People I've never heard of have thousands of followers and i have three. Ah well, such is life. My family is too busy  playing trivia on ctheir smart phone to read my blogIt is of no interest to them.Those who read object. let bygones be bygones.
The BORO Hotel had a wonderful lobby. Books were arranged all around. I thought colorwise they were for show,but when i looked at the titles they were all famous books and good editions. But as usual, rahul and myself were the only two people who were reading.
I read everything. My head is full of trivial stuff, and when I tell people where to make your car stand so the light changes quickly to green, they laugh.I do and it does. youo can calso trying to talk to trafficlight Khambe Maharaj to turn green quickly. Sometimes it hears sometimes not.
 

what a nice day i had. Checked out of the hotel then Matt took  me to the temple but could not find parking, is liye baahar se haath fold kar liye phir gaye Astoria park. Nice fall colors. Blooms and leaves are stilll on the trees, unlike Wisc. where everything is dark and cold and bare. made parathas and dum aloo. A good feeling to eat this food after a few days of tur furkey. Ab daal chawal khane ka iraada hai. No matter where i go I have to have Indian food after two days.AMsterdam, n cNorway, in Denmark, Belgium wherever. Luckyly in cSpain cthere was an Indian crestaurant three doors down. i was the only Indian eating there.
Tomorrow back to cold and bleak Wisconsin. Seriously thinking of moving to new York.. Missed 420 million lottery.
Such is life.

हॉलीडेज

डे आफ्टर थान्क्स्गिविंग . वेंट फॉर शौपिंग , रोड वास ब्लॉक्ड, वैतेद फॉर hours, तीन मार्गरिटा लीं फहिता खाया, घर के बुद्धू घर आ गए . आज राहुल वापस . हम मिथ्रास के पास रेड वाइन पी रहे हैं , इन्दिआन बज्ज़र जाने का मन है मगर होगा नहीं , चलो मैडिसन सके अकेलेपन से दूर चारों तरफ हंसी ख़ुशी , नशीले लोग पार्टी करते हुए. कहाँ गए वो हमारे दिन ?

हिंदी लिखने की आदत डालनी होगी यदि इसे इस भाषा में कहना होगा. असल में मेरी आदत तो कागज़ कलम से ही लिखने की है पर अब लिखाई इतनी विकृत हो गयी है कि लोग शिकायत करने लगे हैं . सुना है की हाथ से लिखने में ब्रेन का अलग भाग सक्रिय होता है और कंप्यूटर से द्सरा. 

थान्क्स्गिविंग का दिन अच बीता. राहुल और मिथ्रास के साथ न्यू यॉर्क में. बहुत खाया, पिया,  बाटें की. इस सब की आदत नहीं रही.

Another Thanksgiving. Another year. Gathering of the clan, festivities, laughter.

What did I know of cooking a turkey?

Yet I adopted the American custom with enthusiasm. A vegetarian and a novice at cooking, I remained undaunted. That first year I had an old TV  which I bought for $45. I was fascinated by Julia Child and watched her  shows on PBS, specially her turkey cooking.

 The McCall magazine in those days had a section every month titled " the bride cooks… "

I took out the page,' The bride cooks Turkey 'and with the visuals from Julia Child and technical help from the magazine I became adept at cooking turkey. For years I invited friends, foreign students and people who had nowhere to go, I set a beautiful table, with Ittala glasses and Arabia porceline. Good friend Faith and Niels were always included, Faith made her mother’s sweet candied potatoes, I made turkey, fancy stuffing a la McCall, my husband made mashed potatoes and later pecan pie. Often there were guests, once the Pathak family came for Holidays and we had turkey.

This tradition stopped because years passed, friends died or moved away. My last Thanksgiving I had invited a Dutch colleague who is a professor of history and a friend who taught Folklore and his Dutch wife. Obviously the Dutch wife had some reservations, she didn’t know what to expect from an Indian hostsess. She came reluctantly, with bad grace and spent the whole evening talking  to my Dutch colleague, totally ignoring me,  the other guests and even her husband. It was obvious that she thought me below her level.  I felt snubbed and insulted.

