Reflections in time

This Sunday we had invited nearly 6 families to our place over lunch. Though it was mainly for rehearsing the group Bhajan which we are planning to sing in our upcoming Dashara festival under the auspices of BACA. Since most of them happened to be Maitnils, I decided to prepare all the ethnic food of our region. As a result we had cooked Tisi Sajman, Oalak chokha, Kumharauri bhanta aa muniga, Kadima bhujiya chana daal ke sang and many other typical Maithil dishes, followed by Madhurs. It required lots of efforts to arrange for all these items. Tisi was the most difficult to arrange. And to make the Oal not “kabkab“, we had to apply lots of innovation. Full credits to Seema as she managed all these items so well that every one was thrilled to eat and enjoy the food.

Since morning we were waiting for guests to show up and it was about 1′o clock when people started showing up. The space in my home was very congested and we accommodated everyone somehow. But more than anything else it was the togetherness, similar language, sharing the jokes and overall Mithilang in the air that we enjoyed very much. Once we had finished our foods, we started thinking about our Bhajans. We decided that there should be three Bhajans in sequence. It was agreed by all that first one will be the famous Bhajan by Maithili’s great poet Vidyapati - “Jai Jai Bhiravi..” Followed by this will be either “Payo ji maine Raam Ratan Dhan Payo” or “Shree Raam Kripal Bhajoman“. Finally we will have a Aarti Bhajan sung by Mukesh.

Since this was our first gathering, and also we were not sure as which all Bhajans we were to sing, we decided that we will have lyrics for Bhajans and if possible mp3 version of the Bhajans sent to all by e-mail. We also decided that we will meet again once before the real performance and everyone agreed for October 1.

Slowly people started leaving as everyone had to catch up with their arrangements for the next week. But we had a very good discussion started in general about our culture and topics related to Mithila. What interested everyone the most was a discussion I started on how to preserve our culture and motivate the next generation to be interested into it. There were many ideas, experiences shared and suggestions in that direction. I had in fact asked Raja Roy, who is publishing the souvenir for coming BACA festival to include a kind of interview on it. One suggestion from Prof. Vinay came to include the question as why the younger generation do not seek alliance in the Indian community. Over all it was such a good discussion that it lasted for almost 3 hours and finally everyone left at around 7:30 PM. I was so happy and satisfied to have a very good discussion that I am looking for more such opportunities. Toward the end of our discussion, Prof. Vinay had suggested us to join with one Prof. Ramashary Singh at Hamilton to carry on this kind of thought provoking discussions and how to pick some of the ideas for implementation.

One day we will. For now we are still debating the importance of Maithili for our daily conversation and continuing the Maithili culture in our way of life. But one thing is for sure that I enjoy more than any cuisines, the dishes prepared in our old Mithila way, do not know what could be the reasons but I enjoy them the most!

What a weekend was that! 

Last weekend was a very busy one. On Saturday morning I woke up hearing the door bell. It was 6:45 AM and the guy to change our garage door had already shown up. Then he started the work and it went on for almost 4 hours. The look of the house has completely changed with recent upgrades. I have got all the windows painted and each window has now got blinds. The look of the house has improved considerably. The garage door was the last on in series. Although the original door had still got 2 years of life if we had upgraded some of the parts but for some reasons I went for the new garage door. One was that the new ones are much lighter, insulated and do not require to be painted as it has PVC coat. The second reason is that the new door installation has insulation all over the doors and since we have a room just above the garage, this will definitely help in keeping that room warmer and as a result the utility bills will be chopped off in a longer run. And finally the changes of springs and  few other components were going to cost me at least $300 and the lie expectancy was maximum of 2 years or so. But overall Seema wanted a garage door with glass windows on top and so we finally went for it. The change has brought a new life in the look of the house.

