A Child's Christmas in [Blue's Hometown]

In honor of Christmas, I'm giving you a section from a (much longer) performance piece I wrote a few years ago. It's a response, of sorts, to Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales.

It sounds better when read aloud, so you'll have to imagine me reading it. Conversely, you could read it aloud yourself.

Preemptive Editor's Note: When Blue writes "literary non-fiction" about her hometown, she calls it "Kirkland." When spoken aloud, please swallow the last syllable so that it becomes "Kirklnd," because that's how us Midwesterners would say it.

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At 5 p.m. Christmas Eve the church bells start to ring. Families park their cars the length of a city block, though few people live far enough away that they actually have to drive. The air smells quiet, sharp, a little cold. There is an enveloping sensation; a strange combination of peaceful and exciting which I still feel, even though I am no longer a child. It is the sudden collision of the holy night with the celebration; the witnessing of the Savior with the parties and gifts and sweets and wine and presents to follow. We all hope that the sermon will not be too long.

Everyone is dressed in their best clothes; little girls running around in red velvet and petticoats, young couples in chinos and turtlenecks, old women in stumpy heels against thick, tan stockings. The narthex is dark, and the sanctuary is dark, and we are each given a candle when we go inside.

Since we are Methodists, the minister changes regularly, and so the service itself varies – the sublime is all too easily interspersed with the ridiculous, as it was the year when a well-meaning minister baked blueberry and chocolate chip muffins for Communion, in an attempt to make it special for the children. There are usually several performances by my mother’s piano students, all tripping to the piano in shiny shoes and curled hair, getting at least three out of every four notes correct. There was a debate, for many years, over including the secular carols alongside the hymns; but our congregation is an open-minded one, and so we now hear “Jingle Bells” in church, along with “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” (To be fair, “Jingle Bells” is a lot easier for a six-year-old to play.)

The services all end the same way, though – with Communion in the semi-darkness, and then complete darkness as the first candle is lit from the Christ Candle and the light is allowed to spread throughout the sanctuary. We sing “Silent Night,” a capella, and process with our lit candles until we are outside. Then it is a bustle of coats and saying hello to people we haven’t seen since last Christmas, and then off to our across-the-street neighbors for eggnog and chocolate-covered pretzels and red-and-green Hershey’s kisses stacked on top of marshmallow snowmen.

Then back home for the presents – we open ours Christmas Eve because we are a family of late sleepers, and up until two a.m. admiring (or mocking) the gifts and all are asleep until at least eleven the next morning, although Santa always conspires to leave some kind of trinket (a Pez dispenser or a bag of Vitamin C candy) in our stockings for us to find when we wake.

Christmas Day dinner is around three p.m., the first proper meal of the day, and at our house it is lasagna because my sister loves lasagna (and, really, we all do). Then back to naps or playing with the presents or reading the books or writing the letters to the people who are not with us… writing to say my dear one, Merry Christmas, and wouldn’t I love for you to see it with me, here in Kirkland, where you could walk down to the river or sit in the hushed and expectant church or chase the toddlers around a marshmallow-fudge-eggnog dining room table or unwrap the Chia Heads or go up and stand in a room lit by electric candlelight, looking out the window at the dome of Kirkland College’s administrative building, the dome on which perches a giant, glowing, electric star to shine its light over our tiny town, to pierce through Dylan Thomas’ close and holy darkness, as if to say “wise men – kings from more important lands – on your way through your life’s journey, on the way to find your own purpose and salvation – stop here.”

But I Like Giving Presents!

If you're in the U.S. (and even if you're not) you're probably aware that today is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, where stores open at 4 a.m. and people knock each other down for sale-priced electronics and gifts.

It's also Buy Nothing Day, which is exactly what it sounds like. In order to raise awareness of the consumerist aspects of the holiday season (or consumerism in general), people pledge to buy nothing today.

