Our neighbors in the next building came over yesterday with an invitation for their niece Meghana's first birthday party. They own the store on our corner where I buy eggs, and run there whenever we are cooking and realize we are out of an essential such as green chillies or ginger (we buy our veggies at a couple different veggie stores a few blocks away).
The party was at a function hall on the street parallel to ours. We arrived with a box of Indian sweets in hand along with a plastic toy drum that we found at the 25 rupee store (not just because we are cheap, but also because we had no idea where else to buy toys of any kind). They ushered us in and the photographer took photos of us with the baby and her aunts. Then we were given cake, then sat around in chairs for a while waving at people we vaguely know from the neighborhood. Then we went outside and helped ourselves to the buffet of yummy Indian food, which was spiced rice, plain rice, an eggplant dish, an aloo (potato) dish, a gobi (cauliflower) dish, curds (plain yogurt), and gulab jamun and another sweet that I believe was Rajasthani (these neighbors are from Rajasthan, a state in the North North West of India, which means they have somewhat different food, customs, clothes, and speak Hindi and not Telugu). There were many women dressed in elegant sarees and my roommates and I, in kurtas and jeans, felt quite under dressed. Many of the Rajasthani women wore the end of the sarees draped over their heads, as is the custom of some.
We talked with the few people we knew (our immediate neighbors, the Punjabi neighbors who live downstairs and run a homeopathic clinic, and Shlayma's boss from her first NGO) and played with the many kids. I chased some kids around the yard until I was tired from running and ice cream mixed with gulab jamun, and then introduced myself to a Muslim woman with 9-month old twins and proceeded to hold them both. Indians LOVE children, maybe more than other people. One of my favorite things about India is that I can go up to people at a party, in a shop, on the street, in a bus - and touch their kids. I can smile and coo and pinch the cheeks of a complete stranger - and often the parents will smile and try and get their kid to say hello back. Sometimes they will hand the kid to me; I've never been refused when I've asked to hold a child. This might not seem so strange, but imagine in America or England if you went up to a child, perhaps with their face turned away from their parents in their arms, or maybe standing alone in a public area - and began to pat them, poke them, pinch their cheeks! (They are big on cheek pinching here; sometimes my coworkers pinch my cheeks.)
It was quite a shindig, especially for a first birthday party. There was music and a catered buffet and nearly 100 people, and the baby changed clothes at least twice... good times.
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- Mylarobin
- United States
- I wrote this blog while working at a women's resource center in Hyderabad, India through a social justice fellowship through American Jewish World Service.
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