After the garage door change, we started getting ready for Hursh’s soccer match. The day was going to be the final day of the season. It was the match for consolation place (3rd place) and the boys played their hearts out but eventually they again lost 5-2. Hursh was playing great and he demonstrated a great improvement in his skills in the last match. He was very aggressive and his kicks were very powerful ones. One of his kicks was almost going in the net but unfortunately his own team mate came in way. That was gem of the powerful kicks he had that day. Other kick I will remember was one which went straight to the face of another player from opposition and he simply went down, such was power in his kick. But on one occasion, he unfortunately didn’t tackle cleanly and that resulted in a collision with the player from his opposition and that knocked him down near 20 yards from the the goal post. The referee awarded a penalty kick and since then they could not maintain the lead. That time they were leading by 1-0. Finally the boys were very dejected and the other side played some outstanding soccer. Reid, Hursh’s team’s start striker and Mathew, the star defense playe,  both were not playing to their potential. Mathew was injured and Reid was emotionally broken down as previous night he had lost his baseball match as well. Eventually they could not put up a good show in last two matches, the semi final and match or third position, which mattered the most. Parents were also disappointed and we all felt that ours was one of the strongest team but unfortunately we just could not play together in last few matches. Ironically, Hursh’s team had beaten all the top three teams very convincingly! Some of them were beaten with margin as huge as 4-1 and so, but then the win was not to be on their side when it mattered the most!

Finally we went for the trophy distribution and the top three teams were given individual medals and a trophy each. Hursh was very disappointed and I felt for him, for he is very competitive player and he always would tell me before entering the field..”Oh  we are facing yellow team, we will beat them!” and likes. That was his spirit and he always charged up the team to the fullest! But now there he was seating a bit disappointed. To add to their insult the organizer did not call his team after 3rd position and started randomly and they got trophies at the very end!  

But he was very excited even with whatever he received, though each one of them received that, it was more for participation than for what they played! Often the end result do not reflect the overall performance and this tournament was one of those!

Yash was very shy and would hide away here and there. At the end coach gave away some candies with pesonal remarks about each player. Hursh did not want to share his candies with Yash and that cause Yash to almost cry, finally he agreed to share a bit.

This is what they deserved:

Hursh and his teammates were having lots of fun otherwise. they were playing a lot in the field. He is able to do the jump and pulling up very well thanks to his teammates who showed him the way and he simply copied them:

We left for home and I finished some of my work for office from home. In the evening we were invited by Manish as they are celebrating Ganesh Chaturthe with great fun and flare. We came back in the night and I wanted to complete the scripts for my skit which I was hoping to be enacted duing the Dashara meet being organized by BACA.

Next day in BACA meeting I ran through all my propsed points for finalizing with the working committee but many of them are of diferent thoughts. While few of my suggested ideas were liked by them, majority of my thoughts were rejected, including my skit. I felt very disappointed and for a moment I decided to quit the association. It hurts and anguishes me, when people just try to follow the age old thought procrsses rather than live in the present world.  The group unfortunaely do not encourage fresh ideas and just want to satisfy themselves by fulfilling their immediate goal and be content with that. My thoughts are little different. I prefer involvement of people in general in all the activities. Anyhow, when I came back from the meeting to home, I requested Binoy Prasad, one of our members of BACA to drop by at our place and have tea with us. He and his wife came and we decided to have some Bhajans in chorus and include that as this year’s one of the items in the function. I was very tired at the end of the day. But it was quite an eventful week.

At the very end of this blog, I would like to share a very funny photograph with you all. I could not stop myself but take this photograph, with due apologies to the father whom I could have never asked for permission for such a photograph, but they were walking allover and what a delight was to watch them move around on a lush green grass!

So finally Yash has grown up big enough to start his school. He has grown up and perhaps can’t be called a kid anymore. Particularly the way he handled the whole affairs, makes me feel that he is no more a kid but very matured boy. Two years back I had never imagined that this boy will have a such a sea change! He used to cling with Seema all the time and there he was now, so independent! Amazing, simply amazing. In last 2 years almost every week we have noticed changes in Yash and he is becoming a perfect child. One example is that until six months back he did not know colours, shape, numbers or alphabets. In a weeks time he grasped everything to the perfection. so much so that he could start alphabet from anywhere. Like if I say F, G..and he will pick the sequence from there or say Q, R,..and he would start form S, T…and so on. That tells m one thing for sure that his brain is developed much more than what we could have expected, he is sure going to be something special, I am sure. He has shown amazing improvement in Kumon also where he has to tell words for the pictures. Recently he remembered few songs on his own and he sings often when in mood, like Hadi Ohm Hadee, Hadi Ohm Hadee…(Hari Om Hari..song)! It is very interesting to hear that. But he is extremely shy. If one starts observing him or if I go near him with camera, everything ceases and he starts hiding! He is shy to the EXTREME! Also, he uses both hands(it appears he is ambidextrous) so well that we are confused as which hand we should encourage him to start writing with. As a result he does not write at all. We will see what he eventually prefers himself.   