(A new blogger, CannedIce, penned an essay on the benefits of Buy Nothing Day. She's also my cousin, which makes her cool. Do click.)

And it is, once again, the time of year where people start writing editorials about how Christmas has become too commercialized, that we should give charitable donations or volunteer hours in lieu of presents, etc. etc. etc.

Which is all very well and good.

But... I like giving Christmas presents. I really like giving Christmas presents. (I'd say "I like giving presents" in general, which is true, but I'm always in much better game for Christmas than I am for, say, birthdays, which seem to sneak up on me without warning. With Christmas I've got months to plan and look.)

Sometimes the presents are simple. One year everyone in my family got socks, with notes in the package on which I had written humorous anecdotes from Christmases past. At my absolute poorest, I gave my friends ISBN numbers, with the idea that they were to go to the library and look them up in the catalog and then check out the book I wished I could buy for them. I do mix tapes, handmade sketches, things like that.

But this year I'm quite proud of the presents I've collected, and really excited to give them. I love pretty things and I love giving people pretty things. I'm really proud that this year I don't have to give anyone socks.

Sure, I'm still young. Maybe in fifteen years I'll be tired of giving presents, and ready to send around an email saying "in awareness of the rampant consumerism of the holidays, we are making a conscious decision to abstain from gift-giving and hope you will do the same," or "economists recognize that presents are depreciating assets and thus poor investments; we are putting our holiday spending money into a mutual fund and in return we don't expect anything from you either; really if you were smart you'd follow our example, and if there's anything we really need in our lives, we'll buy it ourselves."

But there's something so wonderful about watching someone open a good present. Something they were really hoping to get; or, better still, something that's a complete surprise but manages to make them light up with excitement. I've only pulled that one off a few times in my life, but when it happens it's so cool.

So. Black Friday? Still probably bad. But giving presents? Still totally awesome. I'm not planning to stop anytime soon.

Tasting Turkey (once more, for the last time)

Well, the Turkey Day fun has ended, at my house. For those of you curious to know, I did taste a small piece of turkey, despite my confirmed vegetarianism. It was because it looked so much like all the delicious turkeys served at childhood Thanksgivings (all happy turkeys look alike), and I wanted to see if it tasted as good as my nostalgia.

But, although it tasted like turkey, just the little bit was more than enough. I think I've lost my taste for meat, which is fine.

On the list of "things for which I am thankful:"

Goblet fold. (If you don't know what that is, you've never worked "fine dining" food service.)

The fact that sweet potato casserole contains marshmallows. And, this year, the fact that sweet potato casserole contains sweet potatoes.

The reminder, while eating the sweet potatoes, that it's almost turnip season and I'll soon get to make this delicious recipe.

The kheer turning out well.

I should do some kind of crazy meme and demand y'all tell me what you're thankful for, but ohmygoodness it's post-prandial rest time.

But tomorrow... tomorrow, have I got a story for you. Wait and see.

Editor's Note: 500 bonus points for the person who can identify the "once more, for the last time" quote. If you want a hint, it's also from a Russian author. ^__^

It Took Two Tries, But We Had Kheer!

Another example of "multiculturalism at its finest:"

A white woman in a blue salwar getting kheer-making tips from an expat from Gambia (who has also lived in a lot of other places, but not India). In the interest of full disclosure, he actually made the kheer. This was after he came in, looked into the pot I had started, said "this isn't going to turn out," and asked if I had any more rice so we could start over.

When it was done, it tasted exactly like I remembered. However, in the ultimate dessert battle of Kheer Vs. Pie, it lost (and lost badly). I guess cardamom and raisins just can't hold up to the charms of whipped cream and pumpkin filling. ^__^

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am certainly the only person in my hometown -- perhaps the only person in the state -- who is wearing a blue jute silk salwar for Thanksgiving dinner. But... clothing that pretty shouldn't stay in a box.

