of river flowing beside the road was a treat to watch. Everything depicts the true environment of a village with mud houses and thatched roofs to concrete buildings, all immersed in greenery.