 No more Thanksgiving at my home.  I began to fly to Boston every Thanksgiving where my husband cooked turkey and made pecan pie. By that time two grandnephews had moved to USA and they both joined us, one flew from Stanford, the other drove from New York.  In a beautiful condo at Harvard campus, Thanksgiving became a small, festive family gathering.  The high point for me was  to go to the Black Friday sale at Filene's Basement. I came home bruised and with unnecessary stuff but it was fun and a ritual.

Two years ago I ordered readymade Thanksgiving dinner for four from Whole Food and we had a very nice, quiet time together. That was my husband’s last Thankgsgiving.

As the big day rolls around I sit alone in dark Wisconsin evening, forgotten  by friends . But I remember all the festivities, parties, laughter this house has seen. I am thankful for it.

Young men and women died early in the past century. Rabindranath Tagore’s stories are full of the suffering and deprivation the young women suffered. In my family the young girls died young also. They were married young, lived a restricted and un healthy lives with the in-laws and died of tuberculosis, childbirth  and many other undiagnosed diseases. My father’s three uncles had lost their young wives and remarried. Their daughters were married young and died. My Munni Bua and janaki Bua were child widows. Munni Bua was lucky to have her sister’s son look after her but Janaki Bua suffered a lot. Her husband’s nephew mistreated her all her life. She visited her extended family when she could not take it anymore but she had to go back to her brother-in-law and his children ultimately. As a young teenager, I understood her pain and felt anguished but by the time when I could have helped her she had died. Besides she would not have taken my help, I was a niece, a woman. You only took help and money from men in the family. Teasingly I told her I was as good as her nephew, but she was not convinced.

Bitti Bua, my father’s only sister died after she gave birth to a  stillborn son.She fell into a deep depression and the family declared her to be mad. She died soon after and her husband remarried. Punni Bua was also married young, she developed tuberculosis but her strict in-laws would not have her treated. She also died. Another Munni Bua died in childbirth and her husband remarried.

The family did not talk about how these women died, it was the way of life.  Once I asked my mother how Punni Bua died. She told me that her in-laws were very strict and even when she became ill, they made her take cold baths in the morning and do all household chores, grinding lentils, cooking. I didn’t ask why her father didn’t bring her back. That was a moot question. You were married and you had to go through what life dealt you. Besides her own mother had died and her father had married a very young and rather simple woman who was busy having children of her own. The family had fulfilled its responsibility by marrying her off and the rest was her destiny. Punni Bua could not come back. She had to live out her tortured life. From my mother’s account she was the livelier sister amongst Nanni and Banni As a young girl, she was full of mischief. She also loved reading Hindi novels of her time. The girls were banned to read novels because they were bad influence on young minds. My own grandmother  Parvati,would sit in the courtyard and ask Punni to read the Hindi newspaper aloud to her. When my grandmother dozed off, Punni would start reading from her current book, BhootNath. Grandmother would wake up and say, “ Why did you stop reading? Continue.”

Punni Bua would read aloud the portion of Bhootnath and after a while my grandmother would say in wonder. ‘ What kind of news is this? These newspapermen, what stories they print.” All the other women would double up with laughter. My grandmother never found out the truth.

Much later when I read these early novels by Devakinandan Khatri I remembered the story about Punni Bua. I felt an affinity with that long gone relative.

It is my guess that once my Nanaji died my Nani’s position slipped in the family. She became dependent on her eldest son. I think she must have always been a quiet person. She lived confined to her windowless small room and rarely came out to join the family. I had never seen her participating in the family conversation or be a part of it. Every year my Uncle would take a piece of jewelry from her because according to him, there was never any money to pay lagaan on the landed property.  One year it was my grandfather’s fat gold chain ,another year his multi colored precious gems armband. My mother never said this to anyone but she believed that it was a ploy on the part of my Aunt to take possession of my Nani’s leftover jewelry, because Mother saw her father’s fat gold chain years later in my Aunt’s jewelrybox. She mentioned it to me. But at twelve or thirteen years of age, this family lore was of no interest to me. It mattered to my Mother. She reminisced how she remembered her father with his arm band and fat gold chain.

But she kept quiet. It was not her habit to be confrontational.