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Krishna Pooja in my own little way

Gokulashtami is the birthday of Lord Krishna and it is celebrated by Hindus all over India in their own way. In our homes, it is intimately related to food as a variety of fried sweet and savoury snacks are prepared and offered to the naughty Lord Krishna who was known for His love for butter.

Since childhood this was one festival that I used to eagerly await as it used to be windfall of goodies. I used to crib about the fact that my grandmom used to make all the good stuff on one day and then for a few months to come, there wouldnt be any of this stuff to eat.

But thats how the Gods like it and thats how its done at home.

Both my mom and Geeta chithi live in adjacent buildings which is an hours drive from my place. Theyve been preparing to make the bhakshanam for over a week by picking, soaking, drying and grinding rice to make fresh rice flour. Most of the savouries use rice flour as the base. My mom, aunt and grandmom generally sit in one of their kitchens together, in the afternoon. The gas stove is placed on the floor they prepare the snacks over latest family gossip and a hot cup of tea.
The stuff prepared is then divided into 5 portions for each one of us to do the Naivediyam in our respective homes.




The line up for Naivediyam is as follows:

Sweet aval with coconut and jaggery
Vadai
Appam
Thattai

Murukku
Uppu cheedai
Vella cheedai
Tenkuzhal


Sweets this time: Badam cake and Besan-milk cake

The sweet cheedais are known to explode like mini-missiles in oil if the proportion of ingredients is even slightly changed. I couldnt make it to moms place on the day they were preparing the savouries-or else I would have had a field time photographing the various procedures. But I did manage to capture amma and chithi in the kitchen yesterday, making suda suda vadai for our favourite Lord. And that is precious footage for me :)