Jalabulajangs

My last post was about food and the title gave away the topic and so one of my friends said she is not going to read it as she will crave for those foods. So this time as a marketing strategy to pull readers I chose a click-bait title that has no connection to what I’m writing…Muhahaha 👿 Epdi pudichen pathela (read it in Panchathantiram Nagesh’s modulation.

Anyway, have you ever gone to the airport to pick up a foreign return relative visiting for vacation? Narayana…Indha kosu thollai thangala. We are going to talk about such kosu thollai moments by these (including yours faithfully) phoreigners and their vacation atrocities. Firstly, you can easily identify the house with foreign returns. As soon as you enter, along with the welcome mat , you will find 2 big American tourister/ Samsonite bags blocking the way. The house will operate around these 2 bags, moving it here and there playing travel-travel based on the room that maid is cleaning. Let’s say you cross the bags hurdle and enter the house. Even if you feel thirst you please don’t go in and open the fridge to search of cold-water. You will not find that for sure as the fridge will be filled with packets and packets of Hershey’s chocolates .The usual curd, milk and left overs will be stacked sadly on the dining table waiting for attention. Those chocolates will be heroes for a few days and paperboy, milkman, postman , aunty uncle living 10 streets away will be given a fare share along with explanation about the geography and origin of those chocolates 😆

Long long ago ( 20 years ago) when my relatives used to visit, as a kid I used to be excited to receive all the gifts.All the gifts like puzzles , board games, Disney watches, everything was so new and fascinating. I used to boast to my friends in school but again that was pre-Amazon time. Now in the Amazon-era we can even get items ordered and delivered straight from Mars. So nothing is as fascinating as before. So anyway, keeping this logic aside, we foreign returns will still buy all these color color items from here. I remember that I got a color-color light flashing Bluetooth speaker which is used in my house to play Vishnu Sahasranamam in my house on Saturdays 🙄 Imagine the shock on MS’s face if she could witness this, sahasranamam playing with colorful lights and audio effects.

The very important quality of a phoreign return (many of them) is wearing thick sweatshirts in Chennai on a sunny afternoon with ‘New York’, ‘Boston’, ‘San Fransisco’ written in a bold font that can even make a guy 1km away to read and understand he is visiting from the US. They don’t understand that immediately auto Annas will quadruple the rates seeing that New York sweatshirt in Pondy bazaar. Trust me, none of these would have actually been worn by them in the US. In the US, they will be posting pics with ‘veshti’, ‘saree’ whenever they have a get together.

You should see the VVIP welcome that we get when we visit every house. That’s the best part. As we are visiting after a long time , we will be given a feast wherever we go. It will be like breakfast in 1 house, lunch in another, tea/coffee In the next and dinner in the last house. Enna enna itengalo 12b flatinelae moment for people like me. For that 1 month , I will feel like Rajadhi Raaja Raja Marthanda Raja Gambira Raja parakrama 23 Pulikesi parak parak..

All said, for people like me, working away from home the expectation and dream to go on a vacation is like fuel that will keep us going. I will keep thinking about everything I can do when I’m home for a month. Every time I watch a video about a food place in Chennai or any new spot I will immediately remark to my husband that we should go there when we go to Chennai. So apart from the alaparais we do, we just want to make as many memories as possible within that 1 month so that we can spend the next 6months reminiscing about them and the 6 months after that planning our next Foreign return vacation 😉

Oops! I forgot my disclaimer- Everything written here is all purely fictional. So if you see any resemblance to characters living or dead, it is merely coincidental and not intentional.