We're also having kheer for dessert, along with the pumpkin pie. (That is, if it turns out. It ought to, unless there are unforeseen complications in the whole "boiling rice in milk" thing.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Blue Is... Feeling Better!

After nearly four days of rest and way too many episodes of Friends and Seinfeld on StarVision (and the realization that although Friends is a really stupid show which deserves all of its criticism, it actually has some pretty good one-liners), I am feeling back to my old self.

Just in time for Diwali and fireworks. (Blue likes fireworks.)

Happy Diwali everybody!

Elephants and Palaces!

When the other visiting fac at the guest house asked me about my trip to Mysore, they of course asked if I had been to the Mysore Palace. Which, of course, I had. It's kind of like asking someone who's gone to Agra if they stopped by the Taj.

My hotel in Mysore was right across from the palace, in fact; which isn't saying much, because I believe all of the hotels in Mysore are directly opposite the palace, and to tell the truth my hotel was pretty dismal. (And my room faced the back alley, sad to say.)

The other visiting fac asked me, then, if I thought the palace was tacky or overdone. Apparently it's the "in" thing to deride this particular piece of architecture, perhaps because of its history (and gigantic British influence). I said that no, I didn't. I thought the palace was fantastic.

If you haven't been there during Dussera, imagine this:

At about six p.m. crowds begin to gather outside of the palace gates. There are of course masses of touts, jugglers, chai-wallahs, etc. pressing around the edges of the crowd. One man selling wooden flutes tries to capture my attention by playing directly into my ear; another, in thirty seconds, lowers the price of a gourd drum from Rs 250 to Rs 10. By six-thirty the palace guards have arrived, and have opened the gate just enough for one person to enter at a time; the crowd outside now forms a unified shoving mass and we are squeezed through and plopped onto the other side one by one.

The reason, of course, for this "single-file" entry is so that we can be searched; cameras and mobiles are not allowed on the palace grounds. Once inside, the amount of space is enormous and immense; the palace itself stretches the length of two city blocks, but there are also two temples and a courtyard. Set in the center of this courtyard is a small stage; there is a tabla player and a vocalist and the music is amplified at speakers set around the gate and walls.

The crowd mostly watches, marvels, gets darshan at the temples, until there is a horn call and all heads turn towards the rear palace gates. Through the courtyard, down a walk more than a kilometer long, come the elephants. There are three of them, tusks removed, dressed in red and gold tassels. They're led by men in Maharaja-style turbans and kurtas, and, oddly enough, blue jeans. One of the elephants leaves some elephant dung behind and a rush of people line up to put their bare feet into it.

When the elephants reach the palace, there is some kind of ceremony; the words, which I don't understand, are amplified over the speakers and it seems as if the elephants are being blessed, although I can't see very well because of the crowd (and because I hadn't yet gotten my new glasses).

Then, without warning, there is an instant of darkness.

And then the palace appears again, outlined and amplified in shimmering light.

I couldn't take a picture, of course, because my camera was sitting in a cubby, waiting for me to pay Rs 5 to get it back. However, if you want to see what I saw, click here. ^__^

Visiting Kolu

When I was young, I always wanted to celebrate the holidays I read about in books. (Okay, I always wanted to do anything I read about in a book -- and still do.)

After I read All-Of-A-Kind Family, for example, I told my mother that we were going to celebrate Purim, and -- with all the costume and ceremony I could derive from the book's chapter on the subject -- we did.

There weren't many books about South Asian children in our local library, unfortunately; the closest I got to India was through Burnett and Kipling. So I had no chance to read about Navarati or the Kolu celebration.

Which is too bad, because if I had, I most assuredly would have spent one afternoon building nine steps out of cardboard and chairs and arranging my stuffed animals and Barbie dolls into my own interpretation of a Kolu display.

I probably would not have been able to keep them there for nine days, however; wouldn't have been able to handle the delayed gratification. But arranging them, and then standing in front of them and singing.... oh, I would have been all over that.

