FestiFULL of COLORS: Holi! (Guest Post by Ambika)

For thousands of years, Hindus have celebrated the festival of Holi all around the world. Traditionally, the festival is celebrated by throwing powdered colors at people, with festivities like singing and dancing. The dance associated with Holi is called Dandia Raas, and is played with a pair of sticks. Depending on which part of India the festival is celebrated, a bonfire is lit in the evening of Holi or the night before it. In many parts of India, people observe a fast by only eating puffed rice and popcorn for the day.

There are many explanations of why the festival exists, but the most famous is the ancient story of the prince Prahlad and his evil father King Hirnakasyapu. It was believed that the King was an Asura, a demon who is a cruel ruler. Being the power-hungry monster that he was, the King wanted everyone in his kingdom to worship him and praise him even more than God. Unfortunately for him, his own son Prahlad was an ardent devotee of the God Vishnu, the god who looked after the entire Universe. When the King asked his son who the most power man in the kingdom was, the song replied that it was he, his father, and king. But when he was asked who the strongest in the whole world was, Prahlad replied simply that it was the God Vishnu.

I'm wearing an Indian suit and the shoes are traditional Punjabi shoes (cotton)

Viewing this to be an undermining of his power, the King set his sights on destroying Prahlad afraid that his son's ideas would become a representation of his kingdom. He enlisted his sister, Holika, to help with this task. Holika had a special sari, a traditional Indian gown that allowed her to be within flames without being incinerated. The siblings convinced Prahlad that if he were to sit on the lap of his aunt while they were lit on fire, he would be safe and fireproof along with her. After all, it was directions by his loving aunt and father. When the bonfire had died down again, they found that Prahlad was saved by the grace of God and his extreme devotion. Holika had died paying for her sins. Therefore, the festival celebrates the victory of good over evil while simultaneously glorifying the importance of devotion.

The scarf is called a dupatta or chunni (depends on what part of India)

There are few other legends associated with the origins of Holi, but the moral of the story always depicts the triumph of good over evil within the end. The day is always considered peaceful as enemies and friends alike gather to play with colors in the name of Holi.

~AMBIKA

FestiFULL of LIGHTS: Deepavali! (Guest Post by Tabitha)

Deepavali (Diwali), also known as the Festival of Lights, is one of the most widely celebrated Indian festivals of the year. Deepavali is a 5 day celebration made up of rituals, fireworks, gift-exchanges, and feasts. It is a time to appreciate your family and to reaffirm in hope. It is a Hindu festival, but it is celebrated all around the world by various religious groups and ethnicities. There are many explanations to the origin of this wonderful festival, but they all share a universal moral lesson: the victory of good over evil, light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance. No matter what time of year, we can all celebrate the "simple joys of life." The message of Deepavali surely resonates in all of us.

Today's post is extra festive because my dear friend Tabitha Busi is our guest blogger and model for the day! Read below and learn about her unique cultural insight on Indian cultural clothing. This shoot was especially challenging because we were in the dark, but Diana pulled through as always! Thank you for the stunning pictures. Take it away Tabitha!


आनंद लें (enjoy)!

In India, there are several types of gatherings, festivals, and celebrations held for various cultural reasons. These celebrations are nothing like I have seen or been a part of here in America. One of these celebrations, Deepavali, is filled to the brim with joy, festivities, dancing, fireworks, lights, bright colors, and lots of fun. Deepavali is a bright and colorful time, in which colors are seen through multiple things such as lights, candles, and my favorite...clothing!

Here, I am wearing a delicate light pink chiffon saree with intricate details and designs woven onto the fabric. What makes the saree quite beautiful is the unique and intricate embroidery work. Woven into the chiffon are tiny silver sequins, gold details, and blue and hot pink feathery details. All of the outfits that I am wearing are originally from India, and it is actually about 10 years old. You probably couldn’t tell, but putting on a saree is not as easy as you might think. The saree essentially consists of three main parts which is the underskirt, the short blouse, and the chiffon draping.

Putting on a saree involves lots of pins, tucking in, folding, and wrapping around. If it isn't done correctly, one could run the risk of looking like a messy pile of chiffon. But thanks to my mom, I think I was able to pull it off!

First off, let's begin with the tree. This tree that I am entangled in is called a moringa tree, and it is in my very own backyard. A more common name for the tree is drumstick tree. My family and I actually call it a “molecada” tree because in the language that my parents speak, Telegu, moringa translates to molecada (I actually didn’t even know that it’s real name is the moringa tree!).

