काश वही दिवाली होती - Wishing for the old feel - Happy Diwali

It seems like it was yesterday but it has actually been a decade. I see myself standing in the balcony of my house, all dressed up for the day's festivities. People are gathering in large numbers. They wait to witness the burning of the demon-king Ravana. They wish each other, greet each other, hug each other. Sweets are exchanged, and the wait finally ends with the effigy coming down with a loud burst of crackers. The festivity does not end here. The countdown to Diwali, one of the most important Indian festival has begun. Bazaars are decorated, houses well-lit. Everybody waits for the day Lord Ram returned from his fourteen-year long exile, to his home-city Ayodhya after defeating Ravana. It has always been like that - the celebrations year after year after year. And yet, everyone waits for the day with much anticipation and delight.

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Lost in reverie, I laugh. And then, I realize I am so far away from it all. Ten years back, I had taken the first flight in my life. No, not anything symbolic. My first actual travel through air. I landed in New Jersey, the little India in US. My first impression was not of being in a strange land. There were so many Indians here, I had to strain hard to see a 'foreigner'. But things had changed.

The realization dawned upon me as I gradually lived through the days, and months, and years. Festivals came and went like any other day. People here try to keep up with their roots, their rituals. But it was different here. Things became more deliberate. One had to plan for everything. Plan for long weekends, plan for Holi, plan for Diwali. Diwali was such a defining festival, back in India. But here, in the society I lived, which comprised more than ninety percent Indians, I saw not more than ten percent homes lit. There was no evidence of any festivity. Diyas were replaced by candles. Fresh sweets were taken over by frozen desserts, or cakes and cookies. And Diwali went like any other day, except for the occasional greeting 'Happy Diwali'!

As I expanded my circle of friends, we started planning too. But this was necessary. To introduce our children to our roots - to tell them about rituals we observed, about traditions that defined us. I did not want them to see diyas as candles to be blown out on birthdays. They were not candles. They had no other translation. They were diyas. They symbolized Diwali. And they ought to know this. There were other things too. Like greeting relatives, exchanging sweets. Like the special foods - call them oily, or heavy, or unhealthy - they still were the spirit of the festival. Like crackers. So we went to a temple where they could light them up. No, I am not much of a fan of crackers. But I wanted my kids to get the feel of it. Well, the feel was absent there. In a small place -small by the standards of open celebrations that we have in India- many had gathered and cheerfully lit crackers, and screamed with joy. I did not find joy there. It was missing. It was, well, 'deliberate'.

So, for once, I wanted to go back and celebrate Diwali like we did a decade ago. No, I do not want to change it, for it has already changed so much for us. The old feel is long gone. I wish it was back.

काश वही दिवाली होती 
जो बचपन में मनती थी 
घर के बाहर लड़ियाँ होतीं 
अंदर दीए जगमग करते 
माथे पर टीका 
मौली हाथों पे -
चावल-मिश्री और पताशे 
से सज जाती पूजा की थाली 
आरती कर के चरणामृत 
पापा फिर हम सबको देते 
तारों के जैसे उज्जवल दीपक 
थाली में रौशन जगमग जलते 
एक दीपक इश्वर के चरणों में रख 
सारी रात जलाते 
मैं भाई संग घर के हर कमरे में जा कुछ दीप सजाती  
फुलझड़ियाँ फिर खुशियां बिखराती 
काश वही दिवाली होती 

Written for IndiSpire# 90

Happy Diwali to All!!!

Shopping for a Saree

                                               

The other day, all the ladies in Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashma decide to go shopping for a saree. Wow.....shopping for a saree. Sitting in US, my mind roller-coasted back to India, way back in time when I was little and when I used to accompany my mom for saree-shopping. It was way before the CTC plaza era....way before the now-poplar designers had made their presence felt.

We used to haunt a very sought-after saree shop of those times in the center of a crowded market in Gurgaon. It was a market minus the mushrooming malls of today. Small shops hugged each other in friendly cuddle along with rickshaws, autos, bicycles, pedestrians, cows, dogs, and humans. The name of the shop was Suman Vastralaya. I have to ask my mom if the shop is still there. I have been in US for the past nine years so I have no clue to the shop's existence or otherwise.