I've been taken to see several Kolu displays in neighboring flats, and all of them have been very charming and thoroughly impressive. After I admired the sand painting of Saraswati that I saw in one home, I was given a small pot of sand and invited to try and make my own design in front of the kolu. Suffice to say I failed disastrously. I managed to make a pile of sand, and then when I tried to spread it around with my finger into a kind of arrangement, I ended up with a messy pile of sand. ^__^

They did, however, also invite me to stand in front of the kolu display and sing; and at that I was much more successful. It was probably the only time, ever, in history, in which Charles Kingsford has been performed in front of a Kolu; I can only hope that Saraswati approved.

Never Wear A Chiffon Sari Garba-Dancing. Seriously.

Now that we're into Navarati/Dussera, people are starting to organize garba and dandiya parties. I had been hoping to attend one, and had carefully packed the dandiya sticks I bought at last year's Navarati (hosted by my university's Indian Students' Association) and carried them to India with me in my suitcase.

So I was very excited to be invited to a garba/dandiya party in Bangalore.

Being the prepared type that I am, I had also packed a delicate jute silk salwar (ten points if you can guess the color) which I had planned to wear while dancing. However, on the morning of the party we learned that women who wore saris (Gujarati-style, of course) would get into the event for free.

And so I wore my pink synthetic-chiffon sari (with its horribly "frumpy" blouse, as some of you have noted) to the dancing arena.

When I wore the sari to the opening night of Tempest, I had such a good time and wore it so easily that I thought I might begin to invest in a small collection.

After last night, I am thinking that one pink sari is probably one sari enough.

When we arrived at the arena, we were told that no footwear could be worn inside the dancing tent. Off came my strappy heeled sandals, and I was left kicking at the pleats of a sari that was now about two inches too long.

As we began the dancing, I found myself struggling to keep both my sari and my hair from falling down. (Since I stopped using hairspray, my hair has become much happier but has also taken on a life of its own. It cannot be contained, and comes loose from every braid or bun into which it is tied. And how a twenty-inch strand of hair can work its way out of a French braid is beyond me.)

Undoing my hair was easy (and Rohit likes it better that way anyway), but I couldn't very well undo my sari. My host, realizing the problem, pinned the front pallu to my blouse in a few strategic locations, but I still had to be very careful where I stepped (particularly when dancing backwards) and occasionally resorted to hiking the thing up in one hand.

The arena itself was crowded. It was like dancing on a bus. When we formed the circles for dandiya, we were pressed so tightly together that most of us were dandiya-ing with only one stick, since there was only room to extend one arm. ^__^ Also, no one seemed to agree on the pattern of tapping and turning, so (although the music was clearly in five) I would turn to meet partners who would be working in patterns of six or eight. So it was not a very synchronized dandiya, but it was great fun.

Next year, though -- salwar all the way. ^__^

Watching People Eat

I’m not in the university guest house, at the moment. My room has been taken over by a gigantic physics convention. The person in charge of this convention wanted to rent more rooms than the university currently had available; and so the people furthest down the hierarchy were asked (no, told) to move out of the guest house for a week and make other arrangements.

So I’m in a backpackers’ hostel, in the city. And thrilled to be here. The university campus is peaceful and beautiful, but isolated. So I jumped at the chance to get away from the university… and, for that matter, away from the mess hall and its three rotating curries (bhindi, aloo and capsicum, and brinjal).

Anyway. I arrived at about 5:30 p.m. on the first sunny day in over a week. I put my things in the hotel room and took a moment to freshen up from the bus ride, and then flew down the stairs to start my evening’s adventure. Strangely, it looked as if the front desk clerk had “freshened up” as well. In the five minutes (okay, ten) it had taken me to re-braid my hair and reapply lipstick, he had combed his hair and put on a white embroidered cap. It almost looked as if he had put on a different shirt as well, but I couldn’t be sure.

