Summer vacaton and Nanihaal!

Hi all,

Tell me how many of you use to go to naaniji's place in summers.
I guess almost every family visits Nanihaal in garmi ki chhuttiya

My Nanaji Babulalji & Nani home is exactly like this ---
its name is Shanta-Bhavan.the name given by Mama because my Nani's name was Shanta !They are from Chhipabad,a place in Madhya Pradesh near Khandwa.

My Nani has lots of farms,Buffaloes and cows.
We use to drink pure milk of buffalo.My brother sits in the back of buffalo and have a ride of it.
We enjoys fruits and fresh vegetables in the farms.Sometime we go for family picnic by bailgadi.There we cook a famous malwa dish,Daal-Baafle in tthe lunch, with ton's of desi ghee poured, Churma Ladu).Dal-Bafle! my favorite, seems to taste better at picnic.

In the Afternoon all of us have a nap and then we use to have self maid kulfi of pure Milk.The thing is nowadays in urban cities we miss natural fresh things.All are either machine maid or artificial things.Gone are those beautiful childhood days!

Hi Friend,
After reading so nice thread, I increasingly spend more time thinking of my grandparents and trying to recalling my memories of them. None of my grandparents are alive.

She was a stranger to me or my brother in any conventional sense of the term. My family visited Delhi, where both sets of my grandparents lived.It does not require any special effort on my part to remember the abundance of affection that was showered upon me and my brother as we visited Delhi during each summer vacation. We were pampered with the unlimited license granted to grandchildren by Indian grandparents. The only minor criticism that my Nani would make to my mother in passing was that my brother and I sometimes speak English. She would mildly lament in Punjabi on our childhood quarrels.

In my nani place my brother and I were fed from morning to night, what I remember of her is her obsession with her cupboard and its contents. The cupboard, in her bedroom, housed plastic and tin jars typically emptied containers of Dalda and Rath full of different kinds of dals, grains, rice, as well as money, especially coin. The keys to the cupboard were jealously guarded by Nani, kept on her person at all times, even at night when she slept. No one else could even open or shut the cupboard.

We looked forward to our trips to see Aajichya Ghari (Nanihaal in Marathi). Moment we got down from the bus, we would run to her to ask "What's cooking?"

My granny had a cupboard full of pickle jars Mango, Lime, gooseberry etc. Some were for Men only as it has a lot of spice in it. Dad secretly gave me some. It tasted so yumm!

Some powders were for the ladies for those "special days". Mind you, they really soothed the tummy "on those days".

Afternoons were spent in quarreling with cousins as to who would get to drive the cows home from the end of the street. Coffee time saw us chomping Shev, Chaklis, Kadbolis. Kranjya etc to the maximum.

We got coffee after we turned 16. Till then it was fresh full cream milk from the Go-Shala..

My granny passed away in 2000. My visits continued. But the spark was missing. My aunts kept asking my mom as to why I refused to visit them as often as before.

How do I tell them I missed my granny?

In memory of my strong willed, loving, caring & sharing Granny.

Regards,

Corallux