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July 11

Minnesota Malayalee Association Picnic

It has been a dream for me to work in US, not just for the extra few thousands of rupees I would earn, but also because I love to see places and meet faces. I had to wait an awful long time for that to come true since most of my colleagues did their trips more than once and I still was waiting and waiting. Finally things went on fine and I got my bit of luck too. I stepped my foot in a foreign soil on 8th of June, 2007.

This has been my first trip to US and hence everything here was new to me. The place where I am, Richfield, is a little remote place. Around 10 miles from Minneapolis downtown, this is a very calm and quite place. I have seen people saying that comparing to other places in US itself, this place is very dull and boring, and I seem to like the place so far for the beautiful landscape and the romantic weather. And here where I live, is full of Indians and mostly from my company itself, so that was actually helping me not to feel out of place in this newly relocated piece of land.

It was slowly getting acquainted with this place, I had no hurries obviously, and that's when my colleague Sandeep Chandramohan told me about the Malayalee association here. Sandeep has been in this place for a while and so is better acquainted with the facilities around. He wasn't sure about the details and suggested to me to search Google. Hurrey, my first search itself returned me what I was looking for.

Minnesota Malayalee Association. Yes, this is what I was looking for. I was pretty happy to see this and to know that the Malayalees here have already established an association here though it's common for Malayalees to establish an association where ever they go. This basically means two things to me. There are a few fellow Malayalees around which will help me if I need to take advices and alike. Obviously, settled Malayalees are good stores for good food.

And secondly, good Malayalee girls. Actually this should come first, but I thought why I should give a wrong impression to you guys by saying that first. In fact, I'm pretty decent in these matters. No misunderstandings, please.

Now I need a means of transportation. In this country there are a few issues I've been facing going places. One is that the addresses are so short that it's tough to figure out the routes and second, if you are lost you are lost, that's it. It's tough to find someone on the road and ask his help for directions. So the first thing I did was querying a friend of mine in the same company whether he would like to join me. His reply was that he is already going there being a part of the volleyball team and he will definitely take me there. So all set for the grant event.

On Saturday, June 30th I got up at 12 that day which was quite early considering my weekend routines. I was all ready to go for the function by 1.30. That was the proposed time we all would meet up before we go. There I met a few comrades like Baiju, Varkey etc. Most of them were married and had cars and hence transportation was never a problem. I took Varkey's car with Sunil and then we moved off.

Varkey and Sunil both are Malayalees brought up outside Kerala. So their Malayalam too was fun to hear, and I was enjoying that all the way. We reached there by 2. As you would have already guessed, the first thing I looked around was girls. My eyes really disappointed me showing me only a few kids and some obvious mothers and grannies. Guys were high in number in comparison and they were in almost all age groups. They were serving lunch there and to my surprise they served burgers, salads and a few typical American dishes and not anything in traditional Kerala style. My hopes of a good evening died then and there.

It seemed there were taking their own time before getting the whole events kicked off. So I spent my time getting to know Sunil's friends, and obviously feasting on the junk foods they were serving. Luckily they also had soft drinks and watermelons. I stuffed my stomach to the brim but kept my eyes of beer which was also being served for the evening. I kinda avoid beer mostly, I seem to be much happier without it and has developed the skills for getting intoxicated without that.

Vallamkali

The first event of the day was Vallamkali, or that's what they promised us. We had a lake there close to the park called Bush lake where boating was being organized for a nominal fees. We earlier had paid annual membership fee and the event fee and so we didn't pay anything for the ride again. The race was being conducted in aluminum canoes and each team comprised of two persons. I and Sunil decided to be a team. There were around 8 teams initially but by the time the race finished two more teams came up from the spectators for the excitement others created.

Sunil is suffering from shoulder problems lately. It was not advisable for him to put pressure on his shoulders, the doctors had strictly told him not to. So I asked him to sit in the back of the boat while I will do the rowing from front. The way the canoe ride works is that the guy in front rows hard to give enough momentum, while the guy in back equally rows as well as steers the boat. But Sunil was so low in confidence in steering the boat and coupled with the few doubts he asked on how to do it, gave me the impression that he is not going to do good sitting back. So I allowed him to sit in front, which he also wanted to do.