The shop boasted of a trendy and exclusive collection that suited the taste of both the conservative and the contemporary shoppers. Aunties would throng the shop along with other aunties and little children. The shopkeeper knew almost everyone. It was an era of familiarity between the shopper and shop-owner. Uncle, I mean the owner, would treat all the little kids and aunties with cold drinks and tea. He would ask about all family-members' well-being. Then he would offer a good discount to his regular customers without asking for it. There was no need to bargain. My mom would just smile and make the payment which he only reluctantly took while saying, I will take it from bhaiya (bhaiya referred to my dad). Mom never believed in deferring payments. She would promptly reply, 'Udhaar pe nai khareedna pasand mujhe bhai-sahab. (I don't like to buy on credit, brother...). We would return home to show all our purchases to my grandmother who herself was a fashion diva. There was an understanding between the shopkeeper uncle and us (I guess it went with all his customers) that if for some reason we wanted to return the items we had bought, he would take them back. There was no window of return date. There was no deadline hanging around our neck.

Shopping culture has changed with buyers moving to bigger stores and brands. There is a shift from small shops to big showrooms, from bazaars to malls. The shift has brought with a distance, a dissociation between the buyer and the owner. Transactions now happen in a matter-of-fact dry manner, with little or no guarantee from the latter. No doubt there is a plethora of options available as far as fashion, style or fabric is concerned. But that agreeableness to shop, that friendliness of markets - that sadly has been lost.

I never shopped for Indian clothes in US. NJ has a vast array of Indian shops on Oak Tree in Edison. But a look at the dummies wearing ethnic wear reveal unattractive styles. I do not know how well-priced they are. My first year in US, I once went to a saree-shop to ask how much they would charge for stitching a blouse. As I waited for my turn, I saw another lady looking at some sarees which were modestly priced for $10 each. While the lady went gaga over the price and quickly chose one, I recoiled at the plainness, and the absence of aesthetic appeal in them. They were just pure nylon or other synthetic stuff with such dull colors that I felt stifled at the very thought of looking at them. But then, everyone has his/her own taste and requirement. Sometimes, a plain fabric can be worked upon to create a masterpiece. My granny would do that often, with her embroidery skills.

These days, to help those who do not have the skill and patience to tie a saree elegantly, designers have come up with pre-stitched sarees. That seems like a breeze. May be one day I will buy one for myself as I am hopeless when it comes to tying a saree properly.

Half-saree is another term added to my dictionary of sarees. It is not half as the name says. It is just that the color of the pleats is in contrast to the rest of the saree. They look stunning and make bold statements.

And saree shopping online! Have you done that? I am still not confident about this. Maybe one day I will give it a try. After all, websites like cbazaar.com and utsavfashion.com offer such desirable and enticing catalogs that it is hard to turn a blind eye.

So, when was the last time you shopped for a saree? Oh wait, there is a new ad on TV. Nalli sarees. Hmm....just in time for Ugadi....Drench yourself in silky splendor as the new year ushers in, my friends!

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Laundry at Uncle Sam's

It struck me yesterday again. Nine years into marriage, nine years in US. Unwillingly I dragged myself to the laundry room with my toddler hanging on one side and a big pile of laundry on the other. Yet another day to drudge, I said to myself. As I entered the laundry room, I saw three more ladies, all Indians. I knew two of them. Each was busy sorting through her mountains of linens. Inadvertently I smiled. I decided to write on this whole experience and joked with one of my friend there. 'See, we are all washing ladies.'

A little bit about those who were there that day. One of them was an MBA. I myself hold an M.Phil and NET. The other two ladies seemed well-educated too. We all were house-wives here. In this land of opportunities, as they say, we were our own domestic helps. There is nothing wrong in doing one's own work. It just simply looked like a mismatch, an incongruity of some sort as each of us waited to take turns, asking at the same time if the machines were working fine. If they were not, it meant spending additional hours on the monotonous task. The machines had been installed for making our work easier. But out of the four washers, one was mostly in a non-working condition. Same with dryers. One of them would leave your clothes damp after one full hour of drying. Tell me I don't miss drying my clothes on a clothesline in India where the warmth of sun turned them crispy fresh and huggable.

