The Soap Factory

My mom and her siblings seems to be blessed in proportion by God in case of the offspring ( May be the Statistics gene running through the family may have contributed to it.). Anyway each have a sweet and lovely elder daughters and naughty little sons. So in total ,I have got 6 great maternal cousins.Just imagine 3 cousins of my age and three of my brother's. It is a gift in many way especially you won't be having an intriguing and inquisitive brother with a left-alone attitude.

In short the vacations at maternal home were a blast. Whenever we comes together it used to be a non-stop fun. Most important thing in these vacation despite the small fights and late night chats were our special projects. Most probably our genius-gal Sree would turn up with some idea. She and her bro, Vishnu are never at loss of any ideas. and indeed the whole crew including the elder sis, short-tempered George(inspired by Famous Five), creative Sithu, our naughty brothers sethu, kannan,aru and myself, would be at their service.

I remember the trips we made to paddy field with packed samosas when we were all greatly inspired by Famous Five. Then other time, we tried to sell old amarchitra katha and jamun pickle. However as we couldn't find any buyers other than our unlucky grandfather, we had to sell it to each other. Then there was the comedy shows. Being ardent cricket fans no other name than "TENDULKAR COMEDY SHOW" was given to it. anyway i think it was better than gulf-shows these days. With the stage up in the hall and complete with punched ticket, oh god,it was real fun. Since we had very patient audience( moms r good in these matter) , we used to do all skits, dance , fashion shows and what not.....Another thing i recall was our ammama's (uncle) story-telling sessions. He loves tarzan and sherlocke holmes stories. But once when stock is over, he will remake the Mahabharatha and Ramyana. Talking about stories, i recall our own ghost-story masterpiece.

It will be usually sithu who comes up with idea. We all will join. However the funniest part is that these proud authors of blood-chilling ghost story would be too terrified to go anywhere alone not even to restroom. It was really fun to walk like train all around the place, clutching each other nervously.

However I think most memorable thing amongst us is the "Soap Factory event".I don't know whether to classify it as a comedy or tragedy. As usual, it was Sree who turned up with the idea- To make soap. We were all ready and busily added all those smelly things. So churning the final mixture in an aluminium vessel , we left it to set overnight. We were so proud at our work that we were boasting that we don't need to buy soap for a year and so. The whole night was spend debating on a name for the soap. Finally we settled on the Intials of all. So we went to sleep with the sweet dreams about our soap( A little exaggeration of course)

Well the next morning came with the cries of Sree (side-effects of being a sweet, senstive person). We all wake up instantly and sree couldn't tell anything other than just soap. so we all went out. The sight we had there, i still don't know whether to laugh or cry. The place where we left the soap mixture, only the handle of the vessel remained.

If it was a movie i think the nice end would have been wonder-struck me and a slight breeze. Well it then will bring the paper containing instructions to my hand and there i could read the most important instruction written boldly stating " NEVER USE PLASTIC OR ALUMINIUM VESSEL AS THE SODIUM MIXTURE COULD DISSOLVE IT!!!"

Well as it was not a movie, i just stood there wondering whether to laugh or not.