We were not in the first 4 teams which went, so we could see the way other teams performed and how the whole thing works. By the time we went to drive it, we were so perfect in theory. But the boat had other plans, it was steering us unlike what I was originally planning to do. Its no kid play, steering the aluminum canoe was too demanding for a seasonal enthusiast. The objective of the race is to row to one end of the lake, take a small flag which is lying there and get back to the starting location itself. By the time we finished rowing one side; we both were feeling the tremendous pressure of blood rushing through our muscles and brain and were getting exhausted really quickly.

When we reached one end of the lake, rather than the canoe going to the shore, it hit something on the bottom itself. So I asked Sunil to jump out of the canoe and get the flag. I thought, since the canoe already hit a stone on the floor it shouldn't be that deep, but the fact was the water level went quite high there, close to his waist. He got all wet when he jumped off and obviously wasn't feeling good about it. Neither was I, not because he was wet, but because of the fact that the force he gave when he jumped off was swaying the canoe wildly. At one point it seemed that the canoe might turn upside down but luckily I could manage to keep it up straight. Now that we got the flags, we started our way back.

At this point all the four teams were near close and competing highly against each other. I was confident at that time that if I could row fast, I could easily win the race. But my body power was depreciating fast and had to slow down to a very pathetic pace. Sunil was also wearing out, and the lack of pace was making it so tough to steer the canoe from behind. We then didn't try to increase the pace, though even if we wanted to we wouldn't have been able to do that anyways. We slowly moved toward finish line and we finished the game in a little over 6 minutes. We both were totally exhausted and tired, had to lie down in the grass for quite sometime to get enough strength even to loosen up the muscles. There were a female team which was also competing and amazingly they didn't finish last. So finally, in the whole team strength of ten, we finished fourth overall. It wasn't that bad considering we hadn't done that in a really long time. Actually, this was Sunil's first time.

Volleyball

The second event of the day was volleyball. Sunil was also competing as part of one team which Baiju was captaining. Varkey was also part of that team. They played really well though the other team wasn't giving them a good competition. Apart from the first 3 points which the opponent team scored first, they didn't even score a good total. They had given up the game in the first set itself, the second set Baiju's team won comfortably in a huge margin. This was the finals of the tournament which was conducted the prior week and so within this single game itself the Volleyball competition was over. Kudos to Baiju's team, it's their second consecutive win in two years. One more win next year, and the trophy is theirs for ever.

Tug of War

The next event was Tug of War. First it was organized for the women. It wasn't a planned team they were having; they just made one team out of the available few who were ready for it. And as what it happens always, one team was too strong for the other. The game was one sided with one team winning comfortably. It was fun watching, the loosing team didn't let go the rope even after the other team won it comfortably. The game gave some lighter moments during the day. That helped us to get over the fatigue we had after the boat race.

For the next men's game too the same set of events happened. One team was too strong for the others, and if in case you haven't guessed it yet, I was in the weaker team. This time too the other time won in two straight direct sets, but let me tell you, they didn't win it easily. The match was a very tight one with the power battle extending over minutes in each set. That was quite exhaustive too. And before we could rest ourselves enough, we got the call for one more game.

The team that won against us competed against another team in the meantime and they won again. So the team that lost second time wanted to compete against the team that lost first. So the team was all up once again, against the rope which was eating up the carbohydrates from the participants. This time too, the same sad plight happened. We lost again. This time the match was even tougher, it was quite funny when I think about it now for the reason that in between the match I got bored too and let the rope for sometime to exercise my hands. .

Ayways, who is worried about winning!

Our aim is just to have fun. And that we did in all our ways we could.

Thambola

This is one of the two games, Mallus always do whenever they have a group event. The other one, called Anthakshari, was luckily not played. Here they improvised the existing game but not just calling out a number, but by combining that with a quiz. The organizer will annouce a question and we have to strike off the answer in the cubes if we had that. Most of the questions were like one singer singing a song and we had to find the movie in which the song was originally included. That was fun, with all these NRIs trying to wonder about the songs and the respective movies. Finally, when the game ended with the lucky participants winning a few prizes (The full housie winner got $20 in cash).

Finally we had the prize distribution ceremony with the president of the association giving away prizes. Thats when I got to know that there were other events too which was organized in between, but only for kids though. Finally a few photo sessions, a lot of hi and byes. The event is over.

It was an amazing day indeed. Had lots of fun, ate and drank a lot, pushed my body to the maximum physically and then got to see a few Malayalee faces. I loved the day, and is infact looking forward for the Onam celebrations from these guys itself. Hopefully, I'll get a taste of Kerala feast then.

Pictures of the event are uploaded here. http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2090293096