The Trade Fair.....

Bill Bryson has inspired me indeed....one of the standing themes in the thunderbolt kid is the visiting state fair which comes in once a year....and much to his disgust the minimum age of entering the strip show tent is raised every year.....

Reminds me very much of the annual trade fair which used to happen on island grounds (the fair not the stripping, my god a couple of those in the island grounds...there would have been riots...damn...)in madras around pongal time (January), and would continue on until April. Used to be chaotic but man was it an occasion!

So couple of days back, I call my "former pain in the back now beloved" sister and shes like "dey (Yo) am at this fair grounds kind of place". So i go "quick try and find the panju mittai" (cotton candy), and shes like "dont think its going to be available here". I tell her that shes crazy...can she at least find the big vadam (huge rice fried papad), last attempt: look for the milaga bajji (chilli bajji). Nothing except the cotton candy was found. I was really disappointed about the big vadam though.

The reason for the frantic questioning was this, panju mittai and milaga bajji were staples which could be found on the marina beach. But this big vadam could be found only in this trade fair. It used to be this huge thingie, around the size of a bike tyre, sprinkled with chilli powder and bits of heaven.

The first thing which I used to do in this trade fair was search for the vadam guy, scout the place out (Bryson used to scout out the strippers tent, what priorities man) and guide whoever i was with in that direction. I have had various disapproving uncles tell me that it looked suspicious, whats the oil its made of etc etc. But we never did care did we.

To make sure you balanced the thingie on the newspaper in which it was wrapped, make sure it doesnt fly away in the wind, make sure you dont get sand on it, make sure the dogs dint pounce on it, make sure that other greedy kids dint finish off theirs and pounce on yours, make sure you eat fast enough so that you could pounce on the kid eating slower than you.....little vadam eating tam kids bringing in their knowledge of physics, biology, maths and part jedi/part sith skills into play .

After doing this over and over again over quite a few years the quest for the big vadam never ceased.

Wonder how the trade fair is doing these days....