Halloween Notes

This was my first Halloween (I will not add any qualifier about the country since we do not have Halloween in India - although it seems some of the new societies housing expats are celebrating it.) I was pretty excited about it and had bought a witch for our front garden long back. M, being a practical person, did not see the point of buying something for a holiday which we do not celebrate but I feel that if we have to live in a predominantly American neighborhood (and country), we should try to participate in the culture. And so the decision was ruled in my favor. I also wanted a pumpkin but with the kids arrival I did not get a chance to shop.

People started decorating their front yards from Oct beginning itself. It was fun to see the lengths people went to make their yards scary - they put in headstones, skeletons, skulls (buried in the soil), spooky lights, big spiders, puupets looking like dead bodies and posters of various monsters in the windows (and then when you switch on the room lights, it looks really spooky from outside). We made hay by taking the kids to see all this and both of them had to repeat that they would finish milk, food, cut their nails, comb their hair and do any thing their parents asked so that halloween would spare them.

Our office break room also began to look like a graveyard and we had to share table space with skulls and spiders and battle with overhanging witches to reach the water dispenser and jump over spiders to reach the microwave. On thursday we had a pumpking carving contest in our office and it was real fun to see the participants (although the QA team was more bent on destruction - they had brought drills and saws!). I think I will try carving sometime. After that we had a pumpking fest where in people had brought all sorts of stuff made from pumpkin - pie, bread, cake, dip etc. I really liked the pumpkin bread (I hate pie). In all of the sweet items, I spied something which looked salty and had jeera (cumin) in it. I found later that it was our pumpkin sabji brought by a guy from Pakistan.

On friday we had trick or treating in office and people had brought in their kids. It was awesome! I am so impressed by the effort people put in having fun - the costumes were so creative and people had put in small finishing touches with enchanced the overall effect. I would have just put on a dress and that would have been it. Needless to say, I felt really foolish not doing anything. One guy had made a costume by stapling paper plates and cups. People were wearing carefully chosen accessories. The kids looked real cute and the adults looked scary!

Well, after the festivities at office were over, I rushed over to Phoenix. I had taken Monday off just so that I would see the kids dressed up and take them trick or treating. We planned to go with a group of Indian friends in the society where we used to live before we moved to the house. The program was set for 5 pm. Suddenly at 1pm, jijaji called us to tell us that there was a costume contest in the society's club house at 2.30. We rushed there with the costumes. Beth was dressed up as a lady bug (I got the the costume from austin - a netted skirt, wings and 'header bedder' (hairband) with two antennas. Simba was a dog with only a sleeveless jacket with a dog's head - my sister dint dare buy anything else as he hates full clothes and almost all costumes are quite warm - nobody seems to think of Phoenix weather when they make halloween costumes.

The costume contest was quite fun - the funniest part was that 99.9% of the children were Indian!(not even Asian). Although the society has predominantly Indian residents, it was still weird to see only TWO American children. After the pics were done, we dutifully waited for 5pm to begin trick/treating. At the appointed hour a whole group of kids dressed as all horror characters, fairies, princess, insects, animals assembled with a lot of moms. Jijaji (at the behest of his wife) was the only adult male there (and no he was not embarrassed - being the handsome guy, he is used to being kanhaiya among gopis). The first house was fun - I clicked pictures. And then it struck me as to how the "organisers" (3-4 enterpising moms who were managing to control the crowd) were only going to "designated Indian homes". That was taking the 'Indian Island' (the habit of Indians keeping all celebrations and activities to themselves - coined by yours truly) to an extreme. You take an American festival, celebrated in its glory, right in their country and exclude them from it! What kind of message will the kids get? And what kind of assimilation are parents doing given the fact that most of them are aspiring to future US citizens. It left a very bad taste in my mouth and sis agreed so we left before the festivities got over.

The kids fell asleep on the way back. We had skipped our neighbours halloween party so that we could take the kids in an environment where they would be comfortable but we were very disappointed by the way things turned out. A big party was going on at the neighbours. Some time later, they started off the trick and treating with our house. And the trickle slowly turned into a stream - it was FUN to see the children dressed up as a myriad collection of creatures. Luckily the kids got up after some time and they also participated in the candy distribution. They were very excited that for a change they were giving out candies. One of our neighbours brought their 2.5 years old boy for candies - leaving there 4 day old baby at home with friends! After some time, we took our kids through the houses on the neighbouring streets. Most of them were American and we enjoyed a real flavor of halloween - they had decorated their houses and themselves and we got a look inside their houses too! We felt better and promised our selves that we would make better efforts to get out of our self imposed isolation.

Then the grand finale was a visit to one of our neighbours who had made a whole Pirates of Carribean ship covering his front yard and garage area. It was neat - there was a huge ship with 3 pirates, barrels, bridge mast, ladder to the hold and a lot of other complementary stuff. It seems he has made it all himself - and keeps adding stuff each year. Computer programming controlled the lights, smoke, the pirates movement and other sounds. It was awesome. In Beth's words 'it was more scary than the one at Austin'. Simba ka 'sitti pitti gum ho gaya' (read extremely scared) and just did 'gondi gondi' (when he wants to be carried).

We ended the fun and memorable day with dinner at PF Changs.