Diwali weekend

Diwali used to be the biggest and brightest festival back home for me! My favorite part was making rangoli at the door of our house! And of course enjoying a whole variety of sweets and bursting crackers and visiting friends and family and shopping and .. and .. I could just keep writing!

Now that I am away from all the actual festivities back home, we have our own variation and scaled down version of celebrations! Keeping our tradition (2 year old) going, we all (seattle-folks) met for dinner this weekend at our friends place who have traditionally been our Diwali party hosts! Though the gang meets often for dinners and birthdays and get-togethers this one is quite unlike others. This is only time in the year when our traditional clothes come out of hiding from the bottom-most racks of the closet! And everyone dressed up in their brightest and colorful sarees and kurtas, we could almost pose to be at a wedding in Bombay or so! :) Being in Seattle did not stop us from posing for snaps, we came up with different group definitions for the sake of group snaps! From all non-Mumbaikars to Windows engineers to Gatech rejects we had a snap for every group! :) After the snap session the night was long and intense with everyone engrossed in our all time favorite gang game - Mafia :) My stars changed position this time and its really worth putting this down here that I was Mafia for more than 1 round!

Needless to mention food and festivities are inseparable! Our hosts had made delicious dishes that we all relished! Now that I am reminded of that dinner, I have to mention the dishes .. sabudana wada, methi matar, paneer, biryani ... I wanna go back in time! If you have reached this line, I am sure you are feeling hungry too! Time to end this here...

Meeting deadlines for a party project is not easy!

This weekend we invited our local gang ("seattle-folks") over for dinner and games. Its worth mentioning how we both came up with this idea! Our random talks in the last week about cooking (we both love to cook!) made us realize that we hadn't cooked for a large group in a long time. We couldnt have asked for a more appropriate weekend than this one to DO IT since its his birthday on Monday. The project began with sending an email, and then deciding the menu. We came up with a very ambitious list and this is not one of those projects where deadlines can be pushed! So soon after the decisions were made the preparation began! As with every project, the race closer to the deadline (2 hours before our party began) was very intense.

The clock struck 8 so fast, and the table was all set! Vegetarian puff pastries, pav-bhaji, chicken curry (xacutti), peas pulav, dal fry, salad and boondi raita - was our ambitious goal that we managed to meet. As our friends poured in, the drinks were being poured too. And we hardly realized when the crowd grew from 2 to 15, and we were all singing the birthday song for him! Cake, chips and salsa were the usual party favorites and dinner followed.

We had a video of the gang taken in Feb while we were setting up the plot for a surprise birthday party for one of us. The 20 min long video was played for the first time after it was shot and the couple whose house was decorated could not believe the chaos, curiosity and confusion while setting up their house. After lauging our hearts out while watching the video we played a game that was never played by the gang before. It was simple but involved a lot of team effort, creativity and skills. A couple of these first time actvities interleaved with ice cream and dessert wine gave the party project a perfect sign off.

Indian Ocean's new fan!

A few weeks back we attended the Indian Ocean concert at Seattle. I have not been a big fan of their music so far but that could be attributed to the fact that I had not heard most of their songs.. till I heard them live.. and I am now a fan of their songs!

My recommendations for all those who haven't heard their songs yet:
Bandey from Black Friday
Ma Rewa from kandisa
Bhor from Jhini