Deepavali – better late than never!

Happy Deepavali everyone. I know it’s really late, all of you feel like deepavali was long ago, like me you’ve finished consuming all the sweets and bakshanams that were made or bought, but hey.. I am still earlier than the fireworks at the local temple.

Unlike last year, when the TV had been screaming Deepavali for more than a month, and made me feel like an unfortunate soul – this year the lack of publicity on TV and elsewhere made me feel a lot less dejected.

We bought our new clothes – all three of us bought pants and shirts. The weekend just ahead of Deepavali was really convenient because I could make some bakshanams without having to lose too much sleep.

Our new Friday ritual has been having dinner at New Chola Indian restaurant not far away from here. They are the only guys in the neighbourhood that consider South Indian cuisine part of Indian cuisine. Their buffet has two sweets, and one of them is invariably either Gaajar halwa or Beetroot halwa. So, I was inspired to try the same. So, I called amma and asked her, and she said – “romba simple!”. I should have known that if she said that, I should probably re-think my plan after the year before last year’s Coconut burfi fiasco. But anyway she asked me to grate the carrot and boil it in milk “onga oor lae thaan full fat milk kadaekumae.. adhula panina innum easy” she said. Take just enough milk to cover the carrots she said. I did all of that, and somehow expected that when I opened the cooker, I would see something quite close to halwa and that all I needed to do was toss it around a bit with ghee to have some yummy halwa. But duh! When I opened the cooker, I saw what was pretty much carrot kheer. So, my plan of starting at 9 and finishing at 10 vanished in thin air. For the next four hours, I watched “The rise of the Taj” on TV (review of that cannot be public please) while my kheer became halwa. Of course it tasted great, what with the loss of sleep and all that. The next day I started early. I made Jilebis with the Swad Jilebi mix that was available at the local Indian store. It was pretty good when fresh. Later it became kind of soggy. I however felt that it was lacking that sour taste that jilebis usually have. I then made the usual Thenkuzhal and Ribbon Pakoda.

Bakshanam

On the morning of Deepavali, we managed to wake up in time, did our ‘yennai sasthram’, ‘ganga snanam’, wore our new clothes and left for work. My daughter was a darl all through it. The plan was to have dinner with P, Fa and S that night and then light up some sparklers, but boy was it cold, we decided it was not a good idea to stand out in the cold for sparklers. We had a heavy dinner, slept late and got to work late the next day. We did eventually fire up some sparklers the next day when it was a lot less colder.

 

Nalangu

Sparklers

In all Deepavali was good. I hope my daughter has some recollection of what she did this year, so that next year I can see her get excited a month ahead. Long shot may be.

  This year Deepavali is specially important. There are a lot of stories associated with it, but to me it always has been the time to celebrate. As a child I looked forward to the new clothes, the fireworks, the bakshanams, the holiday. As an NRI maami, I look forward to the new clothes, the bakshanams, the excitement on my daughter’s face when she holds the sparklers, and the welcome distraction it offers from the fact that winter is slipping in silently and coldly. This year, with the economy drawing to a virtual halt, there are people Indians and otherwise who are probably facing the brunt of a lost job or foreclosed home. I hope Deepavali for them brought back memories of happiness and cheer and filled them with the hope that things will be good again.

Hope you all had a happy Deepavali.

Navarathri 2008

For all of you folks who have been asking me for the past week or so about my Navarathri Kolu – Thank you for the encouragement.

This year my Kolu grew by 2 steps, we had 5 steps in all. One was allocated to my daughter for her to keep her toys. That way she got a little involved in it, and did’nt really care about interfering with the remaining 4 steps that had the official kolu.

I didn’t send an evite this time. Instead I sent this word document as an attachment.

Invitation

Then we got down to building the steps. We used up our dining table, coffee table, and every book of reasonable size to build it. It is interesting to see how creative we get when we are forced to make 5 steps out of nothing. I also used up one saree and four of my f-i-l’s dhothis. In hindsight, I would have ironed them before putting them on. Step 1 was Dasavatharam, with a MahaVishu in between. The Mahavishnu was our new addition of the year, bought at the Aurora temple for $40. Step 2 was an assortment of all Gods that I had. Step 3 was miscellaneous dolls + my african animals. I tried to grow some vegetation for them, but I guess I overestimated the rate at which they actually sprout. So, they had to make do without any. Step 4 was Winter. I had a christmas town, and an assortment of snowglobes and other winter specific stuff. Step 5 was my daughter’s and she had a bunch of stuffed toys on them.

