Country of convenience

Less then a week was remaining in Diwali, on one fine evening I was little tired after a long jog. I got a call from my friend,

“Are you ready?”

I said, “For what?”

“We are going for dandiya, you don’t know?”

“Dandiya, this time? Navratri is over and it’s almost 2 weeks now”

“Well, there is dandiya program in UMBC College”. Hmmmm, interesting! Let’s go then. I love dandiya too much so I didn’t mind!!!

Traditionally Navratri is 9 days time period when people worship goddess “Shakti” by playing Garba and dandiya, people who are more religious do fast for 9 days. But here in US, it’s all about convenience! Nobody can afford to play Garba for 9 continuous days, after all people here are busy in jobs so they could find time on “weekends” only. In weekends also, specifically on Saturday, because if they do it on Sunday then there would be problem in job early in the morning on Monday. So in US, Navratri begin earlier in time and goes up to diwali. Garba would be arranged on weekends and such 4 to 5 weekends would form a Navratri (Rather “US Navratri”). Once Garba is over people would do Aarti and then “Prasad” would be distributed but making some Indian item as “Prasad” is little inconvenient, so what? Let’s use American branded cookies and chocolate chips. Cool!! “Kya prasad hai??”

Same is the case for Diwali, it’s on this Thursday but again people are busy so can’t do it on weekday. So what? Let’s do it on weekend! We’ve a Diwali program in a temple on this Sunday because Sunday is a “convenient day”.

Now lets see how we celebrate 15^th august, an independence day in US. My friend, Mahesh who is a project co-coordinator of infosys is staying in charlottle, NC. They’ve a team of about 15 Indians and out of patriotism, team decided to celebrate our independence day, 15^th aug. They got together at one place; I thought they would sing a national anthem, hoist a national flag or do something that would help the country in direct or indirect way BUT no. They prepared some snacks, tea and coffee and did a party (full time pass, basically “Jo dimag me aye, jo bhi achchha lage, voh karo!!”).

These were very few incidents to narrate; as time will pass I would come across more fancy and customized way of celebrating festivals and national days. Whatever my future experience would be but for now I can conclude one thing for sure: “US is truly a country of convenience!!!”