Navarathri Golu - 2017

We are currently celebrating Navarathri (nine-nights) and the Golu visits that come with the celebration. 

The women and girls (and their drivers by induction) are dressed nicely. 

There is high octane fuel.. err Sundal to feed the traveling beauties and chaufers.. 

Some fine singing by the kids in front of the doll displays and 

the doll displays themselves.. a thing we look forward to in this household. 

For those of you who are new to this blog, here is the background. South Indians celebrate Navarathri (Dushera, Durga Pooja in other parts of India) with elaborate doll displays on a staircase pattern (padi) and make some yummy treats with various legumes on 9 nights of the festival. They invite ladies and kids to visit their house, they sing in front of the deities, eat the snacks and are off to visit other folks. The ninth day is a prayer to the godess of learning, Saraswathi and the tenth day is celebrated as the day of Victory (Vijaya- Dasami).

In most houses where there has been a death in the family that year, they skip the display in their house and visit other folks. In some rare cases, where families found that the first year they kept the display as a newly wed family correlated to a death of a closed one, and I use the term correlate with a lot of hate given my applied math background... they watch cautiously. 

My grandmother apparently lost three kids to three years when she tried to keep the golu and decided that keeping the golu was not auspicious for the family. Since then (60 odd years ago), there has been no golu in this house on any paternal desencents. Any woman who gets married to a guy in this family, is promptly brainwashed irrespective of her education level and is told "not to tempt fate by keeping a golu". 

Let's just say that everytime I piss a flamingo dies. Unfotunately piss I have to. Out of respect for my elders (let's call it that) I am just happy visiting golus and taking photos of my cuties in different dresses. . . and of course documenting the golus from bay area which are frozen in time.. the Golus in Chennai seem to have morphed into some advanced concepts in terms of themes, dolls and partying! 

This is typical of any immigrant community that evolves on one side and supresses evolution on other fronts to keep things "authentic".. 

This year we managed one family portrait..

and visited 10 or so Golus over the weekend. I will miss the rest of the golus because of work. It is what it is.. Have asked Jr. to take some nice pictures of golus they attend and show me and I can add it to the slideshow below..

This year I also got to take pictures of the Dasavatharam set (10 avatars of Vishnu) from different Golus (where it was possible to take a picture). Given the circular golus and a shallow depth of focus, some golus were a challenge to capture.. next thing I know, we might need drones to take ariel views of the golu and add videos. Golugraphy has to make its technological advances, no?!

Talking of technology, the kids are taking their science projects and making the Golus interesting. We were witness to a volcano demonstration as part of a golu. Every visitor gets to see the volcano. Just think of how much fun Golus are becoming! 

Here they are...

Given that kids place the dolls and there is sometimes breakage in transit, it is impressive that the golus make it with all 10 avatars. Sometimes folks place it in the wrong sequence while majority place it right. Have written about this in a FB post before.. but there is a logic to this. My grandpa taught me that the 10 avatars of Vishnu is our forefathers way of teaching us evolution. The puranas that talk about the 10 avatars pre-date Darwin by 100's of years. 

The idea is :

life started in the ocean.. the first avatar is fish

Life moved to amphibians .. second one is a tortoise

Then it came to be ground feeding land animals .. third one is a boar

Then came a predator .. Vishnu as a Lion

Then came a pygmy or dwarf .. Vamana

Then it is all homo sapien transformations with a man who is mentally unstable (but physically a man as we know it) - parashurama (violent man)

followed by Rama - man with ideals

then Balarama -- a man with a plough (he has now settled and has figured out how to tame rivers and do agriculture.. non nomadic man)

then Krishna (god who does anything he has to to win and in the process sets up the downfall of man)

Finally Kalki, the doomsday avatar of Vishnu who finishes off what Krishna started. (Last year I had made fun by saying Trump is Kalki and regret that.. he won as I predicted and given where we are.. he might actually be the 10th avatar of Vishnu.. given God comes in all shapes, sizes and colors..even orange)

It is interesting to see how sometimes we miss the bigger picture or the hidden lessons! 

As usual, look forward to next years's Golus.. 

Sadda Pind - a great end to a great trip

The previous post on this series is here..

