Festivals & Fascination

My fate destined to be a Hindu, My parents including their families were ordained to celebrate every ritual in a religious way. They followed the sacredness successfully for generations. As I grew, this became more a practice than understanding the knowledge these rituals possess. I respect our tradition and always wanting to know the importance of every event our Hinduism had to have. (Don’t judge me here; I equally respect other religions and practices and have been trying to co-relate what’s the purpose of these events in terms with humanity).

Every time, I had asked my mom more questions on why, how, for? I must say, I wasn’t convinced. Everyone goes through this phase, where the child in you wouldn’t refrain from the Q&A. I’m sure most of us now realize how much troublemakers we were as kids.

As years passed by, I was keen on questioning my grandparents and trying to understand in my terms. Those days, we weren’t fortunate of having google onboard. Books were definitely the rescuer, however they were more complex than I had though. My Sanskrit teacher was a real boon, he was a treasure of knowledge. I spoke to him on various things and he happily answered them all.

Things changed as days went by, College, studies, job, wedding, kids kept me engrossed and it wouldn’t be wrong if I say, I had absolutely forgotten ‘ME’ as a priority. One day I was surprised to hear my daughter asking me, what are festivals? Why are they supposed to be???? I felt a dejavu passing my nerves. “Wasn’t I asking these in a similar way?( May be I would have been a little older than my daughter). This stuck me hard, I dint have an immediate answer. I mumbled..

“Baby, festivals represent God, and we are his children… (Before I could continue….)

“Am I not your child??? Then how can we be God’s children???”

“Yes, that’s right I said, we meaning all beings on this earth are his children”

From then, she snapped me with back to back questions and I only stood there with hmm, oh yeah!, yes.. yes…

I decided to make her understand in a simpler fashion. I was sure, the 2.5 year old wasn’t a joke at all. Every time I tried telling her stories, I had to go back to google to find it out myself. It dint stop me from finding information and saving them for my next questionnaire. A sense of proud mother surrounded me, but then a guilt of not knowing them for ages made me sad.

Thanks to google and the fellow bloggers, I could gather the kid friendly data. Working with pictures took me few days and had this album ready for my little cuppie. She saw them and guess what she had to ask… “Amma, why you had to do this, aren’t these on the laptop???

“ looking at my puzzled face, my husband couldn’t stop laughing”….

Here are few pictures of the album;