ROCK-E

Did you celebrate Raksha Bandhan yesterday? Did your kids?

I have many vivid memories of my Renu Faiba coming over and tying what appeared to be a friendship bracelet onto my dad. My dad then gave her jewelry. Seemed like a good trade-off to me! I wasn't privy to what the ritual meant until much later and, while I understand peoples' feathers getting ruffled by the idea that sisters need to be "protected" and whanot--the tradition to me can be simply about carving out a time to appreciate the special relationship between a brother and a sister. Period. Full stop. We are always talking about ways to incorporate Indian traditions into our American lives--this seems like an easy one to fold into the mix, and what a way to create memories for our kids.

My sister and I don't have brothers, but our cousins from India always said that we were their "sisters" and as much as we didn't understand that as kids, we love it now. (Feel the same way but live too far away to actually tie the bracelet on? Send an ecard.) As for my kids: We did a little, makeshift rakhi ceremony this morning and, gotta say, it was pretty cute. In classic my style--we didn't do it on the right day and the rakhi were a bit unconventional, having been fashioned from string and odds and ends in our house. But the sentiment was pure...!

I do wonder: What would happen if a sister tied a rakhi onto another sister? Do you think it would bastardize the tradition?

Just some food/friendship bracelets/presents for thought...! Happy day after Raksha Bandhan to everyone!

Celebrating New Year's Eve with Kids

New Year's Eve isn't the easiest holiday to celebrate with kids. First, of course, there is the issue of timing--keeping kids up, I now know, does not necessarily bring CPS to your door but you almost wish it did the morning after, when you have uber-cranky and unruly monsters on your hands. Plus, the stuff of New Year's Eve--sparkly dresses, flutes of champagne, reminiscing about the year--is just very adult. That being said, New Year's can be lots of fun with your little ones and it's a great opportunity to make traditions that can be part of your family folklore for years to come. Some ideas on how to celebrate the mark of 2009 with your children:

Noon Year's Eve Party

Create a party at 12 p.m. instead of 12 a.m. Invite some kids to come over to your house at 11 a.m. on Dec. 31. Have the kids watch the ball drop in Times Square (taped from the year before). Make a ginger ale toast, make festive hats, blow noisemakers, dance under disco lights, make sundaes, be festive. Or you could have the party at 12 p.m. on Jan. 1 and show the taped recording from this year.

Indian New Year

Since India is twelve and a half hours ahead (the half! why the half!), you can start celebrating New Years in India right around noon (on the west coast)--Indian midnight. Make it fun for adults and kids alike by shaking up some easy Indian cocktails, like a Tamarind-margarita or one of many concoction based upon Sub-rosa vodka, with its decidedly Indian notes of toasted cumin, lemony orange, ginger, black peppers, and red chilis. You could do this for any country. Try an Italian New Year and have a pizza party starting at 6 p.m.--midnight in Italy. And check out these recipes for some cool kids cocktails so the babies don't feel left out of the imbibing...!

Clock Party

My friend A. started a tradition of making clocks with her kids every New Year's eve. Her kids are now 8 and 4, and they have quite a few clocks in their collection. There are many ways to do this, but why not start simple? This kit comes with a step-by step poster for easy assembly. And here are 4 other basic kits. (For the classic Indian over-achiever mom, check out this site for actual clock parts.) The basic clocks are super colorful and, according to A., making the clocks together affords you the opportunity to teach your kids about time, as well as places around the world, since you can set the clock to the time of different countries. Gotta love the fun with the hidden educational component. Kind of like sneaking those green beans into the spaghetti sauce.

Once you have made our clock, you can set it 's alarm to whatever time to you deem to be "midnight" and herald in the new year.

Time Capsule

This one's my favorite. You and your kids can fill a box with all sorts of circa-2008 items--toys, photos, magazine collages. There's no limit. You can use anything as a time capsule as long as it's waterproof and airtight. If you have any of those popcorn tins from the holidays lying around--those are perfect. And, depending on how young and/or interested your kids are, you can unearth the capsule as soon as next year or as late as, say, your eldest's high school graduation! The fun part is making it an adventure and explaining to your kids that you are a bunch of explorers in your house, searching for artifacts to bury. Make tinfoil hats as necessary, and turn hiding the capsule into the centerpiece of the event.

