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Suji was delighted, taking every opportunity she found to run down to the library. She loved to kneel between the book cases, riffing systematically through the spines till she found her favorites. Sometimes, Champ, the librarian’s black poodle, would trot up to her, waiting patiently from a possible doggie treat as she petted him for a few minutes. The treat never came though, Suji had no clue that it might be something Champ would enjoy. Then it was on to the next library patron, who might be hiding a small snack in his pocket.
The Book Exchange cupboard under the stairs was another magical place. Musty and dusty, reeking of old books long forgotten, most kids stayed away from it, not caring for the contents largely placed there by avid bibliophiles seeking a gentler retirement for their outgrown favorites.
Suji surreptitiously brought a couple of unwanted books from home and placed them in the cupboard, picking out a couple of much desired books in exchange. Some books on the bottom shelf were even marked “borrow and return any time”, so she delved into those with a special vigor. There were hard bound editions of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ‘Little House’ books, that had Suji curled up in her bed, reading as if her life depended on it, even as she ignored Amma’s calls to dinner. Those books would move with her from the old apartment to a newer one, and not return to the Book Exchange cupboard till they left
Appa would occasionally pick out Enid Blytons for Suji on his frequent business trips to
There were even a couple of French books to vary the charm: a translation of a Mallory School series book of Enid Blyton's called "Le Theatre au Malory Towers" and a nondescript translation of a mystery adventure "Secrets au Clair de Lune". Suji was particularly taken by the description of the secret cabin where the protagonist went with her little notebook to write.
What to do about the lack of a secret cabin? She could remedy that by placing a bedsheet over the old dining table and crawling in there with a torch. That would have to be her 'secret' spot to write in the notepad. Suji started filling the pages one after one, lists of favorite books, doodles and drawings,anything and everything that she thought that she wanted to keep secret, though from whom, she didn't know. There were no really close friends with whom to share these secrets.
Feminism is defined as the belief of the political, social, and economic equality of women. It is a discourse that involves various movements, theories, and philosophies which are concerned with the issue of gender difference, advocate equality for women, and campaign for women's rights and interests.[1][2][3][4][5] According to some, the history of feminism can be divided into three waves.[4][6] The first wave was in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the second was in the 1960s and 1970s and the third extends from the 1990s to the present.[7] Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements.[8][9] It is manifest in a variety of disciplines such as feminist geography, feminist history and feminist literary criticism.
You deserve to look and feel fabulous. With so much to do during the holidays, in addition to hard economic times, is there a way to achieve fabulous? Of course.Right, the economy is going down the drain, but you can plump up the chin (and the pocketbooks of those dermatologist and/or cosmetic surgeons) by shelling out the greenbacks.
THE PRICEY STUFF
We are not talking extremes here. During the holidays you don't want to try any type of cosmetic surgery with long recovery times. You want to be able to attend all the holiday functions rejuvenated, not swelling, bandaged and poor. How do you tell your children that Santa can't come this year because mommy has one less chin ? Depending on your budget, there are a lot of options.
For those willing to spend less than $1,000, Radiesse may be the answer. Radiesse is a dermal filler for the cosmetic treatment of facial wrinkles and creases, stimulating the body to produce additional collagen and volume.
Before you throw it down the drain, use leftover wine at the bottom of your holiday glasses to make your skin flawless. Spread the wine (can be red or white) over your face, leave on for 10 minutes, then gently wash off with water. Your skin will tingle. The acid in the wine will act as a peel and take off dead layers of skin.Wow, no money for injections, but money for wine evidently. Will this technique work with dregs from a can of beer for the truly budget minded?
Breathe -- yes, breathe. It will calm the body and give you more energy. K_ R_, co-owner of B_Yoga Studio, offers a selection of classes specifically designed to relieve holiday stress. All classes begin with seated meditation, and you can even become liberated through yoga by candlelight.Talk about fluffy articles- just as we were exhorted to shop to defeat the terrorists, now all we need to do is focus on facelifts to lift up the flailing economy!
Amma was at a loss initially about what to do for the costume, but she had always been very clever at sewing and crafting. She came up with a cardboard and cloth version of the pointy black hat (stuffed with crumpled paper to keep the point up.) and modified an old black underskirt for a sari as a sack shaped cover, with holes for the arms.
