This blog is now becoming time warped with a mix of past and present events, as I go through old photos from March to September and capture some regular events.
After a three year gap, we did go play Holi in 2023.
It was great to be in a large crowd of strangers enjoying the colors. We had Jr. join us as she was on spring break, if I remember right.
Looking back, we had a great time in Foster city with friends. A large multi ethnic crowd, great DJ, amazing atmosphere.. smiling faces! What more can you ask for?! We could always wish the little one had joined!
That hazy effect is because of the color powder on the iPhone camera!
Love this festival. We live in a post COVID world now, where booster shots are becoming like flu shots.
Hope we get to celebrate Holi this way in the coming years!
After two years, this blog is seeing an entry for Navarathri. Last year I happened to be in India for a conference and barely made it back on Saraswathi pooja. I did get to visit a few homes in Chennai last minute to see golus!
As most of you know, we do NOT have a golu (doll display) in our house. I am trying to figure out though if the higher powers (mom) would divine a way for me to start. Given the best years of our kids being kids are gone, maybe it is a moot point now. Hopefully my girls marry into homes that have golus!!
Personally I think families that have no golus because they associate the festival with some past tragedy, may not be the best families to marry into. Will definitely get flamed for this, but one has to voice his opinion when it comes to correlating deaths to not celebrating festivals. The dead are dead. Festivals are for the living! In case I do conk out on some auspicious day or festival, this blog post would hopefully remind my near and dear ones to keep celebrating! Now that the rant is over.. lets move on to positive things!
Bay area golus!!!
They are a treat, as the folks here take it very seriously and do an amazing job. The only thing that beats the doll displays and the enthusiasm of the kids to do their own little side projects is the food ! There was also some singing and instrument playing in many houses and this year I sang 4 or 5 different songs on repeat mode, thanks to whatever I have learned from my carnatic music teacher from Paadarivom Padipparivom!
A cover photo for the blog is a compilation of some of the dasavatharam sets in the golus.
Here is a slideshow of all the beautiful full golus..
Then there are the side displays which are done by the kids for the most part with some adults taking it to a different level. The one of Ramana's ashram and the Murugan atop a custom made hill were mind blowing when seen up close!
and finally, the unique dolls that caught my eye on some of the golus!
Given the number of images for the unique dolls, the slideshow sometimes does not load. You can browse through them at this link.
A lot of our friends are empty nesters now and it was nice to meet some of the kids who had driven or flown in for the weekend.
Matched San's sari color for the most part. She did have some challenging colors this year. This is now becoming a bay area trend as I see more hubbies being forced to wear matching shirts for Navarathri... Hope the men folk don't take me to some alley and beat me up for doing this every year!
Even though we have no golu, we still do Saraswathi pooja like clockwork.
This year for a change I played Vara veena on the flute to commence the "spirit of learning"
Our little saraswathi..
This year we missed our kids who are both in college, but had fun visiting friends, catching up and eating a lot. The after effects of all those good eats caught up finally today, but if history is any guide, things will be okay in a few days!
We really loved Navarathri this year!
My guru gave me a 15 minute music class on Vijayadasami and started teaching me Sree saraswathi Namosthuthe in raga Aarabi and I loved the new start for music learning!
My friend and flute teacher made me play in front of friends and family to get over my self doubt, and that was equally wonderful !
Attended one India golu virtually. That one was twice the size of the biggest one we saw locally!
Here is to Indian festivals!
It is heartening to see good traditions surviving over time!
A big heartfelt thanks to all of you who invited me along with San, encouraged me to sing and gave us all the good eats!
We had started Friday afternoon to go from SFO to Calgary. We were coming back Monday afternoon. That meant we had half a day to spend on the return.
Given we were used to waking up early the last two days, we did the same on Monday, checked out and started driving towards Calgary from Banff.
First stop was Lake Minnewanka. We were pretty much the only folks there. We did a short hike around the lake and realized it was getting pretty hot and we were hungry.
There is a steam boat ride on this lake which is a family owned business (or so it appeared). When the family showed up, we started out of the park!
Our plan was to go to a place called Cochrane on the way to get ice cream at McKays. Every person we knew from this area had told us "do not miss this ice cream!"
Thing was that this shop opened at 10AM. We would be at least an hour early after we drove from Banff to Cochrane. We walked around the closed shops on what was the main storefront in this cute town and decided to have breakfast at a place called Sunny side up. The service was fast and the food and hot cocoa were excellent. We had managed to kill an hour.
Then it was ice cream time! The folks were right. This ice cream was delicious. It was finished in record time.
We were still too early for our flight. The new friends we made at ink pots, had suggested that we check out downtown Calgary on the way back if we had time. They had mentioned something about a Rodeo and Cowboy festival called Stampede that we might see.
We spent a good 15 minutes trying to find a parking spot. The whole place was festive! There were cowboy hat stores on the streets, everyone dressed up for the event, square dancing lessons on the street, etc.
We spent a good hour walking around downtown, checking out what I thought was Canadian crows (turns out they were part of the crow family), enjoying the skycrapers.. and we said a quick goodbye and went to the airport!
A video of the morning..
This was a good vacation. I was hesitant to go on such a hectic trip, but San convinced me to go! Good thing I listened.
We did get COVID the day after we landed and the next 10 days was a blank! Chances are we got it in SFO as masks were mandatory in Canada and optional in the US!
I for one am glad that these posts are delayed. COVID put a negative touch to the whole trip, but looking back, the trip in itself was amazing and we had a great time!
We will definitely visit Alberta again in a few years, just to go to Jasper National park and also spend a few more days instead of doing a "sampler weekend trip".
Now the blog has to catch up on a few more hikes we did locally!
