Once again it’s that time of the year when the cheeks are rosy and everyone wants to be comfy, cosie, from the cold (yes, it does get cold at time in Mumbai). It’s the festive season and everywhere you look you’ll find a festive glow. Shops with their festive window displays, houses with their lit windows, at every signal there’s Santa hats and reindeer antlers being sold, there’s decorations for your house, decorations for the tree, star lights and dancing lights, not forgetting the statues for your crib. It’s a magical feeling, the most beautiful feeling you could ever have. There’s excitement in the air, as people rush to make their purchases, children writing letters Santa, hoping they find what they wished for, the asked for, beneath their Christmas Tree, or in their stockings. You hear the gentle strains of a carol, heralding the coming of the Christ.
It’s a magical feeling, but you can’t help yourself and be transported to years ago, back to your childhood, to christmases of yore. As soon as you step on to your floor you you get the whiff of the sweets being made, kulkul, navri, marzipans, guava cheese, date rolls, the coconut cake. You could tell who was making which sweet just from that smell, that sweet smell.
Sweet making was social activity. You made sweets together in one house and then moved to the next house to help. I distinctly remember the lady who came to knead the atta, literally bashing it up on the heavy aluminium thali. You were either assigned to make balls or make the kalkals or do the fillings for the navri, and get scolded when they came small or opened up while they were fried. I remember the taste when the first batch of navari and kalkals were fried. Making marzipan was fun, especially when you experimented with colours. So A sunflower could red or green, Christmas trees all yellow, and Santa a very colourful fellow.
Decorating the house was and is a very tedious activity in itself. Finding the right streamers that would go with each other, that would match, if not the same. Deciding on the patterns in which to hang them, ensuring they didn’t touch the fan. Then you had decorating the tree. Did I say that I had a 7 feet tall tree, with toys that my dada had got when he came down? So decorating it would be fun, firstly finding the right branches, putting in the right sequence, spreading the branches, hanging the toys so that the good ones were in front, and thanks to my doggie, there were no balls down. Finally came the untangling of the lights and wrapping them around the tree, and putting up the star.
Our building boys used to put up a huge star, hung in the centre of the building, with a crib in it. The highlight being getting that star up. The excitement, that crackle in the air, got everyone out of the houses and on to the gallery, cheering the boys on as they pulled the star up which mind could be damn heavy, as my poor buddy Ryan found out.
Once the star was up it was time to get ready for midnight mass, but first sweet needed to be distributed amongst the neighbours, especially the families of those mourning. Midnight mass included royally snoozing during the mass, or trying to count the number of people who had gone Betty-by, going to Persian Darbaar for chai, to avoid the long and preachy sermon, and then stand out there at the end of the mass to wish everyone. Once the mass was out of the way it was time to make way to Mondes for beer (or in my case, Coke or ice tea) and then Bade Miyas for some kebab rolls.
What followed was a week of fun and frolic, music and activities, of Christmas Parties, and housies and request programs, Fancy Dress and Talent Competion, request programs and guessing the Santa, children running around selling housie tickets, music playing, people jiving ( yes that’s where I got my jiving skills), guitarist in demand cause at the time talent meant singing (unlike dancing now days), Tele games and guessing the Santa, all culminating with the old mans walk on New Year’s Eve and the prize distribution and raffle draw on New Year’s Day.
But now things have changed, the world has changed, the way we celebrate Christmas has changed. The Christmases of our childhood have become a memory, albeit a sweet one, one we shall cherish forever. Those days may never come again but we shall always have them with us, no matter where we go, over land or sea or shore, the celebrations of Christmas of yore.
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