The gym was filled with game stands for traditional Halloween fun, but Suji had little success at the ringtoss and the bowling games. She did manage to snag an apple while bobbing for it, but would have vastly preferred the small toys that were being given out for the other games. Still, an apple’s an apple, she thought, as she munched away.
There were about 20 other witches at the parade, all far more elegantly dressed than Suji in their purchased costumes, but she was definitely the happiest of them all. She loudly sang along as they marched around the school :
“Witches, ghosts and goblins
Screaming down the street,
Knock on every doorway,
Trick or treat!
When the door is open,
This is what you’ll meet
Scary creatures shouting,
Trick or treat!”
The cold crisp weather meant recess was mostly indoors in the gym. The drama club had started its sessions, with Suji promptly signing up. She enjoyed declaiming poetry and drama scripts as they worked their way through listening to tapes of A Christmas Carol and the witches scene from Macbeth. Which one would they perform? A vote was taken, deciding in favor of the Macbeth scene.
Suji was delighted. She could reuse the witch costume from Halloween without much trouble. But what to do about the ‘beard’ that the Macbeth witches were supposed to have had? Amma came up with a solution again. “Try wrapping your long hair around your chin and tying it to stay up on your ear.”
For the final performance, that’s exactly what Suji did, even though the hair did threaten to slip away from the chin as she declaimed, in as shaky and eerie sounding of an 8 year old voice that she could muster:
“Fair is foul and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air.”
Having religiously celebrated Easter (garish bunny cutouts on windows, color changing plastic eggs), Halloween (brilliantly tacky neon pumpkins lit in the lawn, yards of fake spider webs dangling from our trees) and Christmas (fake Xmas tree threatening to fall apart) for five years, I decided it was high time I started setting up a kolu (doll display) during Navaratri. I must add that the garishness and tackiness apply to the decorations that we used, not to the festivals themselves. I have long given up hope of our house and yard ever showing up in a photo feature in Martha Stewart Living or Better Homes & Gardens magazines!
Designed as payback time for all the Maamis who insisted I attend their displays and put out rusty renditions of "Maamava sada janani", it would now be my turn to request musical (or not) offerings (granted, some were really good singers!). I was determined not to nit-pick and was quite sure the Devi would smile graciously upon even halting renditions of "Twinkle twinkle little star" or highly prompted versions of " Saraswati namasthubyam" performed by lisping toddlers. It’s just the principle of the thing!
Decisions, decisions, decisions - three steps or five, or perhaps "boldly venture" where nobody in my circle had gone before and try for a seven step kolu? How on earth was I going to cover seven steps, even if I brought out the entire set of Burger King figurines accumulated over a span of ten years? Perish the thought, especially with the specter in my mind’s eye of Neela’s impeccable, authentic Made-in-India collection inherited from untold generations, lovingly mummified in tissue paper and transported in elephantine hand-luggage. No, I would have to settle for the three-step, with foldaway features for easy out-of-season storage, and perhaps with future expansion capabilities built in. Ha! Now that was an interesting problem for my husband’s inner engineer! A trip to Home Depot for lumber and a few hours wrestling-with-the-saw-and-drill later - tada! Behold a new set of three kolu steps built to my precise specifications. I was thrilled with the results and proudly displayed them to all visitors, prompting a frenzy of similar "new construction" in their homes.
The top-most step presented no problems, since I had assorted statues of deities picked up on trips to India (Martha Stewart wannabes, please take note – only tasteful earth tones such as sandalwood, rosewood, black metal and bronze.) An expedition to the local dollar store netted me assorted witches, fairies, dancers and other miscellany to cover the middle step. I filched a few Disney dolls from my kids’ fast food restaurant "happy meal" collection to add to the groupings. Inspiration struck as I heard my friends discussing their ‘kid’s kolu project’ of gardens and farms. I spied a set of mini plastic pirate dolls and decided that with a bag of sand and shells, "Pirates in search of treasure" would work for my kids’ kolu activity, placed carefully on a small side table.
The big day arrived. I spent more than a couple of hours arranging and rearranging the dolls to my satisfaction. I then proceeded to make turmeric dough for the representative face of the Mother Goddess to be applied on a ‘haired’ coconut. I used sliced garlic cloves for eyes, and marked the pupils with laundry marker instead of kohl. A molded and gold-painted Sculpey crown with rhinestone decorations was my only innovation to the tried and tested look. Rhododendron leaves stood in for mango leaves to provide a collar around the mouth of the kalasam, or pot, on which the head was placed.
