September 25, 2015 – Homecoming – Patansaongi, Maharashtra, India

After visiting my undergrad institute, it was a perfect opportunity for me to take some time off work and see my folks. During this point in my life, I was in a long distance relationship (which I sucked and still suck at), giving me more time to work. Naturally, I worked harder and harder.

I never knew I could work this much long. My day used to start with a 2-hour online Hadoop classes, followed by my 9 to 5 full time job, and again 2-3 hours of Hadoop and Big Data classroom sessions. It seems crazy to look at it now, but, everything that I did during this time was to accumulate more money to fund my MS education so that I could rely less on my parents. I didn’t want them to burn through their savings and I was glad that it didn’t come to that.

Anyway, getting back to this trip. It felt nice to be a part of the family celebration during the Ganpati Celebrations. It has been our family tradition for more than 25 years now, and it always feels special to host the Ganpati Idol at your place and having a good time.

A quick funny story behind how this tradition started and my MOM has told me this.

When I was a 4-5 years old kid, I was envious of a neighbor having the Ganesha Idol at their place, so naturally as a small kid would do, I grabbed the small Ganesha Idol and brought it to my place so that people could come to my place and worship the idol.

I could picture myself doing that, since I was and am a goofy kid at heart.

So, the morning I arrived at my place, it was so cool to look at the HOME, where I grew up and made so many memories. Funny how the moment you move out of “your” home, it eventually becomes your “parents’ home”. You don’t realize it sooner, but over time when you tell your friends that you are visiting your “parents’ home”, it hits you and hits you hard.

This is how “MILIND NIWAS” looked like back in 2015.

and this is the “MILIND” after whom this place is named. I look so corny in this picture.

During the rest of the day, we carried out many things related to worshipping the Ganesha Idol. It was a busy day and being the only son of the household, I had to take care of many things – both ritual and physical. As I have mentioned numerous times, I am an atheist, but I don’t mind celebrating these festivities with my parents as it makes them happy. I don’t mind keeping my beliefs aside so that they can be happy.

By the time, we came closer to the end of the day, my MOM and our domestic helper worked really hard to cook some delicious food and I can still taste this mouth watering food that you see below.

I never knew I would be the FAN of the Indian food so much, but, having spent so many days outside and cooking your own food, makes you miss home food more than ever!

After the quick bite, it was time to catch up with friends and relatives. Below you see my nephew, Ananya, who is so cool and down to earth person for a kid, and so well-behaved I tell you. I don’t remember what we talked about, must be something that he was curious about!

After everything was done, it was time to see off our beloved Ganesha. The picture that you see at the top is the Ganesha Idol that we installed that year. Before seeing the Ganesha Idol off, we have to “celebrate” by playing with the pink colored powdered chalk – “GULAAL” as we call it. You can see my parents with a little bit of GULAAL on their faces. This was taken just before leaving our place to see off our Ganesha Idol.

It was a good day, filled with so many memories and delicious food and lovely people and their talks.

Until next time, MILIND NIWAS!