Happy New Year!

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year!

We have just celebrated "Vishu" the regional New Year here and the festive atmosphere is still lingering. I thought it was a nice day to start and here goes...

It was one of those enlightening moments (perhaps the effect of local homemade grape wine) which all of us have - "Well, I should put up this blog and here it is".

Frances Mayes and Peter Mayle have this impact on you where one wants to run to the sunny south and buy a house and spend hours renovating it; but then I am from the middle middle-class and can't afford holidays abroad - forget buying property; but then I am already in the sunny south and have been here for some time now. It was not an easy journey with a new language, a different culture and of course a sultry climate where you pull out your woolens from their bags once a year to air them, where it rains at all odd times of the year and one often wonders at the dust that accumulates on everything around. And yes, when I think about it, definitely an adventure.I would love to share with all my friends, my experiences, the good and a few bad and share with you all a lot of things that I have learnt along the way. The cultural differences, the recipes, the architecture...I am actually talking about Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala state in India. It is only about 90 kms away from Kanyakumari, the southernmost point of the country and hardly any distance from the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border.As of today, the sun is blazing hot and the temperature here is at an all time high. The trees have a droopy look though the whole place is ablaze with the yellow "kanji Kona" flowers. So bienvenue and join me in this adventure...