It might be hard to notice, but hanging from the molecada tree are several long, skinny, green, vegetables which we call molecadas. When they are ready to be picked, my parents pick the molecadas and cook them to add to a healthy and delicious Indian meal. It is actually quite rare to find such a large and prosperous molecada tree in America. They are plentiful in India, but it is difficult to successfully grow them here.

Under the molecada tree, I am dressed in something a little different than a saree. It is a deep purple and green Punjabi outfit with very intricate detailing particularly along the neckline. The embroidery includes, beading, sequins, several hints of color, and various gold patterns. Unlike a saree, a Punjabi outfit is ten times easier to put on. This is because a Punjabi outfit is not quite a dress. Rather, it is a long top with pants that go underneath. The drape over on top is a “dupatta,” a scarf-like accessory that complements/completes the outfit. The dupatta can be worn in many different ways. I chose to wear it traditionally, across my chest.

 To complete the outfit entirely, I am wearing dark green glass bangles with gold detailing on them. It is almost a necessity to complete an indian outfit (saree or Punjabi outfit) with stacks of bangles on the wrists. Here, i decided to go with dark green bangles to match the outfit.

Gold accents are also very common in Indian clothing and accessories. You can see that the necklace that I am wearing, also from India, is gold with diamonds detailed within it.

Here I am wearing another Punjabi outfit. This time, it is golden yellow and orange. The collar is my favorite part about this Punjabi dress. I own many Indian outfits, but none like this one, with such a beautiful and detailed, stand-out collar.

Of course, I accessorized with bangles. Red, gold, and orange to match the outfit. Like I said earlier, an Indian outfit is never complete without the bangles!

Deepavali is a time for celebration, appreciation, and happiness, not only for India but for everybody. It signifies the victory of good over evil. Try to remember the good things in your life at least for these couple days of Deepavali. Celebrate, love, and appreciate.

Thank you for reading! ~Tabitha

Vertical Cities, Infinite Dreams

TRAVEL DIARY #3: CHINA

When I grew up in China, I was lucky to be in a city buzzing with cosmopolitanism, where skyscrapers jutted like teeth, and a humming sense of energy/urgency draped people in arrogance; ecstasy; exhaustion. For some, China may be a question mark stitched of too many people, embellished with the same cheap, artificial stuff it seems to pump out at a stupefying rate. But having been born and grown up there, I have some stereotypes to challenge. My recent trip back to China, I hope, will help dispel some of them.

First, I visited my home province, Guizhou. If you translate the name of the province, it means "expensive/precious province" (Gui can mean both expensive and precious). I tend to think of it as priceless and invaluable. My maternal grandmother lives in Guiyang, the province capital; we went there for a few days. The first thing we did when we got off the plane (15-hour flight...sleep, homework, sleep, repeat) was go eat 牛肉粉, or beef rice noodles.

BEEF NOODLES.

If you haven't tasted it yourself, you probably wouldn't understand the fanaticism. Let's just say: it's probably my favorite food in the world. In Guizhou, we engulf spicy stuff the way Americans love their Starbucks: Unapologetically. I craved this stuff the way Romeo longed for Juliet, Paris for Helen, John for Sherlock-

Is that too far?

Anyways, China is full of delicacies that vary sometimes even just from city to city. Another Guizhou favorite of mine is 肠旺面, which translates to Pork Intestine Noodles. I don't know if that sounds weird to a Western audience...

Told you we love our spicy stuff. This bowl of noodles is so good, I might have just drooled looking at the picture. In addition to pork intestine, there's pig blood and 脆哨 in the bowl, which I don't really know how to translate, except that it's this little cube of crispy, crunchy meat, and if you eat it, it might just become your new favorite addiction. At this moment, I'd like to apologize to the vegetarian/vegan readers of this blog. I try to eat vegetables-only meals as often as I can (keyword: try), but when I haven't been back in so long and China taunts me with all these favorites from my childhood... how can I resist?

Segueing from food--I noticed this beautiful truth as I wondered about the city. It is steeped in tradition, yes, in the architectural details and the slogans of restaurants, but it was, more incredibly, a city slumbering and waking in the embraces of mountains. It nestles between summits and hills, rivers and pagodas, so that sometimes the apartments or hospitals look like the brick armor of a mountain beast, crimson-black beneath the magic of crescent moons.

I know people always say that China is so polluted, it's revolting... But I wish they'd see that China is not only Beijing, Shanghai, or Hong Kong, international cities whose images have been fleeced by Western media, whose bones of history and culture remain a myth, an exotic hyperbole, an alien mystery. Because--and not to dismiss the environmental problems, which do exasperatingly exist and persist--if you look around, there is nature everywhere. On the tops of apartments; flanking bridges...

