Happy Pongal! Pongala Pongal!

Everyone here in the state of Tamil Nadu is celebrating The harvest festival Pongal lasts for three days. Like Thanksgiving but with the celebration joy of New Year's Eve. Pongal is actually the first new rice harvest. All through the markets, at doorways, inside our hotel are sugar cane stalks (instead of corn stalks) and people may be enjoying chewing the stalk or juicing it (unlike corn stalks). On Thursday Ganesh, our guide, bought a bundle of sugar stalks and laid them in the aisle of our bus to give to a family in a village we visited. Enroute to Madurai, we stopped by a little village for a walk. Kids were off school for the holiday, so we were surrounded by maybe 60 kids wanting pens and pencils, wanting to know our names, while we walked the street in their village. There was a Catholic Church in this village; Hindu and Christian and Muslim all together, no problem. We gave the sugar cane to a family in this village. Hope they shared it. Continuing our travels, we see so many trees and crops growing. Palms, coconut-loaded trees, tamarind, banyan, eucalyptus, papaya, bananas; we stopped at roadside to purchase fresh roasted cashews. The raw cashews in their shells are put into a little roasting pan over an open fire, charred until they can crack open for the tasty nut inside. There was some road construction to repair damage done by rains. Our bus driver made a short stop at one roadside idol to make an offering of banana, coconut and flower. He had a bus breakdown in this location previously, so this offering was made for continued good bus service. At a railroad crossing, we saw an unusual site. A female operating the gate! This train had an engine and 15 cars. We stopped in Chettinad for lunch. Beautiful hotel there. Lunch was served on a banana leaf; the severs came around and put foods on this leaf. Rice with peas, squash and lentil mix, beets in yogurt, potatoes, mango that tasted like an apple pie filling, stewed chicken, more yogurt, veg fritter, fried fish. Dessert was a coconut gelatin and vanilla ice cream. Watermelon juice in a glass. Yesterday morning en route to the temple, we walked through a residential neighborhood to admire the rangoli the women rose early to create. Beautiful. Many greetings of Happy Pongal or Pongalo Pongal! We happened upon a newlywed couple going to their parents' homes to offer them the sweetened Pongal prepared by the bride. She offered all of us some of this as well. Another neighbor also offered us some. Our hotel here is in a beautiful setting; peacocks, dragon flies. Last night we took a rickshaw ride through the area around the temple. Many Pongal greetings. One American per bicycle-driven rickshaw man. Much fun. I forgot to mention all the banana bunches we see on stalks everywhere! Heading to Kerala in an hour. Everywhere we go, warm and friendly people. Come see for yourself.