I know Mark Twain said that in all sincerity or honesty, but he sure made life difficult for a lot of people like us.
Before you start wondering about the unusual start to a blog, let me just take you through what happened to me over the weekend.
I went into the weekend, filled with both expectations and some curiosity.
For this weekend, I was going to try a very tricky thing. I would be trying to mix the West with the east
Before you get any more confused, let me tell you something ...
I am an Indian, well nothing great about it but I do happen to have a Finnish girlfriend who is currently working in India(Chennai, the erstwhile Madras). We have been together for about two years now, roughly the same time she has been in India.
I will introduce her better over my following blogs.
But, getting back to this weekend, I took her to one of those religious, cultural thingies which are like mine-laden fields.
Mine-laden because it's something which she has absolutely no clue about and as we are both aware of the stark contrast of our cultural differences, we really try hard to avoid any Faux Pas on our side
Well, this cultural thingie is something very Gujrati-Maharashtra specific, it is called Garba, Dandiya or just Navratri Celebrations.
Imagine about 100 or more people dancing around in big circles with well coordinated dance steps, which everyone seeems to learn right from childhood. The music is very drum based with a very fast tempo and beats.
The whole area is well lit and families gather in large gardens to dance well into the night till about 4:00 am in the morning.
The dresses are laden with ethnic jewelleries and the dresses are very rustic and ethnic.
Anyone who knows how conservative Indian cultural festivals can get will balk at the whole scene.
And it can be a daunting scene.
I knew Anna(my gf) had been only exposed to the very staid and conservative dance and cultural festivals of South India so I was a little vary of her reaction to such a loud and in your face celebrations.
But, I think she took it well, probably in expectation that as I am from Rajasthan, celebrations in my family would be on same lines.
I really don't how this experiment went off, but it serves as a good addition to my numerous experiments with mixing the East with the West.