Nowhere do you see more greenery than in the countryside, though. My paternal grandparents are still farmers, and their home hugs the heart of the mountain valleys, where roads are too narrow/pebbled for cars. I walked with my cousins between rice paddies, jumping from crumbling soil, across skittering rivers, shoes smeared with mud and scat. 

A panorama of the village, featuring my maternal grandmother

A close-up of a house in the village

On our way back home from the hike, we ran into some humans

and a horse.

We arrived to find steaming food and delicacies usually saved for New Year celebrations. It's rare for our entire extended family to get together like this. Sometimes I think about how I am in such a different world from them, but then my cousin plays the newest Taylor Swift song on her phone, and I grin, because what is 8000 miles when we are family, when worlds can shrink to pixels on a screen?

Country food tastes different, infused with this richness that only plants and vegetables that thrived free from chemicals can boast.

One of my relatives cooking

My great-aunt sitting by the furnace, tossing in fuel to satiate the flames

The house had few windows, draping the scenery in chiaroscuro 

 Then it was time for a family excursion. We went to visit a mountain/park famous for its monkeys.

They were mesmerizing. Baby monkeys grabbed onto their mothers, and many times tourists threw away food to avoid the taunting blow of a rapaciously hungry monkey. 

Of course, I worry about the safety and health of these animals. The yogurt, popcorn, chocolate can't possibly be good for them. But there are many people selling peanuts and sometimes, bananas, for tourists to feed monkeys with, and I can also understand the tourists' eagerness to part with their snacks when a monkey menacingly marches up to them.

My favorite part of my trip, though, is absolutely my time spent teaching and interacting with some sixth grade students in a village close to my home village. Curiosity rimmed their incessant questions, and a bravery I still don't feel glowed in them, so that they danced, and sang, and cried without regret or self-consciousness.

Me with some of the kids and the principal

It's funny, actually, because the two boys in the picture above didn't show up half the time because they were helping their parents do laundry or cook, yet the boy in the white shirt ended up winning a mini-contest I threw. Just goes to show that full attention part of the time can be more valuable than paying only part attention the full time.

Their village was incredible as well. Emerald rivers, mountains sky-high; bamboo forests stunted beneath a gaping sky, telephone lines slicing through leaf-dusted paths as if plucked from another world. ..

Guizhou still did not fail to impress me. As is typical in China, many restaurants and apartments flaunted details reminiscent of ancient architecture.

The rain was unmerciful, but a miraculous sight to this California girl. 

MORE amazing food:

I had to snap this picture before anyone got in it... the restaurant crowds, man. Crazy. But not unexpected.

MY ABSOLUTE FAVORITE DESSERT. Fruit roti prata.Yes, Indian food in China.

For the last two and a half days of my trip, we flew to Guangzhou, the capital of the province where I went to school, Guangdong. Guangzhou was the international city that Guizhou didn't yet dare be, but in its own hustle, it bloomed a city of beauty.

In China, the public transport system is life. Frankly, I wish more people rode trains, buses, and subways in the U.S. Especially in commercial cities such as Guangzhou, the subway stations were plump with people and underground shops.

Guangzhou also boasts impeccable seafood. I am not a big fan of seafood (at all), but even I was sold. 

Restaurant in a 20-story mall

In the end, though, the most meaningful part of my journey in Guangzhou was... yes, shopping. I rarely shop, both because of money and because I rarely find clothes that fit my peculiar tastes. But in Guangzhou I stumbled across shops in markets as blurred/fleeting as staccatos, where shopping through the windows of buses and taxis inevitably ended with my feet almost hypnotically rushing to a specific dress. I told myself that since I barely ever buy anything that I will give myself this opportunity to buy whatever I want. 

So I did, haha. I'll do another post on the clothes I bought in China next week.

Ah... There was something so... alive about Guangzhou. I felt like pirouetting, like falling dizzily onto clumsily-made beds and rushing out into sun-dusted rain, tripping over myself to soak in the hustle that floods the blood of this city. Somehow it blended together a smearing sense of nostalgia with a culture inked in history and commonality, so that even footsteps sunk into its fabric. The sky may be pollution-stained, but it also drooped like an eyelid, half-awake, half-entranced, just like the city--just like me.

That is, in the end, what I love most about China. It is a juxtaposition of dynasties and ghost-like democracies. Of brutality and honesty, beauty and busy-living. Of rugged mountainsides and vertical cities, where towers hunch over a billion people like sentries to a giant's city.

And, most importantly, it's home. It's my family.