So here he is staring his first serious business of his life!

I decided to start late for my office yesterday. Around 8:30 Yash and Hursh were ready and all set to start for the school. Hursh is a seasoned player now and he was not that excited. Though his school had already started a day before on Tuesday and Yash had to start yesterday. Yash had already purchased his favourite Madagascar printed school bag. When I was all set to start I took their photographs:

He was very excited and Hursh was teasing him with what he should and what he should not do in the school. He was mainly concerned with the fact that if he does something awkward, principal should not call him from his class room as he would be embarrassed. But Yash was not understanding much of what he was talking about.

Finally Seema also came out and we were all set to start. We wanted to have some memorable photographs for the occasion, so here are they:

And one with me as well:

Finally we were all set to start. Although school is not far from our home, may be it is 700 m, we still went by car.

Once we reached the school, I was busy in recording as well as taking few snaps here and there and meanwhile Hursh left for his class. He was not very keen to see all of us assembling there. The occasion was very touchy one. All the parents were there and many kids were crying. But Yash was more than anything, puzzled as what was going to happen next!

Each kid was asked to stand in the line. Mr. LeGaree(Yash’s class teacher) was busy in talking to all the parents and kids. Some of the kids were very bold and they were moving around and talking to other kids as well.

Finally the first bell rang and we were getting ready for the moment. After another two bell rings, the door of the class room opened. And that was the moment! A small step by little fellow is beginning of a LONG journey ahead! All the parents and kids went inside. I also went inside and did lot of video recordings.

After a while when all the students settled down, Mr. LeGaree came and started talking to each of the kids in a very mild and friendly way. That must have soothed each one of them. Then after a while he asked each one of them to respond with “Good Morning” when their names were to be called.  Few did and rest of them just raised their hand. When Yaaash (that is how most of the people pronounce his name!) was called, he could not even look at him. He was smiling and had his mouth opened and was trying to hide out..something we know about him, that he is extremely shy (Lajkotar as we call him)! Mr. LeGaree had to look around to find him! For most of the time he was watching everything happening around him! Then there was national anthem “O Canada…” and everyone stood up. To my surprise there were many kids who were reciting the anthem so well, much to my shame as I am yet to memorize it.

After that the attendance call continued. One boy was hiding behind his father. When his name was called, his father had to say that he was there hiding behind him. On the other hand there was a girl who was crying endlessly. The ambiance in the classroom was set to the perfection and the kids will start loving it in no time.

I had to leave for my office and seeing that Yash was not only comfortable but was enjoying the class as well, I left for the office. Seema was to drop me off at the bus stop and she went for other woks. Finally at 11:30 she went to pick him up from the school and he was waiting outside in a line with smile at his face! Much to the delight of Seema! She was so relieved to see that as some of the kids were crying or had grim on their faces! This is what something Hursh used to do long time back, four years back! Yash was very excited and happy. Seema was telling me that he was very keen to go back to the school again. That is a very happy development. So finally, Yash ban gaya gentleman!!   

We had been looking forward for this trip for quite sometime. It was Labour Day holiday here in Canada and Labor Day in the USA. I had taken off on Friday instead and left office early on Thursday to start the journey. Initially I had planned to start on Friday and return on Tuesday as I was planning for holiday on Tuesday. But Hursh’s re-opening of the school and his soccer semifinal match on Tuesday forced me to change my program and instead we started on Thursday evening. It worked out to be good as we did not have too much of traffic on Thursday night and while return also on Monday we had very comfortable journey back.

We left home exactly at 5:00PM and up to Hamilton we were sailing through smoothly and then we faced a heavy traffic volume. That took away our nearly an hour. But our travel beyond the bridge in the USA was very smooth. We stopped at somewhere in New York state around 6:30 PM and then we continued for quite some time. Kids were having fun while watching the movie. The DVD player was serving its purpose very well. With just one stopping I continued driving till around 1:00 AM. We were too tired to drive further. In fact we had almost completed 3/4th of the journey so we decided to stop for the overnight in a motel. It was somewhere in Massachusetts and close to Boston. The motel was one of those Motel 8 series. We were too tired and soon we went to sleep. Morning we got up around 8:30 AM and started around 9:30 after having the breakfast served as complimentary by the motel.