Bubble Wrap Stomp and Balloon Drop

Two fun add-ons to any of the above ideas, or parties in their own right. For the bubble wrap stomp, all you need is a bunch of packing materials. Attach bubble tape to any surface and let the kids at it. Make sure to get the bubble wrap with the big bubbles (which pack more of a firecracker-like sound than those puny bubbles) and synchronize the stomp with whatever time you are calling "midnight." The fun is in the sound, and in the contagious energy of a bunch of kids jumping and dancing on the stuff at the same time.

The balloon drop is a little more involved but kids LOVE it. Here's how to do it:

• Line up two rectangular paper tablecloths and punch holes every 2 to 3 inches down one long side of each.

• Stitch the tablecloths together with yarn, leaving a foot or so at the end for a rip cord. Tape the cloth to the ceiling on three sides, leaving the side opposite the rip cord open. Tape the cord up separately, so it's accessible. Let the center of the cloth hang down to allow space for the balloons.

• Inflate at least 75 balloons, buy thin streamers and metallic confetti.

• Stuff the cloth with balloons, then add the confetti and streamers on top. (Reverse it, and the confetti will weigh down the cloth and filter out ahead of time.) Tape up the last side of the cloth.

• Let her rip! Just one strong pull tears through the paper, releasing a cascade of balloons and confetti--and some seriously amused children .

Forget about it and get a Babysitter

Always a good option!

Enjoy, and here's to great things in 2009!

Merry Krishnamas?

I grew up celebrating Christmas. Sort of. We put up a tree, we exchanged gifts. We listened to carols and, as my sister and I got older, we looked at Christmas as a time for our family to come together, spend time at home, drink hot buttered drinks, celebrate and be thankful. We never went to Mass or put up nativity scenes (and, in fact, my dad for some reason has always liked the look of menorahs so we put up one of those one year) but, when people ask if we celebrated Christmas as kids, we always say yes.

We also celebrated Diwali. My mom would have big Diwali parties, would light floating candles, and every year would remind me that my name derived from this festival. Diwali was never explained to us as an "Indian Christmas"--I can see how that could be annoying. But, in all honesty, we also didn't celebrate it with the gusto with which I remember celebrating December 25th.

Which all comes to a head, now, of course, when thinking about whether my kids will celebrate Christmas. My husband never believed in Santa Claus and his family never really celebrated Christmas. He has memories--which he will proudly recite--about debunking Christmas mythology and the existence of Santa to his 6 year old friends at school (there may have been tears). While he will indulge me, he thinks I'm a little silly to put up a tree, garlands, stockings, and ask to be taken to see the holiday decorations in the department store windows and "the houses with the best Christmas lights." (I think I'm a little silly too. But I still ask to see this stuff). But, as in many spheres of our life, there has been a shift in my husband in terms of his perspective on this holiday since we've had kids. After he and my 3 year old put up our tree (and my son essentially thought his dad was the most amazing person on the planet for making the glittery shimmery object materialize from our garage), he even told me that he is glad I "make him do this"...! (I wish I had had Dave Chapelle's home stenographer around so that I could always remember this moment...)

I would like to give our kids Christmas. First of all, I have so many memories of the time of year from my own childhood and we often want to pass on the happy traditions from our own youth, right? Plus, Christmas doesn't really seem Christian to me. For better or for worse, it just seems "American," like Thanksgiving or Halloween. Obviously this provides a host of issues as well--because, really, even the secular traditions around most holidays, American and not, are baffling when you try to think about them rationally--but, end of the day: We are American. We are a part of it. Is it worth fighting this particular manifestation of it?


I don't think so. But I could be wrong. Once in a while I am. Ha. No, seriously, I do wonder about whether it would be "better" to explain to my kids from an early age that we aren't Christian and we don't celebrate this holiday. Maybe use the season as an opportunity to discuss diversity of viewpoints and religion. On the flip side, I just don't care enough to be one of those people who insists that this period of time be called "the holidays" instead of "Christmas". Neither do these Hindus so I guess I'm not alone in being rubbed the wrong way by the overly-PC nature of some very well-meaning people.

