We had some amazing weather this past weekend in A2 (which we're paying for dearly now with all the miserable rain and cold weather this week)...
My friend Gina and I capitalized on our good fortune and visited BOTH the Botanical Gardens and the Arboretum.
Pretty awesome looking tree on the trails at the Botanical Gardens
Picturesque views from trails at the Botanical Gardens
Picturesque views from the trails at the Botanical Gardens
Kite flying festival at the Arboretum
You could make your own kites based on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean designs
Perfect weather and an amazing location
Wheeeeeee!
There was even a snow lion dance performance
Even though we didn't get to spend tons of time in the great outdoors, I feel so thankful that programming and places like this exist and thrive in Ann Arbor. They are a real source of relief to get away from just locking yourself indoors, staring at a screen all day.
... is the cry you hear from roof-tops during Kitcheree when a kite is cut and comes floating gently back down to earth. The kite-flying festival, or Kitcheree as it is known in Banaras, happens every year in the middle of January. This Wikipedia article calls the festival Makar Sankranti and says it is a holy Hindu celebration of the harvest and sun ... that somewhat uniquely is celebrated all over India. In Uttar Pradesh it is celebrated with lots and lots and lots of kite-flying. On the 14th and the 15th (choti kitcheree and bure kitcheree respectively - big and small) the sky was packed with hundreds of kits, sub log patank urate te (everyone was flying kites)!
Here's a video I made of all the fun we had flying kites on our rooftop in Banaras... We might not have gotten much better at flying kites, but we certainly have more experience (for whatever that is worth).
There definitely is a lot of religious significance to this festival - but being completely ignorant of all that, we were just out to get covered in dyes.
We'd been warned that in some places Holi color throwing celebrations can get a little bit rowdy, so we arranged with the kids in our building to play with them in our gated parking lot. Here are the before shots:
Powdered dyes
A blank slate
You're smiling now...
Sneak Attack!
Buckets, cups, squirt-guns, use whatever you can to get spread the color!
Allen, Jaquline and I had a blast with these kids! "Uncle we'll get you!" "Oh no, Auntie's playing too!"
So Diwali - the follow-up festival from Dussehra last month - was celebrated this past weekend. For Hindus, Dussehra celebrates Ram's victory over Ravin, while Diwali celebrates his subsequent return to his kingdom Ayodhya from Lanka. As such - there is much merry-making for the return of the victorious Prince Ram (to put it very simply).
The best way to describe this "festival of lights" to Americans would be to say that it is like the Fourth of July, Christmas, and New Year's all wrapped into one holiday. It is not only one of the most significant holidays in the calendar, it is also a time to give gifts and celebrate with everyone you know. Families string colored lights or place small tea candles out for decoration. Fireworks are set off all over town - including more than likely from your neighbor's yard or balcony ... there is no "official" show - you just make the show yourself, and so does everybody else. This holiday was made for people like the firework friendly Pfeisters. And lastly, merry-making goes on so late into the night that the following morning is a day off for everyone (sort of like New Year's Day).
As we had been warned (somewhat cryptically) by the Institute's directors "not to go out on Diwali" ... we decided to celebrate at home. Besides a fabulous meal... ...we had traditional sweets, barfi (sweet and creamy like chocolate but made of nuts) and laddu (flour soaked in honey). After dinner we went to set off some (somewhat dogy) fireworks Allen had purchased at one of the many side of the road stalls set up for Diwali. This was the first time I'd ever set off a firework - so Allen stuck to some pretty simple, low key sparkler-type fireworks... ... which was pretty awesome, until one just promptly exploded after being lit. We had set off our "baby" fireworks before the "main" event. Seems that despite the lack of any "official policy" on how or when fireworks are set off, it is an unwritten rule that the best stuff gets set off after 8pm. So we headed off to our 8th floor balcony for a better view - and boy did we ever get good seats.
Oh... so that's what our neighbors were running from
Besides having a great view on all the fireworks in the neighborhood, we had front row seats to the fireworks our neighbors in our building were setting off from the ground floor, which were literally exploding right in front of us. I'm not exaggerating. Seriously - all moms should refrain from watching the following watch the following video.
We get up close and personal with some fireworks our neighbors set off.
Maybe continuing to sit on the balcony during our neighbors' fireworks show wasn't the wisest thing we've ever done - but thankfully we never felt like we were in real danger and the worst of it really was the headaches we had the next morning from how loud the fireworks were.
So I mentioned in the previous post that we were invited to celebrate Durga Puja on Sunday at the home of one of Allen's fellow tabla students...
He didn't just invite us - he invited all the students that had come with us the night before, which was amazingly generous. Three other students joined us to go to this family home in the old part of the city.
Again, I don't really know what any of us had been expecting, but India surprised us yet again.
