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My mom used to tell us a story when we were very young. The story follows…

A king takes his twin sons to a well educated scholarly swamiji and asks him to test both the kids and find out who is more intelligent. Swamiji then gives a banana to each of them and says “Open the banana peel and eat”. One boy opens the peel and eats banana while the other opens the peel and eats the peel.

Then the swamiji smiles at both boys and says to king that both OF them are smart, one is good at education and the other one has knowledge. I never understood that how can both be smart. I used to feel that the boy who eat the peel acted foolish. But now I understand that it is called ”thinking outside the box”. Now I always tell my mom that I can relate Suhani to that boy.

This morning Suhani said “Amma, I wish you live in separate house”. I asked her “Why?”. She said “so whenever it is my birthday I can come visit you and you can give me gifts”. I said “Ok, then you can sleep/eat and play by yourself and I will happily live in a separate house all by self”. She replies “Amma! I am only wishing but I do not want you go to a different house”. So I really do not know what her thoughts are about “a wish” and “a want”. Whatever it is I changed the topic, as I was afraid that she would talk more nonsense.

One evening, I and Suhani were standing outside our house watching Shivani ride her bike. Recently Shivani learned with out training wheels, so every few minutes, she wants to go for a ride.

After some time Suhani also started riding her bike with training wheels on. Suddenly she came to a stop and said “Amma! I am almost your weight”.  I did not quite get it. I was thinking that I almost weigh 100 pounds more than her. If she is 30 then I am 130 pounds. Was she not considering  the ‘1′ in hundredth place. Different thoughts were racing in my mind. Then I asked her “What weight are you taking about?”. Then she said “Look at the shadow, when I am sitting on the bike I am almost your weight”. So, I had to correct her saying that is called ‘height’ and not ‘weight’.

The other day Shreya was checking with girls whom they are going to vote for - Obama or McCain. Suhani asked what is meant by voting. Shreya and Shivani were trying to explain and used word named President. Suhani says my dad is already a president (Telugu association of Memphis). Sometimes she says he is Ugadi President and dances President.

They were also talking about yard signs saying so and so vote for so and so…..Suhani saw one of our neighbors yard sign and said they are voting for ‘WALMART’ (as the yard sign has blue and white colors, btw she cannot read yet).

Shivani, Suhani and company were counting how many aunties they know have same names. Suhani says “there are 2 Saila aunties, 2 Padma aunties, 2 Sujana aunties, one is Tanish’s mom and other one is Sahithy’s mom”. After listening to that I corrected her saying Tanish’s mom’s name is Srujana and not Sujana. Then she immediately asked me ”Oh!! really!! when did she change her name to Srujana”.

Basically Suhani did not want to accept that she was wrong but instead thought Srujana has changed her name. 

As like every year this year we cooked food for 60-70 people at the temple for Durgashtami. We made spinach+dosakai+tomato pappu, Kotthimeera, tomato and peanut pachhadi, chamadumpa and kanda deep fry, Dappalam or mukkala pulusu with mudda pappu and last but not least majjiga.

DP bought groceries around 2pm and was on conf call until 4pm . I started cooking dal,chutney, boiled chamdupa at home and then reached temple around 6pm. Rukku picked up Suhani and got her to temple directly, which helped us a lot. DP then fried the roots and made mukkalu pulusu.Shivram garu was a great help.

Mukkala pulusu turned out very good - Recipe is here-  http://veggiecookbook.wordpress.com/2006/11/17/mukkala-pulusu/ .

For yagnam in this year in May’08, we made upma, idli, vada, coconut chutney, daddojanam and payasam for around 150 people.

For