Alas! I had decided that the next post I would make would be more in the spirit of my old Xanga posts and would be a chronicling of the recent events, rather than the two posts so far which were more expounding thoughts that have been pervading my mind. And while there is nothing wrong to declare this of my next post, with every passing day, there is a new day to be chronicled, leading to the post that never ends as has been joked against me! In an attempt to expedite the release of the prose I have collected, here are my entries for November 24th-26th. I have more to post, as well as more to write to be posted. I hope that I shall be able to finish this and get it on here soon (hopefully measured in fractions of a day to mere hours). Seeing as this very moment, I am going to be going to Oakland for my club meeting, I figure there is enough written that you could enjoy some of it now. Seeing as it is already well over Untar (two thousand words), there's enough to begin digesting now. Were it to be in the same post as the rest of the entries to come, it would most certainly be double-Untar.
Thursday, Nov 24 (Thanksgiving day):
It started after I woke up, with a mother grumbly over my falling asleep after the sun had come up. I wouldn't have it another way, especially that night, but I make the mental note to redouble my efforts to find a job somewhere sooner rather than later. After making the note, I smile as I remember the conversation that kept me up so late. Starting with just two, Little Red joined the conversation to make three, which is also when the conversation shifted to an amusingly awkward topic, especially in retrospect. I feel the way I contributed to the topic at hand literally (and swiftly) put her to sleep. And as Little Red slumbered, the conversation continued on beyond the margin of time we had available considering it was the morning of Thanksgiving.
The family prepared to leave to the house, only having to wait for Dad to finish with some rounds. My sister drives, and Mom and I are totally guilty of perpetuating some backseat driving. We do arrive at our uncle’s house first, to meet with the cousins that had arrived at that house in the prior days. Among them are my two eldest cousins (on my Dad’s side at least). Their spouses were not able to come this day for reasons obscure to me, and one cousin who was newly married was also not in attendance since she was partaking in this day with her in-laws. The eldest cousin had come with her two children, who are old enough to always ask for someone to play with them, but not to know what typewriters are. We started playing some Scrabble, and since I’m fairly terrible at that game, I opted to be the word verifier. Soon enough, we started with the first course of food: artichoke dip, and two soups, squash and tomato. Afterwards, we began with dinner. This was the first Thanksgiving in a long time where I partook of meat consumption. We all collected foods upon our plates, and across two tables, we sat and feasted.
As the bell chimes nine, I bear the usual effects of food coma from stuffing oneself with Thanksgiving stuffing (and mashed potatoes, turkey, et cetera). The call went out for who wants chai shortly before the kettle whistles for attention, and the family begins to settle in conversation, a heterogeneity of chatting on family matters, humor, technology (including talk independent of Black Friday), perhaps among other conversations that do not make it to my ear. I have come and placed myself to the beloved but disastrously out-of-tune piano, beginning with my usual three-song repertoire. My cousin, back from Chicago, asked me which song I used to play on the flute. And while she warned me and admitted the vagueness of the question, I was able to correctly guess on the first try that it was Bach's Badinerie (
BWV 1067, of course!) that was on her mind. Satisfied that I haven't forgotten the three songs of yore, I turn to the fourth and newest song I have and begin to practice it with the sheet music. Afterwards, I played chess with the nephew, impressed at his fairly developed eye for the game at his age. I also played Chinese checkers with my aunt, and it was a close game by a difference of only two moves! Eventually, the night finishes, and the plan gets set for Black Friday.
I go home with my cousins with some intentions of shopping in the morning at the Pittsburgh Mills mall. Before we arrive at their house, however, we stopped at the Pittsburgh Mills mall to judge if it would be worth sticking around for any shopping, seeing as stores had promotional hours beginning as early as 10PM, something which I have no recollection of being true in previous years. But when we saw overflowing parking lot and crowds of people waiting in line and taking merchandise to their cars, we understood no shopping was successfully happening at this hour, and we set our course for home.
Friday, Nov 25 (Black Friday):
After scratching on my laptop for a measurable period into the night, this time in solitude, I eventually passed out on my assigned bed. I woke easily enough to the sounds of my sister and cousins eagerly preparing for the shopping session. I was the last to shower and eat, but we were still mostly adhering to the projected time of departure. As I could still feel Thanksgiving dinner being digested, I opted for simply a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast with a glass of milk. We got into the Prius and head for Pittsburgh Mills. We snaked around the parking lot in search of a suitable space amid the shopping madness, eventually found a satisfactory spot, and head into Macy’s. At this point, the girls split off to look at their clothes, and my cousin and I left to meander the other parts of the store. I told him a bit of my news like the recent Baltimore trip I had taken, and he found a sweater to purchase for himself. It was odd that I did not purchase or even search for anything, seeing as my wardrobe is in a pretty dire need of updating. The only thing that is precisely tailored is my interview suit, and I suppose that is the prime article that would need to be top notch while I am still job hunting.
