தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்…ஜெய் பீம் Happy Ambedkar Jayanthi. Jai Bhim. Happy Tamil New Year.
This week has been entirely spent on a dream that refuses to be realised. Howmuchever I attempt to make it real, the world acts like a parent wanting to teach me patience, hiding it away for a few days, then not giving it to me.
I’ve spent many moments of this week thinking about ambition and the wish to be driven… to be both the driver and the driven. I remember the pleasure and happiness of finishing off my mother’s Aviyal - right after I returned having known weightloss from my NCC camp. I remember having known the feeling of passing 12th standard, without failing any subject - I’ve never felt liberation like that after. There have been other kinds of weightlessness - of sunset after a light day, or in the lap of a lover on a September evening. How are these related to being driven? I think you need hope to really be driven, and I think I’ve let myself lose simple hope and the promise of pleasure in the everyday.
As I’ve been telling everybody around me - so much so that they are tired: I believe my new Honda is going to be that guarantor of pleasure in the everyday. Coincidentally, agentsofishq wrote about the pleasures of Babasaheb today.
I watched Good Bad Ugly, an Ajith film filled with silly connections to his filmography. I’m enjoying the bit of film history I am getting interested in.
As a way of understanding my family’s history, I’ve been talking to older relatives: Which pavadi are you from?
There are 5 paavadis in the village: Kottamedu, Nandhavanam, Sandhapetta, Puyalakattu and an unnamed one.Each paavadi is a long (close to 150 odd meters) piece of land.
Each paavadi’s history seems to carry details of when the community migrated to the village and their relationship with the village (There are known under the categories of pudhuppavadi and palayapavadi, ‘old’ and ‘new’ paavadis). Some paavadis are private (probably due to their lack of access to the old paavadis’) while the old ones are public lands. They are currently used for fairs, temple festivals or village meetings. Leisure also finds place in them.
‘Paavadi’ (possibly பாவு + அடி) is a place where threads (‘paavu’ or warp) are hung over stones on a large ground and starch is applied.
- Excess starch is then beaten (maybe where அடி may come from) and the threads dried out.
- Then the threads are rolled and brought to be attached to the loom. A ‘tar kucchi’ is used for weft.