As demanding as any screen goddess, the Mother Goddess’s face needed a special moisturizing regimen. I carefully dripped water on the face every few hours with a medicine dropper to prevent any cracking of the smooth turmeric complexion. To my great surprise, the yellow of the face started to turn a rather rusty red in color while the tip of the carefully shaped nose remained yellow, prompting irreverent comments from my husband about "Ambal is turning into Elmo!". I anxiously googled in search of explanations for this phenomenon. Was this something I ought to bring to the notice of the local temple, a miracle perhaps? Alas, it was nothing so wondrous. The Internet assured me that it was just your average "chemical reaction of turmeric with water or lime juice, a long forgotten method of preparing kumkum or sindoor". Hmmm, at least I knew what to do if I ever ran out of sindoor.
Next, the mad race every morning to make the typical food offering every morning of the next ten days. Time for the sundal 101 course with the venerable Meenakshi Ammal’s text book - Cook and See - translated from the Tamil original.
"What is one ollock or viss? Must not forget to check the lentils for stones - are there any stones in the highly processed stuff we get at India Mart anyway? Why pachai karpooram (raw camphor)and why can’t I substitute the regular camphor used for pujas instead?"All these questions ran through my head as I determinedly struggled with the cooking.
Day 1: Overcooked lentils; decided to make a payasam instead of sundal.
Day 2: Undercooked lentils; I couldn’t offer these to the visitors and substituted fruits for the offering.
Day 3: Perfectly cooked lentils; but extremely salty – this sundal was ready for a rendezvous with the trashcan.
Day 4: Gave up soaking lentils and resorted to canned chick peas to prepare the sundal.
Day 10: The feminine curse struck, and with secret relief, I palmed off the puja duties to my husband asking him to set out fruit and milk for the final offering!
Busy lives that we lead here, the negotiations for visits and counter-visits consumed the morning hours.
"I could fit in a visit to your place on Wednesday evening, after karate class. Why don’t you stop by tomorrow evening? Is that so? Ragini has music class that evening. How about the weekend then? Oh, the Lalita Sahasranaamam chanting at Veena’s? No, I didn’t get an invitation to that yet…Okay, Sunday evening will be just fine!"( Fume…why didn’t Veena invite me yet? Am I so out of that loop?)."
Eventually, we managed to work out acceptable schedules for the visits, besting the top negotiators in the country in terms of juggling mutual interests and secret agendas. (Should I put in my job application to the U.S. Department of State yet?Maybe after a couple more Navaratris….)
Every afternoon, the scramble would start for the Ladies of the house to get dressed in formal Indian clothes.The Gentlemen of the house would remain in their usual costumes - boys badly in need of haircuts with un-ironed T-shirts and pants and men in golf- themed polos and shorts. This was the time to pull out all the marvelous saris, the not-quite-as-comfortable blouses of yore, the dazzling embroidered lehengas, cholis and dupattas. " Not pretty enough!" my daughter wailed, as I swore my way through fighting with recalcitrant hooks that fell off at first use, safety pins and salwars too loose in the waist. Three changed sets of dresses and matching jewelry later, the end result was worth the struggle. I have the digital photos to prove it- all to be printed hopefully before she is old enough to leave home for college.
The nine evenings passed, clothed in the glow of the small electric diyas and oil lamps softly lighting up the Devi’s face and shining on the kolu. Rustling silks, shimmering beads, tinkling bangles and anklets, voices raised in songs and hymns in praise of the Devi.I was starting to feel like one of those ads on Sun TV for Navaratri sales at Nalli’s when that illusion of tranquility was rapidly destroyed by discordant howls as my children fought, punctuated by "Aye-aye Captains" from the television.
At the end of the kolu season, this song kept running through my head " Hum honge kaamyaab ek din" ( the Hindi version of "We shall overcome"). The next Navaratri, I was sure, was not going to be such a mixed bag and would truly reflect the spirit of the season. In any case, my kids are already hooked and asking when we will have the next kolu.
Which was exactly my reason for setting it up in the first place!
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