Author Archives: Nikunj Mistry

Festival – India

Nationality: Marathi
Age: 55
Occupation: Public Relations
Residence: Cerritos, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati

“During the beginning of the year or the beginning of winter, usually in January, there is festival called Makar Sankrant, it’s the first festival of the New Year. It falls on the 14th of January. It follows the Sun’s northward journey. Because its winter, you make sweets from sesame and jaggery, which is a more concentrated form of sugar. Sesame is a very warm seed, it creates heat in your system. This festival is always known as the festival of friendship. You give the sweet to your friends, or if people come to your house, you say “Tir gur gya, gode gode bola,” which means have this sweet and speak sweetly or be sweet. Typically, in Gujarat and Maharashtra they fly kites as well, during the festival. The festival is celebrated itself on January 14th but the people celebrate it even before, similar to how people are in the Christmas mood before Christmas Eve.”

It seems like this is the Indian celebration for the winter solstice, since this falls around the end of the winter solstice. Also, I feel like this isn’t a very elaborate festival since, from my mother’s description it only calls for the exchange of sweets and repeating a phrase. There are similar festivals that take place at the same time in other places in India, which are probably the same festival but just celebrated a bit differently due to regional differences. To me, it looks like the festival serves more as a time for people to get together and get into a holiday spirit.

Recipe – India

Nationality: Marathi
Age: 55
Occupation: Public Relations
Residence: Cerritos, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati

“Puran Poli is a stuffed sweet bread, that is flat. First you cook the lentil, pigeon pea, which is called Toor Dal. You first cook it and add jaggery, and then cook it some more. You put a little nutmeg in it too. The stuffing is called Puran. Then, you make dough from self-rising flour, fine wheat flour. Then you add oil and water to the flour so that makes the dough kind of sticky, and knead it enough to make it nice and soft. Keep it for about 3-4 hours so that the liquids soak in nicely, and that it comes together properly. Then make small balls of the balls of the dough, flatten it a bit. Then take another small ball of the stuffing, and cover it with the dough, sort of like a dumpling. Then take lots of dry flour, and roll the dumpling of the dough and stuffing flat and thin. Make sure that the stuffing doesn’t ooze out, that’s why you need lots of flour. Then, on a flat pan, cook it till one side puffs up, then flip it over and cook it till it’s evenly brown on both sides. Eat it warm, with ghee, which is clarified butter.”

This is typically eaten during Holi, which is the festival of colors. It represents spring; it’s supposed to invite spring. It generally happens during March or April. My mom learned the recipe from her mom. They used to make this a lot in her, and she said she used to just love it and eat it as often as she could. She used to eat this as a snack after school, and would even eat it cold with lots of ghee. This is a difficult dish to make, so it would be made once a year and they would make a lot of it. It’s a difficult process and takes a lot of effort, so my mom doesn’t make it very often. When she goes back to India she brings Puran Poli back to eat. Nowadays, it is made readymade for people to buy and eat anytime. Before, people just used to make it in their own homes.

I actually had no idea that Puran Poli was supposed to be eaten during the Holi festival. I never associated it with a certain time of the year, and don’t remember being told that it was supposed to be eaten during Holi. I knew that Puran Poli was a treat to eat and that I didn’t get to eat it that often, and if my mom made it, she made a lot at one time. Now whenever someone goes to India, usually one of my parents, they bring back lots of Puran Poli because it’s easy to find and buy in large quantities. Since I don’t know much about Indian customs and traditions, I am just going to agree with my mom that it probably is supposed to be eaten during Holi.

Tradition/Festival – Japan

Nationality: Japanese, Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: April 21, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

“Every year, my family goes to the Buddhist Temple in Nuuanu, for this thing called Obon, which is in July. So, the Japanese belief is that during this period, which is around a week, the Obon season, Japanese people believe that the spirits of their ancestors are walking the earth. We have services at the Buddhist Temple. We burn incense, pray to all members of our family that are deceased. The monks chant a Sutra to Amitabha Buddha (from the Pure Land school of Buddhism). There are also Obon dances that the temples sponsor; different temples hold the dances at different times. There is traditional Japanese music, and people will dance, it’s very strict and there are concentric circles of people. There’s a certain pattern to the dance, you just learn the pattern and go in and do it. For one dance, there’s a big festival, with food tents and everything, things that are basically sponsored by the temples. There are also lanterns that are supposed to guide the dead, help them find their way back.”

