One more Indian/Marathi Festival and more reasons to celebrate. This time, it was an arrival of Spring – which also marks the MARATHI NEW YEAR people across the world.
The name of the festival is Gudi Padwa and a quick google search confirms what I just stated above, which means, I know at least a couple things about my culture. Yay, I am happy!
During this time in my life, I was surrounded by my sister, Minu Tai, and her roommates and my roommates. It was fun to celebrate this cultural festival in not so cultural way. I, being an atheist, was of no use when it came to decoration. My job was to show up and click some pictures and eat some delicious food, which I was okay doing, as long as I didn’t have to perform any ritual or of that sort.
So, the festivities started off with this beautiful and awesome Rangoli. If you are not familiar with what a Rangoli is, I would strongly recommend googling it as I would put it like it is a cultural thing like you do when you celebrate some festival like you take a white powder and put it in different designs like whatever makes you feel better like you put some powder here and there and then like click some pictures. You got it? Good!
Isn’t it look beautiful? All credits go to my sister and her roommates as they put all the efforts.
Now, comes the actual part of the celebration/ceremony. The setting that you see below is called Gudi. I am sure this is how it is spelled and pronounced as Goo-Dee. So, to construct this, you take a long stick. You wrape/drape a saree at one end of this stick. Remember that this end is going to be the TOP end of the stick. Then you decorate this some flowers, gifts, and what not. You top it off with a steel cup which you can clearly see in the picture below.
Then you take this stick and tie it to some steady object so that it doesn’t fall. And voila, you have your own Goo-Dee. You can thank me later! 🤪
And here’s my sister, Minu Tai, posing with the Gudi. The pose that she is flaunting here is the Namaste pose which is used while greeting each other (in India) and mostly while praying to the deity.
And how can I end the post without posting one of my pictures? Here’s yours truly posing with my huge tummy and off course my glasses, because it was sunny and why to waste a perfect opportunity to flaunt my love for my sunglasses.
Until we meet again!
stochasticity 