Mmmmmm...

While I eagerly anticipate a delicious meal and fine company at my in-laws' house tonight, I would love to celebrate the New Year with them:

After Rosh Hashanah services this morning, Shirley Kehimkar has invited family and friends home to enjoy an Indian feast she planned to get up at 3 a.m. to start preparing, including rice pilaf, chicken curry and grouper fish.

"A Jew is a Jew. We're the same everywhere, but I do like spicing up my food," Kehimkar, 65, a retired civil servant who came to Canada in 1969, says with a chuckle.

The rest of The Star's article on the the teensy Indian-Jewish-Canadian population in the Toronto area is very interesting as well. (How many times can I tag a post "Hindi" and "Jewishness?!?" A very unique opportunity here indeed!)

If you have any desire to read more about my thoughts on Jewishness, this time in conjunction with feminism, I wrote about the subject today at BlogHer.

So Sari!

OK, I do apologize for that terrrible pun. I only wore a sari once. It was to Dr. H's sister's wedding, back in May 1999. Another friend, Future Dr. S (yeah, I seem to have many friends of the medical persuasion, don't I?), took Dr. P and I home with her and her mom gussied us up in her finest saris. This was way before I was obsessed with India and all things Indian, but I loved it. I'm sure I looked like a big white goober (Future Dr. S's mom pinned the sari onto me so that it wouldn't fall off at any inopportune times), but I felt utterly glamorous. Clearly, that was my first clue that I needed to reclaim the lost Desi within me.

Insolence

After my dad picked me up from the airport this morning, we ran an errand and then headed to my bubby's swank apartment in senior citizen housing. It is on the 12th floor and overlooks Lake Michigan. If it were a condo, it would undoubtedly cost several hundred thousand buckeroos. Instead, it is highly subsidized by us taxpayers. I think she pays about $400 a month for a decent-size one bedroom with a million dollar view. I'm only slightly jealous.

For the first 30 minutes we were there, she stuffed our faces and talked to us. Then her pals arrived and she held court at her dining table in Russian. I speak better Hindi than I do Russian (reminder: I know about 14 Hindi words), so needless to say, I felt neglected, although also relieved. As long as she was being rude, I figured it would be OK to be rude right back and read my book. ("Nature Girl" by Carl Hiaason. I love Hiaason, but this was definitely not among his best work. It did nicely pass the time, however.) Damn, I am a surly little bitch.

Later, I had dinner with my parents and Rachel and her partner and kid. Their kid is so fucking adorable. Especially with ice cream all over her face. (Hey, I don't have to wash her clothes later, so it is easy to laugh. Her folks are good peeps and didn't seem to perterbed either.) Rachel told us an amusing story about chaperoning the prom last spring. The principal's wife was relating a disaster that unfolded at her sister's wedding on a hot day. It seems that the icing on the cake melted, and the sister freaked out. The prinicpal's wife (doesn't that sound like a character in Canterbury Tales?) told her sister to calm down because the day was not about icing. It was about dick. Dick as in "Dick, the man her sister was marrying," but as she repeated the line over and over again, all the teachers sitting at the table turned red from the effort to not laugh outloud. Rachel even had to kick someone under the table to stop him from giggling.

Maybe my bubby tells hilarious stories like this when she sits around and guffaws with her friends in Russian.

Finally!

Last week's insomnia, which resulted in either almost no sleep or anxiety-ridden sleep, finally caught up with me last night. My eyelids began fluttering shut around 9:05 pm. Within minutes, I was dreaming of India although the light was on in the bedroom and Husband was reading a magazine next to me in bed.

Barnes & Noble finally received the Hindi course I ordered last week. I picked it up on Saturday afternoon, and was relieved to find that it came with a book and two CDs. Then it occurred me that the only place I can listen to the CDs is at home or on my laptop, which is not very convenient. My iPod is a Shuffle, which means that I can't organize MP3s and select which files I want to listen to. I don't think that I want my Hindi lessons to come on while I am at the gym, between Madonna and the Beatles.

I wracked my brain. Finally, it hit me. I could use the Barbie Girls prototype MP3 player for my Hindi lessons!




Oh, this combination of learning tools cracks me up.

Just a reminder: tomorrow is finally May 1. Every first of the month is Blog Exchange Day. I didn't sign up last time because I was in India, but tomorrow my usual crazy rantings and stories will be over at Web Kittyn Warbles and Web Kittyn's insights will be here. The theme is Mother's Day.

Ji Nahi

"Ji nahi" means "no" in Hindi. It was the third word I learned in India, but probably the most important. It seemed to work wonders when people tried to sell me things.

I had a "ji nahi" moment last Monday evening when I received my new book for learning Hindi from barnesandnoble.com. It seems that I can't read English very well and thus did not notice that the book I ordered did not, in fact, come with a CD. As I discovered while in India, when I tried to pronounce things after merely reading them in my little Hindi & Urdu phrasebook, this is not a good method for speaking a language if you want to be sure you are saying, "Thank you, my friend" instead of, "Come to my room tonight for hot monkey sex." I need to listen to things be said properly and repeat them. I also cornered one of the men who work in my building and asked him if I can practice Hindi with him. He seemed rather pleased with my suggestion. (He also seemed extra excited when I spoke one of my four phrases to him, which of course makes me worry that I unintentionally offered to suck his dick as part of his holiday tip this year...)

Oh well. I'll bring it back to Barnes & Noble and then re-order the book with the tape online, which I will then get free shipping on and a discount. It's cumbersome, but so is learning Hindi right?