Matt told me that the purpose of the Obon season was to pay respect to the relatives that have passed away. He goes to the temples for the services, out of respect for his family and deceased family members like his grandfather. He said that his grandfather died before he was born and that his family has been taking part in the Obon season since before he was born. He also said that he doesn’t know if he would continue to take part in the Obon season since it’s a lot to coordinate, getting the family together. He said that he knows about everything involved with the Obon season and knows what is supposed to be done, but doesn’t exactly know what every part means.

I agree with Matt’s analysis of the Obon season, since it is the commonly accepted reasoning behind the festival. There doesn’t seem to be any alternate meanings or purposes for the festival, but from the way Matt described it as being widespread and at various different locations, it might have also become a cultural event for people who aren’t Buddhist or Japanese. He said there are dances all over the place and some dances have food tents and things like that, so the Obon season or at least the dance part of the Obon season probably has attracted more than just people who are there to pay their respects to their relatives.

Annotation: This festival is cited in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin which is a newspaper in Honolulu.

Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Dancing for The Dead. 29 May, 2004.

<http://starbulletin.com/2004/05/29/features/story1.html>

Festival – China

Nationality: Japanese, Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: April 23, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

“There’s this Chinese festival called Qingming, where you go to the gravesite once a year and pay respect to the dead. It happens around Chinese New Year. We do it for my “Po Po” and “Gong Gong”, my great grandfather and great grandmother. We have to put incense around the graves, in groups of three, because there is something spiritual about the number 3. Also, we set up a little table, a low one, so you can kneel and we make offerings to different spirits, one of them is the gatekeeper. You have to have certain types of foods, weird foods like fish heads and things like tea and wine. We also bring a large 55 gallon tub, a metal barrel, and we start a fire in there. We burn what is called hell money, which is fake money with pictures of the devil and some other perverse things on it. Afterwards, my whole family goes to this Chinese restaurant Hee Hing that we always eat at. Anytime my family gets together, we always eat there. We started doing this when my great grandmother died. This is way too much work, and my family is becoming less connected, and we don’t get together as much. I don’t think I will continue to do this.”

For Matt, the Qingming festival is when he and his family tend the graves of their ancestors and perform the necessary ceremonies. I was able to do some research and the Qingming festival is pretty much what Matt said it was. It is a Chinese festival that is meant to pay respects to the dead and calls for their relatives to tend to their grave sites. It also seems that the Qingming has become a large family event for Matt, sort of like a reunion, where he and his relatives get together and eat and spend time with each other.

Annotation: This is documented in the New York Times.

NewYork Times. For Visitors, Graveyard Holds Memories of a Bloody Era. 10 April, 2006.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/10/world/asia/10china.html?scp=3&sq=qingming&st=nyt>

Folk Slang – Whitney High School, Cerritos, California

Nationality: Indian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Cerritos, CA
Performance Date: April 21, 2008
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Supposedly, one day in AP Biology, a guy in my class who said “Kirr the Rorrie Porries” instead of Kill the Rolly Pollies. From then on, we started switching some of our L’s and R’s. We called it Rorrie Porrie. We would sometimes say raptop, instead of laptop. Things like that. We later found out that Eric (the guy who started Rorrie Porrie) never actually said “Kirr the Rorrie Porries” but someone thought it would have been funny if he did, and just told other people that he did. The class above ours has started a language called Tabish that was more elaborate and had actual words that were created for the language. Rorrie Porrie on the other hand just involved modifying English words. It didn’t spread very far, there was only a small number of people out of the entire class that would speak Rorrie Porrie. But, within my group of friends and some other people who I wasn’t friends with, we would sometimes just start talking in Rorrie Porrie. Sometimes it even happened when we weren’t trying to, which just made it funnier and perpetuated it. I don’t know about other people, but my friends and I do still occasionally break out in Rorrie Porrie just because of habit or to joke about high school, although most of the time we just speak normally.