Sleeping Chameleon, Moving Snails and Hanging Gulab Jamuns...

Here is an insider's view into my last weekend...

One may wonder what does a Sleeping chameleon, moving snails and hanging gulab jamuns have in common...

Dora, Diego and Boots went into the unexplored areas of the new house garden and its neighbouring layout. Lately this is one of my favourite escapes to fantasy land with my kids...Kaavya does an excellent Dora impersonation and you guessed it right - Diego and Boots are assigned characters by Kaavya. I played Diego's role and Saatvik will play Boots until he figures out who Boots really is. Diego often wonders how character selection by sisters are similar across generations.

Kaavya is 6 and Saatvik turns 3 in the next couple of weeks.

We took our usual stroll to explore and with the hope of striking some thing spectacular. I normally pray that we come across cool things that would excite my kids. But mostly nothing too memorable - dried leaves in the garden, shell and trash in beech have been the previous bests. This one was special and I am sure this gold mine we hit will be one of those to stay for a long time to come. Read along...

We started our journey trying to explore stones to build a temple under the Temple tree - this ones for another blog.

Ho..Ho..we spotted something. Deigo spotted a brown, stripped snail crossing the road...Snail with its tentacle, eyes and rest of its body out of the shell and moving at snails pace of course.

Boots has never seen a snail before. The last time Dora and Diego ventured in Snail adventure was in the beeches of Chennai. Diego had this crazy idea of taking them home in bottles. Dora of course agreed. Mami (Dora's mom) never in favor of such crazy ideas. Mami has a foresight of Nostradamus (particularly for Diego's ideas with Dora's enthusiasm) and almost always can predict doom. So clear that one may wonder if there is a conspiracy to make clairvoyance a reality. We got the snails home and overnight they all perished, all 4 of them. We woke up next day to the welcome aroma of dead snails in a bottle. If you guessed we left the bottle closed, you are probably Mami in some Dora fantasy house. We did not. However, in our over enthusiasm we had just 4 inches of extra water - yes we drowned the snails. These were land snails.

Back to the snails over zebra-crossing...Dora's enthusiasm is so predictable...First thing that comes out was, "...can we take this one home...". Diego a victim of past predictions, was smart for a change (normally known for pushing his luck and falling flat) and reminded Dora of the Chennai, "Snail in a bottle"...

After watching the snail move a few paces and taking the infamous mobile mugshots we moved on...

We moved on and I spotted a Jamun tree (Jamun is a local name for a variant of Plum). I stopped by to show Dora (and Boots of course) that here is a Jamun tree. Dora was quick to clarify to Boots that this is where he gets his favourite Gulab Jamuns...this was not a joke or anyway an attempt to fool Boots. Dora actually believed that Gulab Jamuns came from this tree. Next few minutes, Diego spent time trying to explain the difference between the Gulab Jamun and the Jamuns in a tree, with intermittent convincing argument from Dora that they were one and the same.

Thus ended a very rewarding hour of exploration. On reaching home, it was topped by spotting the Chameleon. The Chameleon that slept at night clinging to the branches of a barely-living hedge plant. It was pretty late the previous night when I saw this interesting sleeping beauty and decided to take pictures to show it to Dora and Boots when they wake up the next day.

Now that they saw it after our exploration the day after, they had to look at the pictures to be convinced it was the same one that was sleeping last night. Diego for once felt like everything was falling in place and brought the picture taken in the digital camera...Dont ask what was Diego doing at 10pm with a Digital Camera in hand the previous night.

Rest of my weekend went away indulging in Abuela's food and sleeping through the 18 overs of the T20 innings. Managed to see over 7 and 13 - both of which were non-consequential.

In some ways my weekend was nothing but a Sleeping Chameleon at snail's pace with loads of Jamun. Thanks to Dora, Boots and Mami - One heck of a weekend.