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Yesterday was the 100th annual Bay2Breakers race in San Francisco - one of the most fun races ever. 12k, very little elevation and lots of fun, costumes, and craziness. Went again to walk the 12k and be part of all the good fun. Check out the pic below for some of the craziness at the race.
I went to the Stanford PowWow (http://www.stanfordpowwow.org/) this past weekend and it was great. It was my first time attending a pow-wow. "A Pow Wow time is the Native American people’s way of meeting together, to join in dancing, singing, visiting, renewing old friendships and make new ones. This is a time to renew thought of the old ways and to preserve a rich heritage." While it's mostly for the native americans to meet and celebrate, they opened it up to the public for us to learn about their heritage. Many tribes were present each of them in their traditional attire and they drummed and danced and performed against each other. Was wonderful to watch and enjoy their rich culture and tradition.
This evening, I went to a Garba event in the South Bay at the Santa Clara Convention Center in celebration of Nav Ratri & Durga Pooja. One would never know you were in the USA at that event. There should have been well over 1500 Indians or so gathered at the event, everybody dressed up in their colorful traditional dresses and dancing Garba and Dandiya Raas. I tried Garba and it was pretty hard for me, but Dandiya Raas wasn't that bad and I managed it not too badly. Always great to go to these cultural events and immerse oneself in them.
On our way to Colca Canyon, we stopped in a few small villages along the way and it was amazing to see all the culture, the people still living in their traditional ways, the great colorful dresses and symbolism. Always humbles me to see how all these people are so happy with so little and yet, in the "modern" society, we have so much and yet want more and are not satisfied ever. Anyways, here are a few pictures of the people living in the Colca Canyon.
Apart from sharing sweets and cakes to loved ones, for Divali, we also light up our houses to welcome goddess Laxmi.
Even though we are not celebrating this year, we did some prayers to Goddess Laxmi (picture 2) and put some earth lamps (picture 1) in every room in the house. Quoted from wikipedia about significance of the lights - "Festival of Lights," where the lights or lamps signify victory of good over the evil within every human being."Last year, my dad had decorated our house a lot with many decorations, the most he had ever done on the house. I've attached some pictures of my house (picture 3 and 4) decorated for Divali the year before.
Divali (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali) is celebrated today in Mauritius and everybody cooks sweets and cakes that they share with all family, friends and neighbors. This year, I am not celebrating as it has not yet been 1 year since my father's passing away and we mourn for 1 year.
But we did get a fair share of sweets from family and friends and neighbors. I have not celebrated divali for a while in Mauritius and biggest change I see are that the cakes are very much more elaborate than they used to be and also people have started to use fancy decorated boxes to put the cakes in rather the little plastic or paper bags, we used to use when I was a kid. I've taken snaps of a couple of the boxes. They have very nice designs.
One thing that has not changed though is the traditional 'gato patate'. Its a cake made of sweet potatoes, flour, sugar and grated coconut filling and has been a traditional cake to cook for Divali. Mostly everybody had a 'gato patate' in their sweet bag.
For my Mauritian friends who are not in Mauritius at this time of the year, I've taken some pictures of what you are missing :)
I over indulged on the sweets today. Tomorrow diet starts :)
