Hindus celebrate the birth of God Krishna with the festival of Janmashtami which we celebrated today; a festival which brings back a lot of fond memories for me. We used to fast, my grandmother, mother and I, on every Janmashtami. The one big reason for me to start fasting at the age of 12 was that I'd get to eat sago pooris and potatoes unlimited for dinner if I'd fasted the whole day. That was incentive enough!
We moved house when I was 16. The big Birla temple was on the same street as our house and every Janmashtami brought with it a huge fair. The street would be closed for traffic and hundreds of people flocked to celebrate the birthday party of Krishna. The street was full of exciting wares, fun stalls, games and food, food and more food. The tikka-wallah who made delicious fried potato cutlet-like tikkis, set up his stall every Janmashtami at 5:00 am. He would wash his huge iron skillet in front of our house (The Public tap was right outside our house!). Then peel and prepare huge mounds of potatoes to get ready for the masses that queued up for his absolutely delicious, fried tikki. That was my biggest test! I would have loved to eat one of those had I not been fasting. Grandmum's unspoken rule was clear, if you have the will to fast, you had to have the will to stick to home-made dinner that night. I never got to eat that tikki but I still remember it!
The festival was a huge celebration. The idol would be dressed up in mini-frocks and crown. Sago pooris, Ugal fritters, Potatoes cooked in ghee, Talmakhana kheer in our traditional food plate was the tastiest birthday party meal one could have. And like all grannies, mine cooked the best meal! We would pray in the evening, which was the most awesome way to teach delayed gratification to the kids at least, as the prayers would go on and on for long. Finally we would sit for dinner and I could eat those yummy pooris for ever!
I continued the tradition in Singapore, especially for Neetima. Barring Ugal flour, which I couldn't get in Singapore, I made everything else. We prayed together every year and ended the pooja with the ceremonial aarti.
This Janmashtami, for a change I decided to focus less on celebrating and more on learning. So Micky and I discussed Krishna's teachings and compared it to the teachings of the other Gods. Every discussion somehow manages to reach Google and Micky ended up listening to an interesting conversation about similarities between Hinduism and Islam. A learned Islamic scholar made the comparison and talked about how Kalki avatar in the Hindu mythology has similarities with Prophet. I found it fascinating.
The evening Pooja was as always but we missed Neetima, so we decided that she could connected on face time. When we finally connected, I realised that she was wearing a kurta and had her head covered as we did when she was here.
I couldn't help remembering the Hofstede's Onion model. The core values are surrounded by rituals, heroes and symbols.
It is our ritual to celebrate Janmashtami together. The covered head is the symbol and Krishna and other Hindu deities are a hero. Across the core, our practices help us connect, and I am certain that these practices will help Neetima get some sense of her roots and her sense of identity, in her Third Culture way of life.
Love Hofstede! Love Janmashtami! Love Neetima!
You made my mouth water, Atima :) So heart warming to see Neetima follow all these rituals. God bless :)
ReplyDelete