advent of the devi

Ma­ha­laya com­menced Thurs­day due to the time dif­fer­ence be­tween my two home coun­tries, but I wait­ed till the wee hours of this morn­ing to turn it on. 

Mem­o­ries of be­ing wok­en up by my grand­moth­er and hud­dling in front of the old ra­dio was re­placed with a blue­tooth con­nect­ed Bose speak­er and the age­less voice of Biren­dra Kr­ish­na Bhadra stream­ing on YouTube. With the in­vo­ca­tion of the god­dess, be­gins the heart-wrench­ing feel­ing of the times left be­hind, the times lost, and an ea­ger­ness that I might one day be able to go back and im­merse my­self into one of the tra­di­tions I am so fond of.

“Mom­my, can you please turn it off?” said the lit­tle voice while gulp­ing down ce­re­al, ter­ri­bly an­noyed to have been wok­en up to these sounds she did not quite un­der­stand. I al­most choked from the ut­ter dis­re­gard to some­thing that was so im­por­tant to me. Yet, I had to take a mo­ment, and as­sess her re­ac­tion through her per­spec­tive. I prob­a­bly sound the same when I ask her to switch off her TV shows with sim­i­lar dis­re­gard and dis­dain to­wards their content.

What fol­lowed was an ex­pla­na­tion to make her un­der­stand this was my hol­i­day month, my Thanks­giv­ing and Christ­mas all tied in one, and it was hers too, to learn about, to ex­pe­ri­ence, to em­brace. “But I am not In­di­an. Every­one in school thinks I am. But I was born here.”

That it­self will raise a lot of eye­brows, cri­tiques about how this is my fault that I’ve raised my girl so ‘Amer­i­can,’ how I should al­ways speak my lan­guage and force her to do the same, how with my deeds I have not taught her any In­di­an val­ues, and many more. 

But that is a top­ic for an­oth­er day. To­day for me is about ac­knowl­edg­ing she is in­deed an Amer­i­can born to In­di­an par­ents. To­day is about her ac­knowl­edg­ing that I feel the same way she felt when she had to spend Christ­mas in In­dia last year. Dif­fer­ence is, I have been feel­ing that way for 16 years.

I walked into a flur­ry of Fall dec­o­ra­tions be­ing put up at work this morn­ing. While my co-work­ers hus­tled and bus­tled over try­ing to make things look per­fect, I could not help but no­tice the ex­cite­ment in their eyes, know­ing they were count­ing down to the hol­i­days too. 

We greet­ed each oth­er like we do every morn­ing, know­ing very well they did not have the slight­est idea re­gard­ing what this time of the year meant to me. My per­son­al need to adapt, to blend in to a lifestyle that does not make me look or be dif­fer­ent, to avoid con­flict, but most im­por­tant­ly to show re­spect to a coun­try that em­braced me of­ten times leads me to a place where some­times I can­not un­der­stand if I belong. 

Will I ever be stopped ask­ing if I speak In­di­an, make cur­ry at home, or the ex­pres­sion of shock that fol­lows by know­ing I have not watched a pop­u­lar 70’s Hol­ly­wood movie>, the last an­swer to which is of­ten times “have you watched Sholay?”

Out of no fault of any­one, it does get annoying. 

But most im­por­tant­ly, it rais­es in me an un­re­al­is­tic ex­pec­ta­tion that peo­ple around me learn to adapt to my life too, just like I have been adapt­ing to theirs for years. 

So right now is about ac­knowl­edg­ing one of the most unique and his­toric fes­ti­vals in the world, a month-long cel­e­bra­tion of some of the most pow­er­ful and bad­dest women in Hin­du mythol­o­gy, a time to cel­e­brate good over evil, a time to bask in the glo­ry of friends and fam­i­ly, a time to adorn your­self in new yards of some of the world’s finest fab­rics, a time to let go, sing, dance, and be mer­ry, but most im­por­tant­ly, a time to hold on to my cul­ture and my tra­di­tions in a far-away land that make me unique­ly me. 

And that, my dear daugh­ter, is the trea­sure you have of two wide­ly dif­fer­ent cul­tures col­lid­ing to­geth­er and mak­ing you both Amer­i­can and In­di­an, but most im­por­tant­ly, unique­ly you.

 

—mala paul

Flom­mist Mala Paul is a pro­tégé of the god­dess of ten hands. Form to form­less all in a day’s job. A moth­er, de­sign­er, dancer, food­ie, fash­ion­ista, blog­ger, who is al­ways ready to be the change. Copy­right © 2016 Mala Paul.

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