a white memory lane

Thats what I see from outside my window.

The outside is beautiful with thick, lush, white sheets of powdery snow. The green lawns are disappearing fast, the cars are becoming one with the concrete and the rooftops look like grand sheets of cake with icing.

Our very first snowfall in the area and boy, am itching to run out into it. The snowflakes remind me of thick jasmine flowers of the summer – it’s raining mallipoo’s in zero degrees temperatures indeed. Splats of snow as they hit the ground take me back to my grandma’s backyard. 

My older guy cousins would shake the creepers and dozens of flowers would fall over my head, as I scramble to collect them all. More buds the better. Long braids needed lots of white flowers. The poola jadas would be braided. A summer ritual everytime we visited the grandparents. I think I beat my sister in the number of times I got that done. Though painful keeping still, not just your body, but your neck and head and we didn’t have Doras or Elmos to keep you entertained those days, I absolutely loved the end result. Top it with a silk skirt, and later on with the more traditional langa voni and running all around feeling cutesy and pretty [not to mention the blatant showing off to anyone remotely willing to pay attention], it was like a dress up party of the present day generation.

It is indeed quite satisfying to see that the daughter now wants to wear langa vonis and does want to do all the traditional jazz. The reasons can vary from emulation of the heroines,  to wanting to hold onto roots, or just maybe because like me in the corner of our secret minds, find the attire, flowers and the jewlery a way to like ourselves.

Despite it all, the end justifies the means. Always.

[On a completely dejected note, I realise despite all the googling, I couldn’t find a single snap of the original style of braiding. The one linked above is another blogger and is a lot more elaborate wedding style. I should go home and dig some of my older ones or even my daughter’s perhaps… hmm..]

*sigh..and now apparently we are allowed to go home with the weather threatening to get worse. So yay, driving back, I can dream of times when all I had on my mind was flowers, my favorite kuppelu [yes, I had my own and despite being smaller and not as showy as my sister’s they were the best!] my gajjelu and my green pattu langa.

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