We reconvened with the girls, verified they were still chugging along with their shopping, and began to take our meandering outside the Macy’s portion of the mall. At this point, he started to tell me a bit more about his first year at college, and I started to crave lemonade. I had figured we were going to get it from Panera, where there was likely to be a rush of people, but instead we got it from a smaller shop named Auntie Annie’s. Looked like a pretzel shop, which it is, but they also had lemonade. It satisfied my thirst, but was too sweet for me at the end. After sitting down and conversing for some time, we received word from the girls that they were done shopping. We united and went to the theater ticket shop to purchase tickets for a family outing to see the new Muppets movie. After that, we drove home.
Upon arriving, I had curled up on the far end of the couch in the white room in my cousins’ house and wrote some prose for my blog. Both comfortable and focused on my writing, I ended up declining the movie invitation. I felt bad because a ticket was purchased for me, and while I have purchased a ticket to go to an event that I ended up not using, I have only ever done so with my own money. The blog saw some progress, and I eventually became drowsy. I consumed some radish and green pepper slices and collapsed to take a nap. Perhaps it was because I was up too late in the morning? I had been recently prone to falling asleep during blog writing, but that could also have stemmed from becoming available to work on it in the late hours of the night.
I woke to the sound of family bustling downstairs over dinner just freshly served. I checked that I lacked bed head and joined them, taking just simply channa (chickpeas) and poori (bread, thicker than chapati). A simple dinner, but I’ve always had this as a favorite food since I was little. The whole family rested after eating across both the white room and the room adjacent. I returned to some blog writing but also kept up with the conversation in the room. While I had abstained from the pie (I am unable to remember if it was apple or pumpkin pie), I did partake of the chai. Shortly after, my immediate family began the trek home.
Saturday, Nov 26:
Again, I curled up to the laptop with the intentions of talking into the night. I resumed the conversation that the sun had so rudely interrupted two nights prior, filling the void felt Thanksgiving night by the lack of chat. It was at this time that we decided to start dating (making her “She who I call Dear”). Shortly after, Little Red joined the conversation and said “Aww!” at us for a sizable amount of time, and of course, it was welcome and warmly received. She shared a bit of her life, and eventually sleep time came.
Upon waking to noisy sounds around the house, I was summoned to move an outrageously heavy piece of furniture with fine porcelain platters and dolls. After taking out all the items in the cabinets and drawers, as well as the glass separators, it was still too heavy to budge even a single centimeter! Mom and I contemplated removing the top half of the display piece to make the weight manageable, but we decided against it considering the limited space we had and remembering that the painter would need some space to maneuver. We solved the conundrum by remembering some furniture sliders. I was able to lift two legs such that sliders could be put under them, at which point I was able to single-handedly slide the hulking furniture piece away from the wall for painting, meeting our objective. We went into the middle room and moved the significantly lighter couches into the middle of the room. At this point, I was ready to leave to make sure I could arrive at the NextGen event happening at the temple at 2PM.
As I found out, there was absolutely no need for me to rush. I did not understand the purpose of the event, but I had already resolved to attend. After having some people attempt to explain it to me as well as re-reading the e-mail that was sent, it seemed to be an event to raise awareness in youth about the importance they hold in continuing the Indian culture as it exists in the temple. Which is an honorable and understandable objective to prioritize by the part of the temple. Upon my arrival, I only found a flock of adults, who immediately asked me where the kids were. How would I know? I only had been reminded of it the day before (and technically once by a parent weeks before). I thought my sister and cousins were going to be there, but they did not end up coming. One adult began questioning me on what contributes to kids leaving home and not looking back, for me to realize that some of the parents have no idea what goes on in the thought processes of our generation, which struck me since I feel like I communicate pretty well with my parents. In addition, I realized am someone this event is targeting, which I suppose I should have known, but it made me think about how much I may have fallen out of the Indian community. Eventually, some of the temple’s youth arrived, and after some more uncomfortable waiting, the call was made to begin the invocatory prayers. After that, all the youth were required to come to center stage and introduce themselves, where they went to school, what they studied, and what they liked best about the temple. That … was a bit much.
