One, Two Maybe

With my parents in town, there was a debate on where Kunju’s choroonu should occur. The plan was for all of us to go to India in Nov/Dec and do his choroonu in India. But that could not materialize as we were pretty laid back with applying for the necessary paperwork for travel (as usual). So after much debate we decided to do his choroonu here in US. So my mother-in-law joined us for the big event.

Once the decision was made, the debate moved to choosing the temple versus doing it at home. We decided to do the function at Livermore temple and set the date for 22nd September. As we started getting ready we started the usual comparison of what happens (only) in India and what happens here. Talking to a couple of priests we realized that in different regions of India there are big pujas that are done, the food given to the infant was also different. So to avoid major confusions we asked around the temple to see if they had any priest that knows Malayalam and in turn was aware of how we do our choroonu. We were in luck and we booked the 10 AM slot with him.

According to traditions, the first time that the infant is given food one needs to ensure the entire palette of flavors is available to him from sweet to spicy, salty to tangy and everything in between. To ensure this a sadya is given with a minimum of 4 curries, rice and payasam as sweet. Of course the infant is not really ready for solids so in reality it only means that the father of the infant touches each of the different foods/curries with his finger and mix (and mashes) it with a very tiny portion of rice to give it to the baby. The rest of the family gives a drop of payasam.

Last time around, everything was taken care of by the temple and all we had to do was to show up at the appropriate time for the ceremony. This time though we had to prepare the sadya ourselves and even carry some puja items. So the day before we bought a bunch of items for the puja (betal leaves, flowers, haldi-kumkum etc) and early next morning prepared the sadya. We used Kochu’s little lunch boxes to take a little bit of everything to the temple. In between the preparations we all got ready to get to the temple a little early.

When we reached the temple the priest suggested my dad to get some plantain leaves from the back of the temple to use that for placing all the foods. He then proceeded to do puja calling on all the deities to bless Kunju. The nice touch was that the place we were seated was in front of Radha-Krishna mandap and as my mom pointed out it was a perfect setting to imagine ourselves to be in front of Lord Guruvayoorappan.

Kunju sat on my lap as the puja proceeded and throughout he was quiet and happy. He even seemed to enjoy the few morsels of rice and curries. And then came the turn of everyone to give him payasam which he seemed devour. Right after, he started to cry and within minutes was fast asleep in my arms. We gave the priest the dakshina and cleared the areas and then proceeded to seek blessings of the different deities and have prasadam. A little later we headed home for our own sadya.

Though the event was widely different from Kochu’s Choroonu which seemed to have been a fleeting moment, this was an hour long affair. We were able to take lots of pictures as long as we avoided the deity in the shot. And thus our little baby stepped into adulthood.