En iniya Tamil nanburgalukku iniya Tamil puthandu valthukkal (Happy Tamil new year wishes to all my Tamil friends around the globe).
Orayiram vishu asamsakal(happy vishu greetings to all my malayalee friends around the globe).
Vishu brings fondest memories of my maternal grandparents. Nikhil will be missing the sweet traditions of vishu like kaineetam from grandparents and relatives.
We used to give kaineetam to little kids in the family in ten paisa denominations. Imagine the joy of 5 year olds getting handful of 100 mint ten paise coins .oh they felt so happy like they won lottery : ).
My mom and dad used to do the vishu decoration after we went to bed as a surprise. My mom used to wake us up early in the morning and lead us to vishu decoration spot blindfolded to get the glimpse of vishukani . It's considered very auspicious to see vishukani decorations when we wake up .
I used to love vishu's kaineetam since it meant more pocket-money to spend during summers on ice creams and hobbies. Those were the good old days where every kid from our neighbourhood was happy with simple things like camel water color box or playing hide and seek or some pretend play .
Most of my summers were spent drawing lot of pictures from my favorite story/comic books especially the folklore/fairytales books from Russia. We sent most of the illustrations as birthday/festival greeting to our friends and family. Both me and my sister were good painters.I really wish they had saved all my drawings. I always had the privelege drawing some art on the board during our first art class after summer holidays since my art teacher loved my art work. Reminder to myself: I need to go and meet her in person during my next visit to India.
My father is a self made book binder , so we had good supply of good quality card board, stock paper (we used call them binding wrappers) and calico. I loved doing pop up books and 2D animated drawing boards like King Arthur castle with characters popping out. I used to painstakingly draw, paint and cut each character then add a board backing. My earliest memory of doing a model was making different styles of miniature footwear using chart paper and sketch pens during my fourth grade vacation.
End of summer meant getting new books for school and my dad binding all our school books. I learnt the art of binding from my father and I can still bind a book like a professional.
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