India - My Life within and without

Seems like world will fall over..but one year is gone...and second Diwali is coming up soon...more than I miss India I miss myself, my behavior and festival season...its in culture to be around crowded moments and to be with someone who understands, I am missing India and this moment is beyond that.....o shiiiiitttt!!!!!! I need to move on, too far from real sad moment....

Hope all of you are doing good and enjoying the summer weather. Over here in Mumbai, with March comes nice weather and HOLI, the festival of colors. In India it is known as the harvest and Spring festival. After a long time of staying indoors, people come out in the open and celebrate togetherness and happy moments while playing with colors. Normally GULAL, a type of color is made with natural ingredients like beetroot, leaves, etc... Gulal is normally safe but still we need to oil our hair and use baby oil for skin to save it from damages. Sometimes the colors are made from chemicals that could cause problems.

For Holi we (Snehal and me) like to go out of town with bunch of friends. Usually here are about 20 or so of us packed in cars.
Last year we went to Nagaon (a beach area outside of Mumbai) so this year we planned for Murund Janjira, a island which has beautiful, clean and virgin beaches. Early morning on 15th we packed our bags and left Mumbai while keep playing colors, throwing water on each other and dancing inside our cars. Everyone was fully colored and some were unrecognizable too(check out our pics). We had lots of trouble with our second car, the Scorpio (its tyre got flat 4 times, 1 time tyre busted and 1 time we lost the spare of it). But with Gods grace we all were safe and finally reached to Nagoan beach(same as last year, because we didn't wanted to risk taking the Scorpio any further) at 9 in the night. We all were tired and desperate to touch the sea so the moment we stopped, all ran towards sea. We stayed and played in water for another 2 hours and around 11 we all changed in to dry clothes at nearby cottages and left for Mumbai. We reached at 5 in the morning, after dropping some friends to their homes. Snehal and I came back to our lovely home and my cats were screaming for food. We were dying to sleep and with morning we came back to our normal routine of life. It took almost two days to get rid of color from our skin and hair. So this was our Holi in 2006. Now you all must be thinking why am telling all this to you? The reason is simple. Me and my husband Snehal are planning to go to USA for long time, which could be one to three years and am sure am going to miss the same kind of fun on festivals as India and as Holi is my favorite festival (I born on the day of Holi) I wanted to share my feelings with my near and dear ones.

I am missing my Mom, not just the mom who gave me birth but the mom, whose lap I have lived on until some months back on that earth. My mother has sold all her jewellery's and all her precious things to make a house for us (her kids) She was a fashion designer a sitarist but just because my father wanted her to be house wife she gave up all of her life and she never looked back at her creative life...I am creative cos she was the one...I miss her..Wish Mom you were around specially when I need to know how to handle my emotions in these moments. I am missing my motherland as well cos that is the land which has made me what I am today. Wish I was in India and taking care of my Mom.

I love you Mummy...

VJ

I got down at the train station on a beautiful Friday evening and I started walking home. Two minutes later it started raining. It felt good on my tired face. My body felt relaxed and suddenly I smelled that smell which takes me off my feet. It was the smell of earth after a first rain. I felt like getting fully wet and dancing in rain. I felt warm water coming down my face, past my eyes.



A year ago, when I left India I thought that I would never be able to smell my earth after first rains ever again. That changed when this smell of earth felt exact like my India. I stopped on the road, looked around. I observed the earth and buildings and roads but suddenly I felt as if there were no boundaries. I realized that all these boundaries and all these lines are only on paper, only on maps.


In real life, earth has no partitions, no boundaries, no lines in between. The blood in our veins are the same color. The color of earth is same as any other place. I started walking home and saw my neighbors getting wet in the rain and jumping all over. It was beautiful.




This is my earth, where nothing is mine but I own every part of it.




Vimmi
Friday September 21st, 2007