Long time no Blog, Belated Holi Hai

The last two weeks have been very happening in both good and bad ways. There is the tragedy in Japan with a nuclear aftermath, the turmoil in Bahrain, Libya, Yemen and Syria, the icy onset of a much awaited spring, the colorful Holi (thankfully the weather was great), and finally today the fall of the Australian cricket team.
For those of you who don't know, I had the most special Holi in a long time this year. I volunteered with two other parents for the Holi celebration in Sanjana's school. We made a little presentation on Holi, told the kids a Holi story, danced to Rang Barse with the kids, snacked on Holi namkeens and jalebi, and finally played Holi with the kids and teachers, and some of the daring parents :)

The school had requested parents to send spare white t-shirts which the kids changed into. Teachers poured out trays of red, yellow and blue hand paint. The weather was warm and sunny so we took the kids to the play area, gave them a little demo of gently smearing hand paint onto each others' clothes, and then it didn't take long for them to figure out how to play Holi and go crazy with the colors. Given that these are very young kids and that not all of them are Indian, I doubt that any of them had ever played Holi before, but they seemed to get it just like pros! The teachers did a great job of keeping the kids from pushing each other or putting color on the face and skin. Some of the parents who came to pick up their kids were fascinated with the colors and joined in the celebration. Such is the joy of colors that they didn't mind getting paint on their regular clothes. I hope they were able to wash it off with ease! Like the other kids, Sanjana was also thrilled, albeit initially confused, about Holi and the color play. The colored T-shirts were sent home as a souvenir of Holi and I hope they will be preserved as works of an art and social studies project! I will surely be preserving the hitherto white Kurta that I got from that day - picture above :)
Its been 6 years since I celebrated Holi at home. It is my favorite festival of all and I feel sad and nostalgic each time that I am not home for Holi. So this year's was a truly special Holi for me in the longest time! Sanjana kept wishing us "Happy Holi" for the next 3 days. She also enjoyed playing with gulaal and roli at home. I hope that others had a wonderful and festive Holi too.
As for food, I have lost track but I can tell you this. On the day of Purnamasi when the moon was the largest in 18 years, a friend of mine had organized Satyanarayan Katha at her house. She made the most delicious chhole, matar paneer, alu gobhi, bundi raita, mixed veg pulao and halwa for 30 people single handedly. Once the katha was over, lunch was served with fresh hot balloons of puri prepared with the help of yours truly taking turns at puri making with some of the other ladies present. We don't have a count of how many puris were made and served but everyone devoured the puris in large numbers! Such is the joy of hot puris (that they didn't mind putting a few extra inches on their bellies - in keeping with the last "such is the joy of colors" sentence!). Apart from the food, the katha and havan had a deep spiritual cleansing effect on me. The Panditji who performed the havan is extremely learned and went into the philosophical aspect of the Satyanarayan Vrat Katha, rather than going over the standard Leelavati, Kalavati and Sut ji Maharaj stories. It was a very interesting experience to understand the deeper meaning of the Katha. (I remember going to a katha at another friend's house where the panditji had got print outs of the katha chapters in English. He distributed the print outs and asked those present to read each chapter out aloud. Which was not bad because everyone felt like a participant in the katha, but seriously, in English?)
As a result of the spiritual awakening I have taken to reading about the Vedas, the Sanatan Dharm (Hinduism)  etc. Perhaps that will be the topic of the next post. And perhaps I will have to expand the scope of this blog to go beyond food.
However, coming back to food, I am utterly bored of daal-roti-sabzi again and experimenting with kadhi-chawal today. Let's see how that goes.
Till then next blog...