As for the fact that Christmas really is about--well--Jesus. I'm reminded of a story my husband told me about the Christian missionaries arriving in India to spread their gospel. One of the missionaries walked into an Indian temple and showed the Hindus a picture of Jesus. "This is our lord Jesus Christ," the missionary said. The priest looked at the man, looked at the picture, took it from the missionary's hand and tacked it onto his wall--above various images of Krishna, Ganesha, and others. When the missionary protested--"No, Jesus is the only God, you have to take those other images down"--the Indian priest was baffled. "We have many Gods here," he said, leaving the missionary speechless.

So be it that Christmas is about Jesus. We have a rich cultural tradition of accepting different faiths anyway.

We will be spending Christmas with my parents, my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law, my nephew, and of course our kids. We'll eat tons, we'll exchange presents, we'll sit around the fire and re-hash stories we've told before. There will be a tree.

I can't wait and I'm kind of "pro" any excuse that gets this particular group of people together...

Happy Bakri-Id

Tomorrow is Bakri-id, one of the most celebrated Muslim festivals and a day of Muslim sacrifice. A Happy Eid day to Muslims everywhere. In light of the terror attacks in Mumbai, many Muslims are going out of their way to express that their Islam is a peaceful, loving one, and to condemn the recent events.

We are all capable of contemplating and remembering the events still going on in Mumbai without condemning an entire religion.

Here is one of the more poignant tribute to the Mumbai attacks I have yet to see, music by Karsh Kale: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89yzoIAmhPU

The words in the middle of the video are Gandhi's. Many thanks to Nehal for the video.

Porn for Devis with Babies

Household chores are the number one thing that couples with children fight about, according to a survey I read recently. Indeed, in today’s society where gender roles have become largely undefined, it’s up to each couple to figure out the division of labor. Will you cook while your husband cleans, or vice versa? Who will do, fold and put away the laundry? How about the bills, the grocery shopping, the light bulb that needs changing?

You may have read Lisa Belkin’s New York Times article over the summer about couples who do everything equally. They "work equal hours, spend equal time with their children, take equal responsibility for their home.” This small group of people understand “that this would mean recalibrating their career ambitions, and probably their income, but what they gained, they believed, would be more valuable than what they lost.”

I read the article with avid interest, and then thought of whether I actually know any desi couples who practice “equally shared parenting.” You already know my answer, don't you?

The vast majority of Devis with babies still take on most of the housework. We usually cook and clean more, spend more time with our kids than our husbands do, and have more responsibilities around the home. Even if our husbands share the household tasks, we are still the proactive ones who know when the laundry needs to get done, what the diaper bag needs to be packed with, what’s for dinner. At parties, we're usually the ones in the kitchen, setting out the plates and making sure the food is warm. I also realized that among most of the desi couples I know, the husband/father spends more time working. So it could be argued that both female and male roles among second-generation desis are more traditional. Either way, we usually get stuck with the mundane daily tasks.

This may be an obvious observation, but it interests me nonetheless. What is it about us Devis that makes us more prone to embrace traditional gender roles? Is it because our parents were more traditional, and we’re just once removed from the homeland? As far as I know, we didn’t know when we got married, or had kids, that it would inevitably be this way. Many of us planned for it not to be so.

Also, it doesn't come easily: most of us go through periods of figuring it all out (a.k.a. fighting), and then arrive at some imperfect yet livable situation for awhile, until we get sick of it and try to find a better solution again. A friend of mine jokingly told me that while her husband uses porn to get off, all she needs is a house that he helped her clean to get her in the mood.

Why, all these years after women's lib and migrating from the homeland, are we still stuck with the housework? And, perhaps as a more productive discussion, what works and doesn't work with the division of labor in your home?

A Cheat Sheet for School Diwali Presentations

Oh, crap. Tomorrow’s Diwali, and one of the teachers at your child’s school has asked you to do a presentation on the holiday for her class this week. Is she kidding? Does she think that just because you originally hail from the Indian subcontinent, and/or are a Hindu, you should know what Diwali is all about??

The little-known secret among many of us is that we really have no clue, do we. We want to hand down these cultural traditions, but truth be told, oftentimes we're just winging it. We don’t live in an entire country that does rangoli designs in front of their houses on the same day. One entire isle of Rite Aid doesn't get converted for Diwali. We don’t even have the option of doing a version of “Chrismukkah” -- December’s too far away for Christwali, and I’m not sensing a mass movement for Diwaloween.

