I was teaching my daughter about festivals of India - national and religious, from her class syllabus. The next day was 5th September - Teacher's day. I felt a need to tell my daughter about festivals of my house also!!
Growing-up, I had seen my mother celebrate different festivals, in different ways which is not considered normal in any religion albeit humanity and daily-survival. My mother was a high school teacher and the 2 days that I vividly remember are 5-September - Teacher's Day and 14-November - Children's day. These 2 were the festivals of my home.
On 5th September , my mother would get dressed-up in her best attire. Even her old students from across that entire area would come to wish her. There used to be a grand celebration at her school and the teachers would get to see their students role-play their favorite teacher. That evening would be stories from her school. She would get so many flowers and bouquets. We would pull out all vases and augment it further with glass tumblers to decorate our entire house with the flowers and gifts she would receive. What a sight!!! This day is so etched in my memory. I ensure that my kids wish and thank their teachers at school with some lovely rose flowers and my mother's favorite 5-star chocolate bar.
Now the other important festival was Children's day - 14th Nov. This day was a little opposite in terms of preparations! My mother would prepare some sweets, and also take lots of chocolates for all her students. She would think of small class room games, host a flower decoration - IKEBANA competition and also be the delightful judge. Again, we were all ears for the special day's stories.
The other set was what I would call as the survival festivals! Now that I am a working mom, I can relate to these holidays much more than ever before. There were 2 important holidays that mother would get in the month of September - Shab-e-baraat and St.Mary's festival. They would fall in and around our Ganapathi festival. These were days of preparation if Ganapathi puja was upcoming or days of clean-up if the festival was over. She would meticulous plan this day and not a moment would go wasted. Adding to her glory was, my sister and me would have full-day school! Cleaning-up the house, safely packing back the silver vessels used for the puja. And the house is back to being spick and span.
None of our preparations were elaborate, they were simple. We would celebrate all of them, we had pujas, savories everything associated with it.
But 5- Sept and 14-Nov were truly "The festivals of My-House." They have left a deep mark on me.