Afterwards, we had a keynote speaker, Ravi Jai Shankar, visiting from New Jersey to speak here, as the secretary of the national Hindu Students Council. I was immediately more receptive to him, since he is not of the upper generation. And he seemed to know exactly the problem at hand, what is driving our generation away from self-identifying as Hindus. I always respected those who had a pride in this sense, and indeed, he highlighted some examples of how members of the Indian diaspora (here simply used in the sense of a people emigrated from their native land, in this case India) interact with the western world here. He mentioned how it can stem from incomplete understanding of the countries brought from overseas, partially an issue in education, partially an issue lost in translation (not all kids are jumping to learn Sanskrit to understand the texts). In addition, we have the influences around us in school and college, which may lead to westernization of our ways. And to some extent, this is a natural part of globalization and can be welcomed, but we just need to acknowledge that this process is not incompatible with the preservation of our culture and customs. He also spoke of pan-Hinduism, one that would be less sensitive to the customary difference between the North and South. This spoke to me as someone who has spent time between both a North and South Indian temple and believes that this divide is detrimental to the goal of strengthening the Hindu identity, especially overseas.
As time passed, more youth had arrived, including Little Red and her brother. Upon a speaker’s conclusion, the newly arrived youth were made to introduce themselves, as was done before. Some of the older generation came to speak about how wonderful it is to be attending this event as a contribution back to the temple, which began to test my attention. The event moved to a question and answer session to the keynote speaker and eventually turned into a forum discussion. This started to get a bit hectic towards the end, but we as a collective were able to glean insight into the particular concerns that are on the community members’ minds. Eventually there was a Kathak performance to conclude the event. It was going a bit long, and I had to begin thinking about meeting with the rest of the family clan at the nearby Udipi.
All in all, I found the event a bit less than satisfying. The keynote speaker knew what he was talking about and was well prepared to express his thoughts. I would press that if this is an event targeting the youth, there should be no adults. The keynote speaker even mentioned how the generational gap between our generation and the elders prevents some topics from being discussed or even acknowledged. I believe it was Little Red who said to me that there is no problem with them receiving the notes afterwards, and I agree, since after all, they do have a vested interest in the temple. I’d impose a minimum age because I feel it is hard to include the younger ones since they may not have the breadth of experience and understanding associated with these issues and seeing these problems in the wild. Our youngest was sixth grade I believe, and I was more representative of the eldest youth there. I probably would say minimum some years of high school, but that point is most certainly up for tweaking and debate. Also, the event got good when the forum discussion happened, so we need to jump right into that. The handling of the discussion would need a bit of work, someone to keep the conversations from derailing or turning into flame wars. Finally, the temple needs to choose what the purpose of this event is and stick to it. I technically still don’t know what the purpose of the event was, but I know that in the discussion, we started to talk about collaborations with the universities to achieve … something. I feel like the scope had a tendency to balloon, and that’s not good. If you are Hindu, reading this wall of text, and have a blog, I challenge you to write a bit on your thoughts about the state of Hinduism and youth today. This event was stimulating and perhaps only poorly executed.
While I had left the room in the middle of the Kathak, I did not make as much haste to leave the temple quite just yet, since I was just beginning to enjoy some of the conversations I was having, including one with an old friend that I used to study SAT with, as well as his sister. It turned out dinner was eventually being served, and upon backtracking, we found the HSC speaker. After chatting with him, he gave his e-mail address for potential future contact. At this point, the call was made to not have dinner at the temple but with the rest of the family, so I took leave.
I arrived at Udipi and began to eat the idli fries. The two littlest niece and nephew had apparently been asking where I was, since they were displeased that I did not arrive at the restaurant earlier. I had a good laugh over this evidence that the clan mentality apparently starts young. I was disinclined to purchase my usual channa batura. Since the recent weight loss efforts, I can no longer finish that item. All the other family members got a dosa, and upon being given parts of their dosas, I realized that I never eat dosa, so much so that I didn’t know how to eat it! Afterwards, the family began their final parting before people returned to their respective cities and states. This marks the end of the formal Thanksgiving holiday celebrations, and I returned home to expect a return to a more boring time. In retrospect, it turns out that I would be kept a bit busy for more days than I was expecting.
Edit:
It has been reminded to me that this post lacked a Song of the Day.
Due to the length, as well as the days being clearly enumerable in three, I shall provide three songs of the post. And while this post does not represent the pinnacle of musical diversity, do note that the post to catch up Songs of the Post to the Song of the Day is yet to come. Not to mention, more recent Songs of the Day shall start to scratch my metal tastes.
1.
Bach BWV 1067 Badinerie (though the Minuet I do really love!)
2.
Bach BWV 1020, Full Suite (the Adagio movement is not one of my favorites, but I have a fondness of the other two movements)
3.
Mozart K 313, First Movement (I remember an old friend talking of the sixteenth note runs as bunnies)
Enjoy!
