Feasts and festivities..

So october is over... And what a dynamic month it was! With almost all the holidays an Indian can wish for.. Except for the fact that none of them were holidays as such, if you get the pun, that is. Okay, so for all my readers, the festibols(as chini calls them) are called holidays here in the States; whereas for us Indians, who grew up in India, holiday would mean any declared/official off-day from work/school etc. Excluding karwachauth none of our major days coincided with a weekend this month.

The best thing i love about all these festivities is the kids excitement about it. Chini loves to 'tilak' everybody and anybody(including her dollies), sugar loves to ring the bell, and both of them love to look into the 'arti' (prayer) books trying to identify as many idols they can. And of course, they absolutely absolutely love dressing up as indian princesses! Which as you might have guessed means the traditional attire. Chini is so much into it that, just to appease her, I had to put one on her the day I had done the Diwali story at her school. She was so cross with me that I, along with sugar, had come in our traditional dresses, whereas she was not!

The month of all holiness had started With the Nine days of navratras. For me, it was very special coz for the first time ever, I could keep my resolution of not yelling at my little 'Devi avatars'.. For whole of nine days.. And if i forget about one or two meltdowns, I succeeded doing so for entire auspicious month! Kudos to me! It was very important to me b'coz lately I had started getting irritated by a single act of disobedience from them; which at times resulted in such a bad temper that the poor girls used to wonder,"momma, why are you so mad?" That was unhealthy.. Very unhealthy .. For the entire family.. So this month I (tried to) excise control on my anger. (that the dad was at the recieving end instead of the girls, is an entirely different story altogether ;-)). The funniest episode was on the day of 'hoi ashtami'. In brief, hoi fast is observed for the children. And again, as supposedly I was fasting for them, to me, it made more sense that I do not shout at them. Now, my girls chose that very day to test me to the extremes! As soon as chini came back to school, she started picking up a fight on the most mundane matters. All my attempts to intervene, resolve, pacify, and much more yielded no results. Finally, I decided to extradite myself from the scenario. It so happened, that wherever I went, they followed me and after a couple of minutes one or the other would either start crying or cribbing. Everytime! With almost no energy left to try and talk sense to them, I kept hopping from one room to another, one activity to other. Like two little lambs, they followed me to the kitchen, to the laundry, to the computer room, to the balcony... Now wll these rooms are on two different floors. Finally, chini gave up, "why are you doing up down, up down, up down all the time?!" stiffling my amusement, i said, " coz you two are not giving me a moment of peace!" " we are not even doing anything" "yeah girl! And you are not letting me either!" sigh

Karwachauth and Hoi were very special, this year, as the dad fasted along with me. He had always wanted to but somehow or other he couldn't. The essence behind these fasts, for us, is the love and to cherish the bond of this small unit of 'family' that we have started together. Also, it is our way of thanking God for the wonderful partner and kids He gave us. Both days, the kids fell asleep before the actual puja, so they missed listening to the story. Hopefully, in the coming years, they will.

Dussehra was spent listening to the story and attempting to, at least, make them taste the 'dahi laddu'. Diwali saw the ladies of the house sick with cold and cough, still trying to light the diyas! And dressing up for the occassion. Laxmi pujan was fun(minus the grand dinner that we used to host every year) and for the goverdhan puja, we went to ISKCON temple(it took 2x time to reach owing to heavy traffic). The ambience in the prayer hall was just amazing! One, cannot escape albeit, get bathed in that devotion-filled air!!

And the month ended with the 'not so holy' Halloween. The gals had been witing for it for an entire year, so it had to get mentioned here. The school didn't allow the dress up, just a head-gear and we weren't going trick-or-treating owing to the snowfall a day before; so, we took the opportunity at the local library. The girls dressed up as fairy Rapunzels had fun at the story time, parading to the bank(the library and the bank share the building) and enjoying delicious treats. The highlight of the day was giving away candies to everybody they saw on the way and at the bank! Surprisingly, sugar( who has difficulty parting/sharing usually) gave away candies without a single moment of hesitation!! Chini did remember going trick- or-treating with her friends at the old house(her exact words) and said she missed them. We used to go trick-or-treating with our neighbors there. In fact, two haloweens back, we had made very good friends with one of our neighbours while trick-or-treating! This year, one of our new neighbours(an old lady and a grandma herself) came with two goody bags for the gals at our door! I think, we should have a special day to celebrate neighbours, too!

I leave you with a picture of chini and sugar performing puja.. This was clicked today. I guess the girls want to continue the rituals.. Oh! This reminds me, this morning sugar sneaked the sindur and 'tilak'ed the ganesha idol we have at our entrance. On seeing me, she proudly said,'mumma, i did binddi to bagvaanji!'