My mom sent me a package that
included an egg dying kit for Easter and when I brought it home, Deep (my host
brother) was very interested. The funny thing is that Deep doesn’t even eat
eggs since he’s a Hindu vegetarian. He was curious to know about why I had been
sent egg dye and I tried explaining Easter to him. The main problem being that
Easter egg dying and what Easter celebrates have very little in similar. Deep
could never remember the name of Easter and instead just started calling it the
Festival of the Egg. “Indu, what day is the Festival of the Egg?” “Indu, you
will take me to color eggs, nah?” “Indu, will Chini and Shiv and Anandi be there?”
The day before Easter we ad group
masti (group fun) at the local university’s sports fields where we played
cricket and Frisbee. Afterwards, we headed to Caleb’s apartment for the actual
Easter egg dying. We had 30 eggs and Deep probably dyed about 10 of them he was
so excited. We ate macaroni and cheese and potato chips and drank “cold drink”
(what people here call soda). Ben P was at Dolly-ji’s house leading a Jewish Seder
(I also hear that this was very impromptu. They had to make many substitutions
for the Seder platter like mutton for lamb, cilantro for parsley, papad for
matza, and water wit oral rehydration salts for salt water, just to name a few.
Additionally, Ben P accidentally printed out a Jews for Jesus version of the Seder
service), but everyone else besides him made an appearance. Jenny, of course,
made some of the most artistic and beautiful eggs including the Scream and
Spongebob Squarepants, but there were plenty of other good ones. Stephen’s host
nieces came as well and added even more energy to the room. Once we finished
dying eggs, we decided to make an Easter egg hunt for Deep and Stephen’s host
nieces. We hid twenty-four of the eggs around Caleb’s apartment and had the
kids search for them. I think Pari (the older of Stephen’s two host nieces)
found the most number of eggs, followed by Deep, and then Kushi (the younger of
Stephen’s host nieces). Also at the party, Ben T, Alex, and I filled golgappa shells
(sort of an edible hollow bread sphere thing) with candies for an “egg” hunt that
we planned for the boys at Bal Ashram the next morning on actual Easter.
Easter Day was also interesting.
We started off by hiding the filled golgappa shells for the Ashram boys, but
monkeys kept stealing the candy! Alex and I walked around with big sticks to
try to discourage them, but they would always manage to sneak a few golgappa “eggs”
while we weren’t looking. The Ashram boys absolutely loved it (the Little Stars
Hostel girls were also supposed to be there, but they were being punished for
not doing their chores. Later in the day, Ben T came back and hid more golgappa
for them). Later, we learned how to make gulab jamun (an Indian sweet) with Ben
T’s host sister-in-law (I ate wayyyy too many) and then went to a church
service at St. Thomas Church. The service was all in Hindi and the hymns sounded
nothing like the ones in the US, but it was cool to see how the two cultures mixed.
You still had to take off your shoes before entering the church (a very Hindu
tradition) and most of the church goers were in saris (one woman was even in a
sari decorated with pictures of marijuana leaves). Afterwards, there was a
dance party to Indian Cristian rock music and some mildly sketchy free food. When
I arrived back home, the Hindu temple outside of my house was also having some
sort of party (not for Easter) and I ate even more free food in the form of Prasad.
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