After a late, heavy and amazing lunch, we went shopping for clothes. There is a street in Amritsar where women can pick cloth, get measurements done for a "patiala" and get it delivered in 6 hours. This information should have been restricted from the ladies in our Van. Our tour guide/ driver who had to that point secured an A+ brought down his grade to a C by just disclosing this information and volunteering to drive there. The FIL and me knew what that meant and gave ourselves a nod "this guy's grade is coming down fast in the finals"!

So there we were Patiala shopping and after giving our hotel address, we decided it was time to get some rest in the hotel. There were two more places to visit. A rock garden and Sadda Pind, a cultural village that gave us a sneak peak of Punjabi village living (we visited a similar place in Rajastan called Choki Dhani three years ago and had some idea what to expect). We decided to skip the rock garden and go to Sadda Pind. 

It started raining on the way back to the hotel. By the time we were ready to leave, it was raining like crazy. We called the driver and he said "why don't we drive there anyways? the rain comes and goes. you might get lucky. worse case come back and eat in hotel". We were glad that we took his advice and went to Sadda Pind. A few mintues after we reached there, it was not even a drizzle and the skies cleared. We had an amazing time at this place. There was something for everyone!

Here are some pictures.

 

 

as you can tell from the photos, Jr. took the "I am going to try being a Punjabi girl for 3 hours" very seriously and posed for all the pictures and tried every activity available. Then there was an all you can eat dinner that was part of the ticket in a nice closed restaurant. The food was "heavy" and the roti's while not as buttery as the dhaba's earlier, were still thick.... 

Happened to catch Jr. eating and immediately got flashbacks from years ago. While editing photos for this blog post, got the deja(deja vu)vu's and found the old picture from this post for a comparison.. you can see not much has changed! 

and finally a video that captures more of the activities. There were a lot more things to do and see, but it was already 9 PM and we had to rush back to the hotel.. we had an early morning flight to catch and more importantly.. the Patialas would be arriving! 

Amritsar is cute. It is a great place to do this "trip within a trip" and you can pretty much cover everything in two days provided you have a good plan and are ready to walk a lot. The food is simply amazing and you come out happier than you went in! If you put on some weight, there is always the Patiala suits that can do some packaging magic to make Photoshop obsolete!

What more can you ask?

Strongly recommended as a vacation spot!

I have finally managed to finish blogging this part of the trip. Have two more posts to write about the India trip itself that are still in "draft". That does not seem to be a daunting task anymore!

Durgiana temple and Gobindgarh fort

The previous post on this series is here..

There was a reason Amritsar fit our "trip within a trip" concept perfectly. You could cover all the attractions in the city within 2 days, provided you had a good driver / guide. 

We had one more site that got added. Gobindgarh Fort, which used to house the Kohinoor diamond, was open to the public after 157 years! We just were fortunate to be there after it opened.

We did a quick stop at the Durgiana temple, which was rebuilt to mimic the golden temple. Only the "willing to walk in the hot sun" subgroup went for this. The "rest" stayed in the Van under the shade. This temple also has a gold roof, silver doors and reminds you of how rich things were "once upon a time"!

Given Jr. had spent almost a month in India by the time we visited Amritsar, she had been trained by grandma to walk around temples. She was willing to walk in the sun and that to me was an interesting change! 

We spent a litle under an hour at the Durgiana temple and were off to the Fort. At first we were disappointed to learn that the actual fort was a good mile or more from the parking lot.

That meant half our party would refuse to go citing leg weakness and heat! Fortunately, one of the guards said that for a fee they can get us inside on a vehicle, provided we can wait for 10-15 minutes. So we gladly paid and took the ride. 

There were not that many visitors, it being a week day and we pretty much went through all the history of the place, watched a show in the theater within the fort, have San and the little one go on a "camel ride" and come out in time for lunch.

there were a few horses in the fort that were used to give rides. One of the horses was an albino (I think). It was beautiful to see..

and did I mention the "camel ride"? The little one for some reason, wants to go on Camel rides every chance she gets.. maybe because she missed out in Jaipur a few years ago... this time she was not disappointed!

The camel ride, short and sweet.. smile on their faces, priceless! 