Kolu

Yesterday, we had about 35 people over for Kolu (the 10 others either dropped out or re-scheduled). In usual Indian style, almost everyone who was supposed to come between 4 and 8 arrived at 7:30 p.m. So, the house was full with no place to even sit down for some.

I made the usual Channa sundal and Somasi (which is a semi-circular samosa) served with Ketchup. I decided not to spend too much time and effort on Gulab Jamun – instead I took Maami’s idea and made Badam milk. All of them turned out very well. The Somasis were worth the effort because everyone was very appreciative of it.

Navarathri Snacks

Goody bags consisted of a jewellery box, bangalore style decorative manjal kumkumam, paaku and an apple. No vethalai here – way too expensive and no use.

Goody Bags

In all, though Navarathri is not yet done, for all practical purposes it is, because almost everyone who was supposed to visit has already visited. In the process, I discovered the joy of being a mother of a daughter. For the first time, yesterday she was so excited about getting dressed up. She wore her pattu pavadai and all her jewellery and called it her “ballerina” dress, and was showing it off to everyone. That was fun. Made me wonder for the nth time, how boring it must be to have a son.

So to all you folks out there – Happy Navarathri, Dussera and Durga Puja!

Nothing much..

Hello everyone. I took off for a few weeks. You see I’ve been a busy person lately. Don’t ask me what, just sweet nothings of everyday. Plus nothing much has been happening, and my creative side has taken a walk, so I didn’t really know what to blog about. However, every now and then I make small observations as I watch TV or see someone, that makes me think – “I should blog about that”.

My husband has suddenly gotten this intense interest in the news. For one, who was only too happy to catch his news online, and just switch to a movie if I had the channel set on CNN, he has for the past week or so, been happily channel hopping between CNN and MSNBC, watching all the reactions to the bailout deal fail in Congress, the outcome of the first presidential debate, and the very entertaining gaffes by Gov. Sarah Palin. So all of these things made we want to say a few things.

I watched the bail-out deal unfold and felt for the first time, how american politicians were so similar to our own in India. They didn’t have the Bihari accent, spoke good english and weren’t dressed in dhothis and topis, but when a group of them came up to speak, it was so evident everyone there wanted to somehow be visible in that newscast. They would come out with sometimes as little informtion as “We are still working on it and hoping we will reach a deal”, but every time all 4 or 5 of them would have to add their own prefix and suffix to that same piece of news and get a few seconds of the mic for that. I also felt like there were a bunch of phrases that everyone in the media, congress and senate started using like “main street and wall street”, “golden parachute”. I wonder who actually came up with these and how they became the defacto terminology for what they described.  

Then, the debate between Obama and McCain. I was reminded of the debates I had participated in when I was in school. How our team would prepare speeches, and learn them by heart, how we tried to add sarcasm and humor, how we tried hard to make a point, how we sat there with pen in hand, to jot down every small mistake the other team made, as we mentally prepared a fierce rebuttal. Of course, the difference is we were not really arguing each other’s personal record there, but arguing about such paltry things as “Beauty Contests – Boon or Bane” and “Honesty is but a seven letter word”. However, it was sad to note that the McCain Obama debate was void of sarcasm, humor and anything that was vaguely intersting. It was so boring, that even though I had been making a mental note every evening that I should watch it on Friday evening from a week before, about half way through I decided to go ahead and start making dinner anyway.

And then.. there was Sarah Palin. Haha.. huhu.. hehe.. She made up for all of the lack of humor in the other debate. Apparently she used to be a model of some kind and won a beauty contest in her younger years, but I really didn’t think she would continue to answer all interview questions in the same way one tries to answer questions at a beauty contest. I had a colleague who was an excellent salesperson, and her advice to me when she took me along as a presales person for her sales meeting was this – “Stay in the gray, don’t commit anything”. I used to call her “Queen of Gray” after meetings where she clearly deflected many risky questions without making them feel she had deflected it. I would have to say Sarah Palin is the “queen mother of Gray”, except everyone can see right through her. I am sure all of you have seen all of those interviews she did, and how pathetic she was. I think finally here is a person who can be in the vicinity of the white house and be worse than George W Bush.

Ok ok.. everyone is thinking.. where in the world did NRI maami disappear. I will be right back next week with my round up of my Navarathri Kolu. I am expecting close to 45 people all in a day, so I am going to take a while to regain strength after that.

Be right back.. Ciao.