We reached Augusta around 2:30 PM. This time driving was more of an enjoyable trip than a “task”. Kids also had lots of fun and we enjoyed a lot. Maine is a beautiful state with lots of natural greeneries and its very thinly populated. Augusta is the capital but it did not look like a capital city at all. It looked more like a small city and there are no major landmark or any sort of buildings of prominence. When we reached at 28 Blaine Avenue, it appeared to be a very old street with buildings looking very fragile and antique. The street was not maintained well too. I was wondering whether we have come to the right place or not but Seema got down and when Mayurakshi opened the door we were relaxed. We had to park the car on the rear side of the house. Once we went inside the house, it appeared to be quite a good house and kids were busy playing.

In the evening we “attempted” to go to Portland, a nearby big city. But dependency on GPS let us down as we had used one 128 MB memory card in it and Pintu had loaded map for Augusta city only on that. There was no map for way to Portland. We lost our way and we moved around on highways for nearly 2 hours and finally reached Pizza Hut for our dinner. After our dinner we decided to go to K-Mart, as Seema insisted to see the store, we had never been to a K-Mart before. There was not much to see there but Pintu bought a inflatable mattress and a Nintendo Gameboy game cartridge for Hursh. He was busy in that game afterwords.

Next day we started for Acadia State Park. The park is amazing. It took us a long drive to reach there. almost 4-5 hours. We stopped at one Lick’s for ice-cream and then carried on. There was a visitor’s centre for which we had to climb nearly 50 steps! But for each visitor the office had tour guides to help you decide how to go about the park depending on the interest areas. In fact they used to highlight the driving directions as well on a map. That made our life much easier as we knew that what all we were going to see and enjoy.  

We stopped at one place and that offered a majestic view of Atlantic ocean. We did not enjoy much that after a while, as it was too hot to stand in the sun. We started further and stopped at another attraction. This place had a cave kind of rock holdings made by the water. The water splashing there gave us a beutiful feeling. We wanted to go clser and closer to that. Initially it appeared very risky and difficult, but slowly we made it!

At times I was worried for the kids but eventually with lots of cautioning and care, both kids made it slowly. The rocks had many imprints of dried sea plants on it which had solidiied in due course of time and since we had taken off our footwears, it caused us lots of pain. Beside the water was very cold and we could not stand there for long. It was very small version of rock climbing fo us as we had to find the rock folds to make three-point contacts, something I recalled from my old days of trekking and rock climing at Tekri, Garhwal. We had been o trekking course for almost a week under Bachendri Pal, the fist Indian female mountanieer to conquer the Everest.

We spent almost an hour or so at that point. We started for our ongoing journey within the park. On our way to the car Hursh noticed one larva and he was thrilled to see it for quite some time. Our next stop was at a sea beach. But since no one had carried swimwear we stayed there for very short time and continued. By this time evryone was hungry and we wanted food desparately. But the problem was that the restaurant was at the end of our one-way journey, called Loop Road, and if we skipped something, we were to miss forever. So our attempts were to cover as much as possible before we come to the end of our journey and stopped for lunch.

There was a very good  point, I fogot what that was called but it had a small passage between two walls made naturally by the two solod rocks and water used to come in with a huge foce and velocity and when thwarted by the rocks made a loud sound and the water used to look much whiter than milk! It was an amazing site or us and we must have spent nearly 30 minutes watching that. We finally had almost covered all the points of interest by now. We headed fo lunch but not before stopping at one point of interest.

This point of attraction had some kind of  some small trails as well and though not everyone was very enthusiastic about that, I pushed them to go for it. It was not a bad idea though everyone stopped in between once a couple returning from the opposite side told us that there was not something great ahead!

Next day we went to a city called Rockwood. The place was close to Augusta but we had no idea as what it had to offer to us in terms of sight seeing. We stopped near an Art Museum. Though we soon found that entry fee was substantial and enough to demotivate us to look elsewhere!