Then there was a late lunch. That lunch deserves a special post in itself ! 

A line drawn...

As a kid, I would sometimes wish that India was never partitioned by the British. It was their ultimate victory even when leaving India. When so many calories are spent fighting what was your own, it seemed stupid that just because some british guy decided to draw a line on a map, a country gets torn apart for the foreseeable future. Then there was the much anticipated India Pakistan cricket matches and that seemed to be the only plus point for having Pakistan. That was the kid in me..

This time we actually got to see the India Pakistan border at Wagah on the Amritsar trip.

It was quite an experience. Given our US passports, we got to go sit with all the foreigners, which gives you an interesting perspective. We made up for part of the few brown and black people in a sea of white faces on that section. The rest of the gallery was full. 

The changing of the guard ceremony was what we had gone to watch. It was a rehearsed display by the Border Security Force of India and their Pakistani counterparts. We waited for 2 hours in the heat for the ceremony. Given the soldiers were dressed even more than we were and were sweating it out, we used that as motivation to sit and watch the proceedings. 

The flags were brought down, handshakes were in display but so was all the dramatic signs of agression from either side as part of the ceremony. The crowds on either side did not make me comfortable either. There were chants of "down with Pakistan" from the crowd which I thought was uncalled for. There was also the competition to see whose loud speakers could drown out the other side which made your ears hurt. This went on for a full hour. 

It would be great to have pin drop silence with thousands of people on either side of the border stand quietly in solidarity. A large group of silent people always puts things in a different perspective than a loud jeering crowd. 

At the end of the ceremony, it started drizzling and there was a mad dash for the exits and parking lots. Just before leaving, I caught a dove that came and sat right on the flag. It was touching and also ironic that the tension is so high and it takes very little for it to flare up. 

Every country should be proud of its defense forces. You do get goosebumps watching parts of this and seeing what folks sacrificed and continue to sacrifice. Peace is a better option is the only bitter thought that kept rushing back.

Turn the volume low before playing this.. 

On the way back we stopped by a Dhaba for some maggi noodles and tea.

It was perfect for the clammy weather. Kept thinking "how do you get the average person to love and not hate? How do you make folks realize that the other side is not much different?". Did not have very many answers. For one, you cannot force people to do Yoga or breathing. That would help calm folks down, but there has to be a willingness that comes from within. 

It was definitely quite an experience and would recommend this to desi folks in US who are trying to explain the "India-Pakistan" divide to their kids. Expect 20 questions.. or 200 and be prepared and do the right thing and focus on love being the answer.

We went back towards Amritsar for a night visit to the Golden temple.

The Yellow Chilli next to Pathanjali...

On the recent India trip, we visited Amritsar for two days. It is a family deal now that we do a trip within a trip to go see a place that the four of us have never been to within India. This breaks the monotony of visiting the same relatives on a tight schedule in Chennai and Mumbai and flying back. It also gets us to interact with family in a "non-home" setting in India. 

This time it was Amritsar with my in-laws. As soon as we landed at the airport, the tour guide/ driver took us to the hotel which was 15 minutes from the airport. We checked in and the plan was to go to the Wagah border right away with a quick stop for lunch. 

For some reason, he decided that we should go to an upscale "bar" type place. Why, we dont know.. maybe he had a deal with the place. So we went to "The Yellow Chilli". It had Sanjeev Kapoors face everywhere and the ambience was definitely not a "family restaurant" one, but a couples place to get drunk. We were definitely the only family there and there were no kids in the place.

I amused myself by looking at the Pathanjali "super store" next to the restaurant. I did not know there were stores like this. Over the last year, have become a big fan of Pathanjali shampoos. Rate them highly right along Loccitane! I digress. Pathanjali products are great, but this post is about The Yellow CHilli. 

Once the menu items showed up at our table, we really didn't care what the restaurants customer base was. We were hungry and the food looked and tasted great!

Every item was better than the previous one or so it seemed. Then came the final dessert. This thing was downright divine! The hot/cold combination was amazing.

The video says it all..

We gupled the thing down and were off on a drive to the Wagah border. We also told our driver, "this was good.. but next time.. dhaba ka khana!"