I went out into a street that was on the cusp of twilight. The first thing I noticed was that nearly every man was wearing this same white cap (I know it's got a real name, but I can't find it on Google... I'll let one of you educate me ^__^). The second was that everyone – men, women, and children alike – were dressed in these gorgeous, sparkling things. The third, which I realized as I stepped into a group of people as they crossed a street and followed the group through to safety on the other side, was that everyone was congregating around a set of sweet-stalls set up at a prominent intersection.

Then I got it. It’s Ramadan, seconds from sundown, and they’re all about to break the fast.

There was such a sense of excitement in the air, which surprised me, because we are about two weeks into Ramadan already. Is there this excitement every evening? Of course, if I had spent the day fasting, I think I would be more than a little excited myself.

I didn’t watch to see the moment when the sun set. I wanted to, but it seemed like it would be prying into something very personal. It was enough to see the anticipation of these penultimate moments. So I turned and went onto a different road.

On this road, rows of electric lights drew me towards a giant Ganesha pandal (voted one of the top five pandals in the city, as the sign announced). This one had a dancing Ganesh instead of a seated one; his fingertip touched a fountain, and water poured over lotus flowers. This pandal also had a crowd of people and more coming from every direction.

They were doing puja and taking prasadam, only it seemed like the prasadam was an entire meal; rice, dal, and pooris. Plate after plate went out. I went closer, to see if money was exchanging hands, but whatever funds enabled this pandal to have a working lotus fountain (and be rated “top five in the city!”) were also enabling the pandal to feed this huge crowd for free.

Thus on one street, Muslims were breaking the fast; and around the corner, Hindus were taking prasadam. Everyone was eating. Everyone was happy. The sun set, and all around the city these glorious colorful lights came on. It was a perfect moment.

A Dozen Laddoos

I have been, for the past five days, in search of laddoos. Mostly because I saw this post on SepiaMutiny about how laddoos were associated with Ganesha Chaturthi, and thought "well, then I want a laddoo too!"

After all, I've never really had one. I had a sesame seed laddoo once (S. bought it for me at a desi grocery) but it was dry and seedy and not exactly the giant sugar-and-ghee filled mound of goodness that I've heard described.

So I went in search of a better laddoo. And I found, for some strange reason, that there weren't any on campus. None. Nowhere. Not even in front of Lord Ganesh himself (the prasadam was rice only ^__^).

The campus had two bakeries, but the closest thing I could find was a kind of "sand laddoo;" that is, something small and round and hard, gray-colored, tasting of sand, which was fished out of a plastic jar. When I bit into it the rest crumbled and fell through my fingers.

I knew that wasn't what the people on SepiaMutiny were raving about. They usually only rave about good things. ^__^

Thus I went into the city today in search of bakeries. I had to go to three before I finally found one that actually sold laddoos. (Impossible, yes?) But the one I found was a treasure trove. Plump, round, shining laddoos of all colors and consistencies.

I snagged a dozen (a baker's dozen, no less) and took them back to the guest house to share with the visiting faculty.

When I bit into my first "real" laddoo, my unadulterated, spontaneous response was "Oh, shit!" In that good way. ^__^ I passed the box, with its layers of tissue, to a friend, and his reaction was exactly the same as mine. Verbatim. These laddoos were possibly the best thing I've ever tasted, and certainly the best thing I've ever tasted in Hyderabad.

One of the visiting fac who knew the area finally asked to look at the box. When he saw the name of the baker (which I can't read, since it's in Telugu), he told me that I had purchased these laddoos from the most famous bakery in Hyderabad. Pure serendipity on my part. But well, well worth it.

Am very happy and satisfied. ^__^

Life Isn't Complete....

... until one has danced, in a raging monsoon, with thunder and fireworks crackling at the same time, in a parade leading a giant pink Ganesh to its pandal.

There was prasadam, of course, and -- for whatever reason -- red and pink and yellow powder. And I got covered in it. ^_^