Chapter One Ready for Pongal I tear off another page from the calendar. Wednesday. It’s almost Pongal—finally! I’ve been dreaming about the harvest festival for weeks.
In Pori, where my parents and I live on our farm, we usually celebrate festivals by singing and dancing to the sounds of the nadaswaram blaring and the thavil beating and booming.
But this year’s festival will be different.
All of November, it rained and stormed in our tiny coastal village. In December, the weather got
worse: we had a cyclone that formed in the Indian Ocean. Iruttu puyal—the dark storm.
This cyclone season was worse and lasted longer than seasons past. Our rice fields and rivers were destroyed, and some people from our village had to move into the school building for shelter. Luckily, my parents had stocked up on groceries that didn’t need to be refrigerated and bought kerosene lanterns so we could see without electricity.
It’s mid-January now. The cyclone has finally packed up its trouble and moved out of Pori, and we’re slowly recovering. I’ve been helping my parents by planting and taking care of the animals on our farm, which has been in my family for generations.
Every morning, I feed the cows, birds, and chickens. Even during the storms, I never missed a day of refilling their food and water.
But the most important reason this year’s festival will be different is that we’ll have guests visiting all the way from the United States! They arrive today, so we’ve been cleaning the house all day. It’s funny because, even though they are family, I’ve never met these guests before. We’ve only chatted on the phone and over video. Here’s what I know about them:
There’s my aunt Selvi: I call her Chithi. She whistles the loudest.
My uncle Muthu: I call him Chithappa. He loves anything and everything to do with computers.
My cousins, Priya and Kamal: Priya is eleven, a year older than me, and Kamal is six. He runs around making faces and never sits still. Priya does most of the talking during our video chats.
“The last time your uncle visited India, you had just turned one,” Amma told me last night. “And this is Priya and Kamal’s first visit.”
I rolled my fingertip across the Arabian Sea and the Pacific Ocean on my grandfather’s antique globe.
“This is where they live.” I showed Amma the bindi I had stuck on Seattle. “So far away.”
I sighed and bit my fingernails.
“What’s troubling you, kanna?” Amma asked.
I didn’t answer. I don’t talk much when I’m anxious, but she could guess what I was feeling. As much as I have been curious about my cousins, I had to wonder how we would get along in real life. I wasn’t sure if they would want to be friends with me—or vice versa.
“Atithi devo bhava, Malar Velayudham,” Amma said, using my full name. Usually, everyone calls me Malar, or V. Malar. “Remember, we will treat our guests like gods, no matter what.” Amma shook her index finger at me like I was about to do something wrong. “While they are here, I want you to behave like your name, Malar.”
Malar means “flower.” My parents named me that because they’re both agriculturists, so they know a lot about planting, growing, and farming,
of course. Velayudham is my father’s name.
I love my name—it’s just right for me because I love flowers, especially the lotus. The lotus has a special gift, you see. Appa says its roots are anchored strong and deep in the ground. Every night, it closes its petals and submerges into the dark river water. In the morning, it rises and bursts into blooms under the sunlight.
“I’ll be nice to Priya and Kamal,” I said to Amma last night. “Promise.”
“Your chithappa is all the family your father has, kanna, and he hasn’t seen him in years. You must think beyond yourself while they’re here. Understood?”
I stared down at the globe and nodded. Appa was thirteen and Chithappa was only five when their parents passed away. “I’ll try,” I said.
As I’m retying the bow in my hair, Amma calls me to the kitchen. “Hurry, Malar! Our guests will be here this afternoon. One. Two. Three. Joot!”
Amma sweeps the kitchen. Appa scrubs the floor. I brush, wipe, and dust until Amma agrees that everything is sparkling clean.
When the bells from the temple down the street ring, we gather around the table, which once belonged to my grandmother, for a midmorning snack. Amma sets out clay soup bowls. The paruthi paal sizzles warm in the pot. Amma ground the soaked cottonseeds this morning to get their milk, then cooked it with jaggery and ginger. Cottonseed milk is one of my favorite drinks.
“Chellam, we’re going to have a super-o-super Pongal with our special guests, aren’t we?” Appa asks me.
I nod. I love it when Appa calls me his dear one. I am looking forward to laughing and playing with my cousins, but it feels complicated. “What if they don’t like it here? What if they’re annoying and use all my things and make a mess?”
Amma adds another ladle of milk to my bowl. “Pongal is about spreading love and cheer. And it will be good to learn to share with your cousins.”
“Priya and Kamal live in a big house. They must have everything. They don’t need to play with my things.”
“When we share, our hearts expand and the joy of the festival doubles,” Appa says. “They’re
family, chellam. Do you know how to show your love for them?”
Before I can answer, Amma responds, “By letting them eat first.”
“By helping them when they don’t understand how things work here,” Appa says.
I swallow the paal in my mouth. “By offering them my things.”
Amma smiles. “But the most important of all, Malar, is to treat them the way you want to be treated, kanna,” she says, calling me the pupil of her eye.
“I hope Priya and Kamal like me and our village.”
“They will,” Amma insists. “You just have to be patient with them.”
I don’t know if I have it in me to be patient, but Pongal is meant to renew life and give us hope. So I make a decision. I’m going to be sure our guests have a great visit while we celebrate the festival together.
“I’ll be the best host, a super-host!” I say.
I drink up the rest of the cottonseed milk. But deep inside, I know that patience is like the fragile clay soup bowl I hold in my hand—easy to break and hard to repair.
Copyright © 2024 by Suma Subramaniam; illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