I mused how in the past nine years, I have waited and waited as clothes mounted and stacked on each other till the day they would be washed. It was like a ritual you did every few days. It came with its own protocol. There had to be a regularity in the observance of this routine for if you missed it on the allotted day, it would hang around your neck much like Coleridge's albatross. You might land up in the laundry room on an overcrowded day and the trips would become endless with you sandwiched between your own bags. Multiply your woes if it was winter and snow had kissed the ground!

It was different in India. Washing clothes happened everyday or every alternate day. There was an option to wash with hands or use a washing machine. A washer man or a washer woman was always handy. But drying was almost always in the open. The sky would look down at the colorful porch or backyard. Sun was mostly smiling, aiding the drying process. When the weather turned rainy or stormy, I remember my mom running outside to collect the clothes. As I grew up, I enjoyed helping her in this. I can still feel the raindrops trickling down, tickling my face as I rush to remove clothes from the clothesline. Pegs would scatter here and there. How colorful they were too. I remember fiddling with them until they snapped and I would spend a few minutes putting them back together only to break them apart again. It had its own joy.

Pegs in India were the colors of rainbow!

But a journey across the globe, the passage from a developing to a developed country changed it all. Nine years back, I had dreams of becoming a successful professional. But with marriage came the tag 'dependent'. And it was there to stay. When you land up with no work authorization, you often wonder what next. You join the herd of other well-qualified Indian ladies who have remained at home while hubbies go out to chase their dreams. You do the dishes, cook food, clean the toilets, mop the floor, clean the carpet and wash the clothes.

I folded my clothes the moment I brought them back home. (Sometimes I don't get the chance to do that as there are kids and other household chores.) I have seen some people do it there, in the laundry room itself. Some do it so slowly that they almost kill you with their 'speed'. Some take the clothes out from the machine one by one. One cloth after another, as each one is straightened out and carefully put in the basket in order to avoid extra ironing.(Those who are from India will again remember the washer woman who used to take their clothes for ironing and would return in the evening with the carefully organized bundle.) They drown themselves so much in the soporific task at hand that they overlook the fact that somebody is waiting behind them. They are hard to awaken until they are nudged verbally. 'Excuse me. Are you going to use the machine again?' The 'speed' quickens and you become the genie of the washer/dryer for the next hour or so.

Although it seems impolite, but it is something you cannot avoid. Everything is public. Your clothes, your style of washing, the choice of your laundry bags and baskets. Some people surprise you with their aesthetic gear while others just carry the clothes in big Hefty bags. Each according to his/her taste or convenience. Some leave you scorning and sneering because they wash their sports shoes in the machines too. Yikes! I am never going to use this machine again,  you hear yourself cribbing!

Laundry rooms, apart from doing the washing, serve another purpose as well. You are a nanny, you advertise yourself there. You are moving and need to sell everything...even your used but in-good-condition toaster, you put an ad there. You want to start a hobby class, pin a poster of information on the board in the laundry room. I myself have 'sold' my sofa and other stuff through this simple and inexpensive medium when I shifted. You want to learn guitar or take piano lessons at an affordable price, what do you do? Yes you guessed it right - Go to the laundry room!

Laundry at Uncle Sam's misses the sun though. No basking in the brightest star's warmth here. Even sun rays don't permeate the room as it lies in the basement. But it remains a predominant part of your life, much like the sun. Just as the days become gloomy without Mr. Sun smiling, the countenance becomes murky with your clothes piling and you itch for a trip to you know where!

My friends who have laundry machines in their apartments or those who are home-owners often complain about the tediousness of the affair. I cannot restrain my smile thinking about how banal it would be for me if it were not for my kids. My six year old hops like a monkey because he wants to charge the card and start the humming of the machine. And my 20-month daughter chants....Yaundly Yoom!


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