Culture Education:   Lesson 1

Come January and I remember the Makar Sankrant 0f 2006 at Detroit.

I was visiting my daughter there. The whole coterie of their Indian NRI friends had decided to celebrate the Sankrant together at Kavita’s place in the evening.

That day, me and my daughter were preparing to make ‘tilgul’ and sitting at the dining table, were engaged in cleaning the sesame seeds and roasted peanuts, cutting the dried coconut into thin wedges etc. I mean, you know how ‘tilgul’ is made, right? Nothing to it! In fact, it is quite simple. (However, both of us had balked at making the ‘halva’. I mean, who has patience enough? The idea of burnt fingers did not exactly appeal either.)

Mitali, my 6-year old granddaughter walked in with her ‘fuse beads’, and asked us ‘What are you doing?” in an off-hand manner.

Sitting at the dining table, she started to make a pattern with beads on a template. That was an ‘Arts and Crafts’ project she was supposed to do.

I was not going to waste this golden opportunity of imparting to Mitali the knowledge of our culture, traditions, ethos or whatever.

So, I gave her a regular ‘Bauddhik’. (I suppose ‘Discourse’ might be a word that can substitute for ‘Bauddhik’.) I told Mitali, how Makar Sankrant i.e. winter solstice according to the Hindu calendar, signifies rejuvenation of Earth after a hard, cold winter. I told her how we in India celebrate this festival by distributing the sweet cakes made of sesame seeds and jaggery to everyone and ask them to be always nice and polite to everyone, thus symbolically spreading sweetness all around. I even told her that before Columbus discovered the Americas, people in India had to use sesame seed oil for everyday cooking because peanuts and peanut oil were unknown. (Here she asked me “You mean you had no peanut butter also?” When I said yes, she was horrified. )

 

 

I also told her that her ‘Tilu auntie’s name was actually ‘Tilottama’ and told her the meaning of the name. Promptly she decided to call Tilu auntie as ‘Sesame seeds auntie’ and we had a hard time dissuading her from it.

Nostalgia assailed me when I thought of the ‘haldikunkums’ we had held in out home and the postcards that we had received with a tiny silk bag of ‘halwa’ sewn into a corner, from friends and relatives.

My daughter was listening to all this with an amused smile on her face, but now she came out with “Oh come on Mama! She is not doing Ph. D. under you. Why are you bothering her with all that nonsense? At this rate, she will start oozing Culture out of her ears.”

Well, one’s daughters are generally like that. She was not appreciating the effort on my part to educate Mitali about our culture.

“Mama, why don’t you tell her the story of ‘Ali Baba and Forty thieves’ instead? That will amuse her more. That story also has your favorite theme, the ‘sesame seeds’.” Thus spake my daughter, the Sage of our family!

“Oh! Go fly a kite, like the Gujjus do on a Sankrant day” I said in exasperation because I do not like to change tracks suddenly.

However, Mitali had heard the word ‘story’ and started to clamor for it. She is insatiable as far as stories are concerned.

I had no choice, so I gave my daughter a dirty look and started to tell Mitali the story of “The Ali Baba and Forty thieves”. I had come to the point in the story where the thieves have gone away and Ali Baba is standing before the closed cave. He already has the password.

“So, Ali Baba stood before the cave and said “Open Sesame”. To his delight, the cave opened. Ali Baba was a bit scared, but he went inside.”

Here I paused for dramatic effect and asked Mitali, “What do you think he found inside the cave?”

Mitali clapped her hands in glee and said excitedly, “I know Grandma. He found Elmo the Big Bird, Global Grover, Bert, Ernie, Oscar, Fluffy, Zoe and Kermit the Frog.” 

“And Cookie Monster and Baby Bear” She added happily as an afterthought.

I dropped my jaw. My daughter burst out laughing. I was totally confused. I mean, OK, I did not know the names of the forty thieves, but I was sure that these were certainly not their names. Was there a female thief among the forty? There was one Marjina of course, but she was not one of the forty thieves, right? Yes, yes, she was Ali Baba’s servant. Who was Zoe, then?

I mean WHO were these people?

I turned to my daughter. “Will you please stop laughing and tell me who are these characters?” I asked her.

She was still laughing, but managed to blurt out “Oh, Mama, your expression was so priceless! Mom, those are the characters from “The Sesame Street”. It is a highly popular children’s program on TV.

Then she imparted a ‘Bouddhik’ to me about the program and also showed it to me on TV.

That is how I learnt my first lesson in The American Culture.