The family home, which had been established by Shiva's grandfather, and was attached to the first Bengali temple in the area, of which he was the establishing priest. The temple is dedicated to Kali, the goddess of time and change, and it right off the main courtyard of the family home. So immediately upon arrival we were ushered in to celebrate a puja with various community members. Shortly afterward we were ushered upstairs for lunch.
Before I begin the description of lunch (which was amazing), I'll note something we didn't realize till we finally departed about an hour and a half later: being that this was the community temple the family was hosting puja and lunch for everyone in the community ... so as we were leaving more people were streaming in, sort of a revolving door of worshipers. I'm having a hard time thinking of good equivalent - best I can suggest is it was like those huge Italian Sunday brunches we have some times had in South Jersey, where people come in, people go out, but there is always tons of wonderful food and merrymaking.
Just imagine the vast quantities of food that were necessary for this arrangement and it is not hard to imagine that they had (apparently, because I didn't see it otherwise there would be a picture of it) bathtub sized pots for cooking in the back ... knowing this will help you better understand how the food was then served ...
But I digress ... what was really important was the generosity of spirit in this moment. This family, who have shown their friendship and camaraderie through a simple tabla class, opened their home to us strangers to share with them and their community a wonderfully holy and friendship-forging event. I feel like I'm not articulating myself well; but I'm finding it hard to put into words the feeling of openness and affection that I've witnessed in my short time here. I don't want to say that it was hard to accept this very generous hospitality - but it really touched me, and to show our thankfulness for all of their generosity, I was able to give them pictures and video from their son's performance the previous evening... a gift that was most graciously received.
OK - on the the description of the meal: an amazing veg (vegetarian) with all the staples - dhal, potatoes, and green vegetables, with a rice pudding for dessert ....but the true novelty of the experience was of eating off banana leaf plates with our fingers (check out the slide show below, link here):
All of the worshipers were lined up cross-legged along the wall, each with a 'plate' in front of him/her, and several gentlemen with large silver buckets were walking around dolling out dollops of food onto our plates ... if they saw you getting low on anything they came back and asked if you wanted more ... the food was piping hot and we learned that to cool it down you had to gingerly stick your fingers in and spread the small pyramid out on your plate.
I can imagine what your thinking: "Why?! after you both got so sick would you do something so potentially risky!?"
Good question: I guess our guts said it seemed OK.
No really, I think we all collectively agreed after the fact that we couldn't imagine another space where we would have felt comfortable enough to eat in this manner, coming so recently off of some pretty miserable eating experiences. But everything seemed above board and given especially how scalding hot all the food was when it was placed on our plates, we all left feeling the meal had been properly prepared.
The family happily invited us all back for Diwali in mid-October, so who knows, we may be back again soon (hopefully).
(Thankfully I was able to sneak online again today...)
The festival of Dussehra comes in various other names throughout this part of the world, but the purpose is to celebrate the triumph of good over evil. It is a 10 day festival ... that also happens to coincide with the Bengali celebration of Durga Puja.
We happily were invited to events celebrating both this weekend, because of Allen's tabla playing friends.
On Friday night we saw a drum and dance performance coordinated by an adult community group to celebrate Dussehra, below is a slide show of some of the performances (Link to photos here). My favorite part of this experience, beside it being in a local auditorium (imagine a church community center) with loads of families watching, there was this one little girl who kept running to the front of the stage to dance along with the dancers. Adorable!
Obviously, Allen was most interested in the tabla players - but accompanying them was what we had originally thought was a xylophone, but turned out to be a man playing cups of water (video below)
At first we thought they were using a xylophone in this drum performance for Dussehra in Lucknow ... but it turns out he was using cups of water.
On Saturday night we were invited to come see the performance of Shivargha, one of Allen's fellow tabla students perform at the Durga Puja festivities in Janta Park. The whole thing was pretty awesome, attached is a slideshow of some of the pictures I took. It totally wasn't what we had been expecting, although in honesty, I don't really know what any of us were expecting.
We were as much a spectical as the performances -- 12 gore (foriegners) showing up, some of the other language students came with us ... but really the whole thing was so big even we seemed to disappear into the crowd. They had this huge tent that had ceiling fans and chandeliers inside!
There were some more dance performances - this time by young children, again, very adorable. (Link to slideshow here)
Then Shiva came on, and he kicked some serious tabla-butt ... Allen tells me that Shiva is the best tabla player in Uttar Pradesh in the under 15 year old category, which is a pretty big deal. Here he is rocking out in the video below:
After all the merry-making, Shiva's father invited us all to his house for lunch to celebrate the Durga Puja with his family on Sunday ... we took him up on the offer, and I'll post pictures and stories in the next post.
Pretty awesome looking tree on the trails at the Botanical Gardens
Picturesque views from trails at the Botanical Gardens
Picturesque views from the trails at the Botanical Gardens
Kite flying festival at the Arboretum
You could make your own kites based on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean designs
Perfect weather and an amazing location
Wheeeeeee!
There was even a snow lion dance performance