This, Devis, is what DwB is here for. We’ve already covered ten ways to celebrate Diwali with your own kids, but how about introducing it to non-Indians? It’s important to enlighten your child’s classmates about Indian culture, right? Maybe then your kid won’t seem so “other” to them. Maybe a Diwali presentation is what will bridge the gap of understanding between cultures, so that your child will finally be accepted for who he/she is, become popular, get better grades, and eventually become the next president of the United States.

Or maybe you just don’t want to look bad in front of your kid’s teacher. Either way, here are some ideas we’ve gleaned from around the Web.

1. You’ll have to start with a 5-minute talk on “What is Diwali,” but don’t fret, there are people who know about this sort of thing and have done it for you. Try National Geographic’s new, panreligious explanation of Diwali, or LearnHub’s Diwali one-pager. Also, recruit the first generation! They usually know what they’re talking about. Ask your parents, uncles, or aunts to come with you and help out.

2. Have the kids make Diwali collages: Type “Diwali” into Flickr (or just click here) and print out some of the beautiful photos that appear. Add scissors, glue and paper, and you’re ready to go.

3. If the kids are older, have them make rangoli designs. Type “rangoli” into Google Images and print out some of the photos. The kids can recreate the designs with chalk on chalkboards or, if the school is willing, on the ground in an outside area.

4. If you’re more ambitious, try having them make diyas with self-hardening clay and paint. Both of these are available at kids’ toy stores. Or if you’re crafy, try this 15-minute, 5-ingredient recipe for a Diwali favorite, coconut barfi. (Check with your kid’s teacher to make sure this is copacetic to do, and leave out the nuts for allergies.)

How to Celebrate Diwali With Your Kids

As Devis with Babies in the 1.5- or second-generation category, our knowledge of Indian culture is pretty random. We may be able to remember the ingredients of herbal cold remedies our moms gave us, or know the names of the major Hindu gods, but we'll have no idea what that mystery spice in our kitchen is, or what exactly happens in the Ramayana.

So celebrating holidays can be a crapshoot. I have some vague recollections of how we used to celebrate Diwali. I remember a puja my dad used to do involving gold coins, kumkum and water that was apparently from the Ganga. I remember my mom making tons of of "sweetmeats" in the weeks beforehand. And the best memory of all: On Diwali night, I remember going through the house switching on the lights, and not being scolded, as I was every other night, for not turning them off.

Now, suddenly, I find myself responsible for my daughter's future memories of Diwali. It’s a major holiday, and I want her to experience it in some way. But I’m not going to do a puja because I have no idea how to, and I definitely am not making any "sweetmeats."

So, as I often do when I am perplexed about decisions in life, I turned to the Internet and cobbled together this list.

Ten Insta-Culture Ways to Celebrate Diwali With Your Child!
1. Going along with the Diwali theme of lights, string Christmas lights up outside your home. It will make the neighbors wonder.

2. Buy diyas, available at all Indian stores right now, and light them around your home or in a particular room. Then, open up the doors and windows. The significance of this is apparently that if Lakshmi sees your home lit up and open invitingly, she will enter, thereby gracing you with prosperity for the year to come. (And who couldn’t use a little prosperity right now?)

3. Better yet, make your own diyas with your child. Use self-hardening clay to create a little bowl. Glue a tea light inside of it, and use paint to decorate it. Fairly simple.

4. Spread the wealth: Donate to a charity, whether it's local or in India. Involve your child in deciding which charity to donate to, and make it a yearly family tradition.

5. Have a gambling party. It's done all over India, since this is meant to be a particularly auspicious time of the year, paisa-wise.

6. Create a rangoli design with your little one. In India these designs are done at the front door using colored chalk powder, colored rice and spices. Since I have no idea where to buy colored chalk powder, and I'm not going to food-color rice anytime soon, I'll probably just use some colored paints, and rip off the rather nice rangoli designs here.

7. Exchange small gifts with friends. Last year, my friend gave little diyas to her friends' children, personalized with their names. She also got us a children's book about Diwali. I was super impressed.

8. When your kid asks you, "Mommy, what is Diwali?" don't get panicked -- whip out a book! Here are some more Diwali books for children.

9. Buy sparklers and watch your kid squeal in delight. If you're adventurous, and if your local area allows it, buy other kinds of legal fireworks and set them off. I will stick to sparklers since I'd rather not burn the house down.

10. Hang out with other devis who know what they're doing. Then, copy them. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

How do you plan to celebrate Diwali?