Happy Lohri and Pongal!

This past Sunday was Lohri, largely celebrated in Punjab and other parts of North India. Also, as I recently learned (thanks CB!), yesterday was Pongal, celebrated in Tamil Nadu and other parts of South India. Essentially similar events, Lohri and Pongal are like North American Thanksgiving with (in the case of the former) a little bit of Groundhog Day thrown in. I’ll spare you the history and cultural lesson (please check out the links to Wikipedia if you’re curious), but the holidays are an annual celebration of the upcoming harvest and a party to end the rest period before the gathering of crops. (No, K and I won’t be gathering crops this season, but maybe next year.) The Groundhog Day bit comes from the belief that Lohri marks the end of winter.

As K was frantically packing and preparing to head back to Canada on the night of Lohri (and since we didn’t have any clue as to how Lohri is celebrated), we didn’t anticipate partaking in the festivities. But our downstairs neighbors were getting ready for the customary bonfire and invited us to join them. Never known to shy away from a party, K and I readily obliged. Once our hosts lit the bonfire in the driveway, we all toasted to Lohri, walked around the fire, sang a few songs (or mumbled and smiled, in our case), and each threw a handful of popcorn, peanuts, and revri (a crunchy, sesame seed-encrusted sweet) into the fire. Presumably since the idea of burning things while celebrating outdoors was reminiscent of Diwali, our neighbors pulled out some firecrackers leftover from November. We proceeded to entertain ourselves with this additional form of a fire hazard for another 15 minutes or so before downing our drinks and excusing ourselves for dinner. Aside from visits by two groups of hijras, the second of which left happily with a wad of cash, the celebration was pretty mellow, and hey, who doesn’t love to play with fire every once in a while?

On Giving Thanks

I felt pretty jittery and unsettled during Thanksgiving week here, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. I had crowded the fact that it was the third week of November out of my brain, but that wasn’t so hard to do in this lifestyle; I spend quiet moments fretting over whether water will come out of the faucet when I turn it on, how I’m going to get from place A to place B without getting ripped off (meaning that I’m not sure if my accent will reveal that Hindi isn’t my first language), and whether I’ll find meaningful work here, to give a few examples. But I’ve already digressed.

Thanksgiving week was rough because this was the first Thanksgiving I have ever spent away from my family, the first year I wasn’t celebrating the occasion in my mom’s kitchen. It didn’t help that I was getting daily reports from her about the preparations — the event would be at its smallest this year with a mere 22 people in attendance; she had been wooed away from the mashed potatoes out of a box by my very insistent brother and sister-in-law; she was trying out some new fancy Williams Sonoma recipes that I had forwarded her (never expecting that she’d actually take them up); the turkey was being injected in surgical fashion with some complex masala mixture — you get the idea. It was mouth-watering, soul-wrenching torture.

I endured. I even got onto Skype with the whole lot of them that night, as they lazily led their satisfied, over-extended bellies into the study to chat with me for a moment before returning to their wine and pumpkin pies.

Two nights later, my father flew into Delhi, and three days later, a few of my close relatives here gathered for a small get-together. Unlike the usual Delhi buffet style setup, the dinner table was set for all attendees. I didn’t catch on. As I was walking in, my uncle was asking my aunt who was going to do the cutting, and where. Crap, I thought. It’s someone’s birthday, and I’m clueless as to who the cake is for. Yeah, I still didn’t catch on. It wasn’t until Papa, assuming that I was smart enough to have figured out that he had imported Thanksgiving dinner for me, announced that the turkey he had brought along weighed a solid 14.5 lbs that my jaw dropped.

There it was all being laid out before my widening eyeballs: sweet potato pudding, mashed potatoes (real ones, not out of a box), stuffing (with sausage), brussels sprouts with pancetta, a loaf of melt-in-your-mouth pumpkin bread, cranberry sauce, gravy, and a whole 14.5 lb, juicy, masala-injected turkey. And enough leftovers to last us until my sister arrives. (That’s right, I have pretty high expectations for the contents of her luggage now, as well!)

I couldn’t even wait until everyone had served themselves. But before I dug in, I squeezed my eyes shut. Most parents might lament about how bummed I was to miss Thanksgiving this year, some might even joke about FedExing me some leftovers, but only my parents would cook a full parallel meal, pack it in layers of Ziploc, freeze it, stuff it into the suitcase, transport it clear across the planet, and arrange for a Thanksgiving dinner in Delhi, all because their daughter was moping about the lack of availability of pumpkin pie in India.

I give thanks for my wonderfully insane parents.