5-01-2021
Today is my husband’s birthday, he is 69. We were married in 1982 and it has been a good journey together. I made green gram dal ‘payasa’. It is a sweet porridge and we all like it. Aravinda got a beautiful bouquet for his father. In the evening we went to the temple. It was very quiet there and outside a Yakshagana class was going on. The teacher and the small children were enjoying themselves. Yakshagana is a folk art of our place. It was good to see children learning it. We watched for some time.
We have cable TV connection and a staff member had come to collect money. I asked him what he thought about Corona now. He said it was no longer there. I said we were reading a lot about it in the papers, he said with conviction it was all fake news!! I did not answer. Fortunately, all are not like that and people do wear masks, we do. Yesterday morning I added masala to the salted lemon, I now have two bottles of lemon pickle but we have to wait for some time to eat it. I have sun-dried cooked gooseberries, they are good if we have indigestion.
We had not been away from our place, except once. On the 30th we went to Karkala, about 36kms from our place. My husband studied his graduate course there before joining for BDS here. He loves going to Karkala. We left at 7.30, first went to a small town called Hebri, which is famous for its temple to Lord Anantha Padmanabha, a form of Lord Vishnu. There were not people around. We had breakfast in a 75 year old hotel, it was an old building. The food was amazing and we enjoyed ourselves. The owner said he had been working there for forty years and 1 ½ years earlier he had become its owner. Karkala is a pilgrimage centre for Jains. There is a very tall statue of Bahubali on a hill. The black boulders reminded me of a book that I am reading, Indica by Pranay Lal. It is a geological history of India and is a very good book. The author says that every boulder has a story to tell. So, this time I made it a point to look at boulders beneath my feet 😊. We also went to my husband’s college and his other haunts 😊and returned home by 4. It was a good outing.
My daughter says, lockdown has been extended in Germany indefinitely and children may have online school. Maybe the cold is ideal for the virus to spread. But people are not home-bound. They are going for walks and exploring the nearby places which they had not seen.
I wonder what life will offer to us this year, anyway we have to take each day as it comes. Take care dear friends.
25 days that changed the world: How Covid-19 slipped from …https://www.deccanherald.com/international/25-days-that-changed-the…
A Samaritan you can count on to ensure dignity of the dead | …https://www.deccanherald.com/state/mangaluru/a-samaritan-you-can-count…
Moong Dal Payasam | Hesaru Bele Payasa Recipe – Udupi Recipeshttps://udupi-recipes.com/2013/04/moong-dal-payasamhesaru-bele-payasa…
Yakshagana – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakshagana
Mukhamani 
Comments are welcome :)