family

Navratri is a Hindu holiday celebrating the Mother Goddess' triumph over evil. Over the past year, I've also been thinking of it as a celebration of the collective action of people to create liberating change in our world.

Navratri is a nine-night holiday my family has celebrated for generations. In their communities back in India, both my mom and dad's family were Brahmins--a historically established privileged priest caste. My father is from a small farming village in Gujarat. His was the only Brahmin family in the mostly-Hindu village. Families went to his house for pujas, and my dad's family often led religious celebrations in their community. My mom's family is from a small town in Gujarat, and her family served a similar role in her community. After immigrating to America, they continued to celebrate Navratri as their parents did, and still do today. It's the most important holiday of the year in my family.

The mythology around the holiday is a beautiful story of female power, and the collective action of people to create change in their world. In my family's version of the story, Lord Shiva granted Mahishasura, a devout man, the wish to be more powerful than anyone on Earth and any God in heaven. Over time, Mahishasura became corrupt with his power, and created an army to take control of heaven, and exile the Gods to life on earth. Without any power to take back their land, the Gods put all their best qualities together to manifest a single, powerful, female warrior. She led the Gods to heaven and waged a nine-night war with the Mahishasura and his army. On the ninth night, she destroyed Mahishasura, and the Gods returned home.

My family has mainly celebrated this holiday as reverence to the divine mother. Growing up and celebrating women's power had an immense influence on my feminist worldview. Celebrating a Goddess, that was much bigger than our world, and fought unfathomable injustice gave me pride in being a fierce ally to my mom, my sister, and all the women-identified people I'm close to. Celebrating the feminine power that lives in all of us is an important part of this holiday for me.

But another aspect of the holiday that I've been thinking more and more about over the past few years is the decision of the Gods during a time of turmoil. Being banished from heaven, and individually being powerless to fight, the Gods decide to put their powers together. They decided to put their minds and their bodies together towards one goal to fundamentally change the state of the world they found themselves in.

Particularly over the past few years, we've seen many examples of communities coming together to change their worlds. The dynamics of each of these have been very, very different, but they share in common the collective decisions among the people that they wanted change, and they needed to work as a group to achieve it--Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Tibet, Myanmar, Wisconsin. At this very moment, people are gathered on Wall St. in New York and in financial districts in Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Baltimore and across the country. In these movements, people without power to create change alone made decisions to add their power to a group of individuals. To demand and create change as a community of voices, as a collection of minds acting together towards a common goal.

In the story of Navratri, what came after the Gods' decision to act as a group was Ambaji, the Mother Goddess, divine female energy. In the examples we see in our world today, what comes after the collective decision for action is revolution. Ambaji embodies the collective fight for change in our world. She fought a nine-night war, against a massive army that was set up right from the start to win, and she persevered. Just like we have.

Navratri is a special holiday for me, and I've been thinking a lot over the past few years about what it means for me to celebrate it, and what my celebration of it should look like. During these nine nights, I've been thinking about how I can add my mind and body to the collective actions that are taking place in my own city. I alone may not have the power to change the world today, but collectively, we have the power to do anything.

Saturday we're having a small engagement puja at my parent's house. Sheena's parents are flying into town tonight, Sheena and her brother come into town Friday, so right after work I'm picking her parents up from the airport, then the festivities will begin. It's on. Tonight we're proly gonna grab a bite to eat at Lula's, then maybe watch a movie or something. Tomorrow we're having dinner at my parent's house. Friday we're going out to eat with my sister and her fiance, then Saturday's the puja. Ooooh man! I've been cleaning my apartment like a mad man getting it ready for them to stay. Dusting things I've never dusted before, buying shit for my house I've never bought before, crazy.

But on the other side of the coin, we've been having family drama for a while now, and it's been culminating as of late. I've always been the "mediator" in my family, helping keep the peace between different members of my family at the sacrifice of my own well-being. About a year ago I decided not to do that anymore, and told everyone so. It's been hard, and the stressed situations aren't getting any less stressful. Cause my family's developed a dependency on me that they've already realized they can't depend on anymore, but now they have to figure out how to handle their relationships on their own, when negotiating and conversing under stress is not anything they've ever really had to do with each other. That's not a very pretty process to experience.... Uuuuuuugggghhh, why's this shit gotta happen now?

I had dinner with my parents last night, and apparently, my mom played the dilruba for four years in high school. Crazy! She said that her final year, her teacher was encouraging her to go to college for music, but my mom thought it would be better for her “professionaly” to go into nursing, so she did. But that explains a bit about me, huh? I wonder if my mom picked the dilruba up today, what it would be like for her, if she’d be able to remember some of the stuff she learned in high school or not. That would be CRAZY, if I could have her teach me some of the music SHE learned. Hello! Can you tell I’m excited about the idea? :P

Here’s a picture I found on the web of a girl playing a dilruba. this is NOT my mom.

I was chillin with the moms while we were eating last night. She had made ladoos—specifically, graham-flour-sugar-balls-of-splendor. I was asking her how she made them so i could give I a shot sometime, and she got into all these stories about me when I was a kid. She was saying ladoos used to be my favorite sweets. She used to make them whenever we were having people over, and keep them in a dhaba (stainless steel tin) in a cabinet under our stove. One time, she walked in on me sitting on the kitchen floor with the dhaba open in front of me, and me just chowing through the sweets. She was surprised that I knew exactly where the ladoos were and that I just went ahead and helped myself. Lol, I was like 4 (NO this didn’t happen just last week).

My mom used to keep all-purpose flower and sugar in these two canisters in a floor level cabinet under the counter. One time when I was 3, she left me in the kitchen for a minute while she went to do something in the living room. After a bit, she started thinking I was unusually quit. She came back into the kitchen, and again i was sitting on the kitchen floor, with the flour canister and sugar canister open in front of me, and I was slowly moving all the flour from the flour canister into the sugar canister—handful by handful in my little three-year old hands with the rest of me COVERED in flour. Why did i want all the flour in the sugar canister? Who in the world knows what I was thinking at that time, I couldn’t tell ya... But I could just see myself doing that, and being really into it. Lol, that definitely sounds like me. My mom didn’t want to put all the sugar in the canister to waste, so she cleaned out what flour she could and used the rest of the sugar as it was. Consequently, my dad started REALLY liking the tea my mom made. Cause she was saying the little bit of flour that ended up in the sugar made the tea a little thicker. Now that’s funny.

It was a good weekend. Yesterday for mom’s day we took my mom to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. That was cool. I’m starting to see more and more everyday how my mom really is an artist in her own right. We were talking about the gardening she does in our back yard, and her approach and the satisfaction she gets from it is almost exactly the same as me with music. Funny how that works out, huh? Then afterwards, I cooked dinner for everyone—mung bean and potato shak and rice—and we watched Love Stinks. When I first saw that movie years ago, I thought it was pretty good. But actually, it kind of sucks. It has its funny moments though.

I went to the Cubs game on Friday with Pratik and Paras. That was awesome. Bleacher seats and we won 11-0. Hells yea. Friday was a long day, I cut out of work early for the game, afterwards had a beer with Paras at some bar, Mullen's or something like that, then went home, ate, took a shower, and went to some Rush and Division bar for Jared’s girlfriend's birthday, then went to some Lincoln Park bars to hook up with another friend. I know what you’re thinking, Rush and Division? Lincoln Park? Nikhil, what’s happened to you?! Totally not my scene, but I was chillin with friends, so it was all good.

I gotta start running this week.