[My mother is with us now. She will be here till September. She was diagnosed Lymphoma in December. Fortunately she has responded well to Chemotherapy and her doctor is satisfied with the results. My mails are to my father’s elder brother’s wife. I call her doddamma which literally means elder mother. She is my favourite relative. From her I have learnt to take life as it comes. She is 87 now and due to her health condition she has not been able to go out from her home for many years. I started writing to her in October. Her son or daughter-in-law read it out to her and she enjoys the photos. The internet has really changed our lives. It has helped us to keep in contact with our friends and relatives.]
21-5-18
Dear Doddamma,
We tried to talk to you on Saturday, 19th but the connection was not good and twice it was broken. So amma wrote a letter to you and we posted it that evening.
Amma is going to Yoga class since 14th. We had to attend a wedding on the 17th so she could not go to the class and that day while getting up she her back muscle got pulled and she had a little pain. I did not take her last week. But she was doing the pranayamas at home. I do the same so I could see whether she was doing correctly. Now she is better, we went today. We go and come by autorickshaw. There is an autorickshaw stand near home. They have a phone number. They come home when we call them. Aravind also goes to his college in an autorickshaw. It is very convenient for him. On the 18th we had to attend a Satyanarayana Puja. Amma did not come, I cooked lunch for her before going. Evening we went to the park near Venugopala temple in Manipal. It is very beautiful. The temple is one of our favourite places. Amma sat in one pf the benches and we went for a walk in the park.
Last week we got many rains. Saturday night there was thunder and lightning too. Yesterday morning on our way to Maikuri there was rain till we reached Mangalore. Mava is fine though he does forget a lot. He cannot hear properly. But he does his work by himself, walks around and reads the newspaper regularly. We had taken mangoes from our tree and the couple who work there prepared rasayana. Mava likes it.
We got back lots of wild mangoes. We gave to our neighbours. Today we decided to make mambala. Amma removed the pulp from the mangoes. We made rasam with what was left of the fruits. I put the pulp on a steel plate and kept it in water because of ants. Unfortunately, it was very cloudy today. So the mango did not dry properly. I will see how sunny it is tomorrow, if it is cloudy will add this pulp to the pineapple which we got from Maikuri and make jam.
Our star apple tree still has many fruits but due to the rains they are rotting from inside. Kuvara plucked many and we gave the good one to some of our friends. We have been buying our groceries from the cooperative society from the beginning and we know the staff there. We gave some fruits to them too but told everyone to cut and eat. On the way back we went to the library to renew the books. I get books from there regularly. This library is the general library of Manipal Academy. It is for the staff of any of the colleges in Manipal.
Today evening one of our old friends came to invite us for son’s wedding. We were neighbours in the campus. It was nice catching up news about our children. I gave her some wild mangoes and told her how to make rasam.
It is now 9.45. Amma is reading a book and Aravinda is listening to some book in his computer. We are all fine here.
22nd – Doddamma, yesterday night we had thunder, lightning and rains. Two thunders sounded as if they were just above our heads. Today morning I added the mango pulp to the pineapple pieces and made jam. It would not have been possible to make mambala.
With love,
Lakshmi
Satyanarayan Puja – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyanarayan_Puja
The Satyanarayan Puja is a religious worship of the Hindu god Vishnu. Satya means “truth” and narayana means, “The highest being” so Satyanarayan means “The highest being who is an embodiment of Truth”.
Mango Rasayana/Mavina Hannina Rasayana Recipe – udupi-recipes…
udupi-recipes.com/2013/04/mango-rasayanamavina-hannina-rasayana…
· Grind grated coconut along with cardamoms finely in mixer grinder adding a cup of water. Pour it on to strainer and extract thick coconut milk approximately …
Dried mango pulp(Ambe saTh or mambaLa) – Aayis Recipes
http://www.aayisrecipes.com/…/dried-mango-pulpambe-sath-or-mambala
Ambe – mango, saTh(pronounced as saaTh) in Konkani or mambaLa in Kannada is one of the most popular ways of preserving mango pulp during season at our native.
Mukhamani 
Comments are welcome :)