Topic suggested by Bharat on Thu Aug 13 16:08:36 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.

That's right folks. Fond memories of our homeland and our past.
This is an offshoot of the chinna chinna aasai thread in the TFM-DF.

Responses:

• Old responses
  
• From: aruLarasan (@ psiphi.umsl.edu) on: Mon Aug 31 00:01:35
  
  Ravi: :-)))))
  
  
• From: IRfan (@ gw4.awo.com) on: Tue Sep 1 16:20:25
  
  Here is a mail I got from one of my friends:
  
  
  BY CHITRA DIVAKARUNI | Last week, when my
  sons and I were at the post office, we took a
  detour to examine the pole in front and admire
  the big red, white and blue flag flapping
  energetically in the wind. Like any good mother
  of small children, I wanted to make this into a
  learning experience.
  
  "Children, what flag is that?" I asked. "American flag!" said Abhay, who is 3. "Our flag," said Anand, who is 5. Then he looked at me Questioningly. "Right, Mama?" It took me a moment to answer. I was remembering a very different flag, orange and white and green, the Indian flag, the way it flew in the breeze in front of my old school. It would appear on the theater screen at the end of every movie we saw in Calcutta, and then we all stood up straight and sang the national anthem. Every year on Aug. 15, we hand painted small paper versions of this flag and proudly waved them at independence day parades.
  
  I love America. I've loved it for all of the 20
  years I've been here. At first it was a love laced
  with amazement and gratitude, so overwhelmed
  was I by the many openings and freedoms
  America gave me. Later, after I chose to become
  a citizen, I learned to love it more intimately and critically, like one loves family. I learned to take on responsibilities, to push for change, to be a part of the American people. I was happy to think I made a difference, even if it was a small one. But this morning, standing in the beautiful California sunshine, trying to answer my son's question, I felt a surprising twinge in my heart, as though I were losing something very dear all over again.
  
  "Mama?" prompted Anand, a look of doubt in his eyes. "Of course it is, sweetheart. Of course it's our flag," I assured him. There was something else I needed to say, something important about the complexities of culture and allegiance and patriotism and ancestry, how they change and yet do not change, but I didn't have the words for it. So we bought our stamps and aerograms, and then we went home. That night I couldn't sleep. I sat at our dining table and thought about what it had meant for me to be Indian, and what it meant for my children to be American. I thought of the great gap -- mental as much as geographic -- that my moving to this country had created between the generations of my family: my mother, who lives in a little Indian village, myself, balanced precariously between two continents, and my children, whose primary ties will always be to the Bay area. The language Anand and Abhay speak, both literally and metaphorically, is so very different from the Bengali and even the Indian English my mother and I grew up with. When I had blithely boarded the Pan Am airplane that brought me to this country, I'd had no premonition that any of this would happen.
  
  Perhaps it was the upcoming 50th anniversary of
  India's independence that prompted these dark
  night musings. But I believe all immigrant parents
  go through them at some time or other, when
  they must weigh the gains of what they have
  given their American children against the losses.
  The gains are more immediately obvious, of
  course: a great education, wonderful career
  opportunities, freedom of movement and speech
  and thought, the ability to sample a vibrant
  multicultural world. But the losses are there too.
  First among them is the lack of extended family
  -- grandparents, uncles and aunts, even cousins
  of cousins -- and the comfortable sense that your
  parents' house is only one of the many homes in
  which you belong. Some of my happiest early
  memories are of the times spent with my
  grandfather, who taught me to read and to play
  chess and to love trees. Or of my aunt, who used
  to comb my hair free of knots and tie it lovingly
  into double plaits with red ribbons. Or of my
  third uncle's wife, who made the absolute best
  fish-fries in all of Calcutta. My children will
  never have that same sense of fitting with
  serendipitous ease into the pattern of other lives.We are all too busy here, and family gatherings have to be carefully orchestrated. When my children go to visit their grandmother in India - perhaps once every two years -- it is an exciting venture to an exotic place, not a return to a dear,familiar one. As they grow older, I fear their excitement will fade (I see this in the older children of friends), and they'll prefer spending their vacations with their friends, Americans like themselves to whom they won't have to explain,over and over, about Power Rangers and Baskin-Robbins and Disneyland. And yet ...
  
  Will my children ever fit into this country in the way a person of European background can? Even though they were born in America no less than Bruce Springsteen, many people will look at them and always see foreigners. "Where do you come from?" is a question that the American children of my Indian friends routinely have to deal with. Boston, they say, or San Francisco, or Dayton, Ohio. And the questioner responds with, "No, I mean, where do you REALLY come from?" When times are bad, and there's a recession, or a war, the question changes. It becomes, "Why don't you go back where you came from?" In my dark kitchen I bow my head to pray for strength -- for India, facing, on her 50th anniversary of freedom, the severe challenges of poverty and illiteracy and communal violence.
  
  And for us all, children of the Indian diaspora,
  here on the other side of the world, who have
  our own challenges. I pray that we may be able
  to preserve the values we've gained from our
  past: love of family, of traditions, of spirituality and the simple life. That we may combine them with what we've learned in our new home: energy and enterprise and how to fight for our rights. This, perhaps, is the best legacy we can leave our children:
  
  The art of being Indian-American.
  
  bye
  srikanth
  
  
• From: IRfan (@ gw4.awo.com) on: Tue Sep 1 16:22:28
  
  Oops. Sorry for not formatting my above posting perfectly. As this info was forwarded to me I couldn't do much about it.
  
  
• From: S.Krishnan (@ m40.chn.vsnl.net.in) on: Thu Sep 3 06:28:49
  
  I long for the nights spent listening to "Iravin Madiyil" prog on Radio Ceylon. Oh ! Those were the days !
  
  
• From: PK (@ node1.allegiance.net) on: Thu Sep 3 11:33:38
  
  IRfan:
  That article was too good. Hats off to the person who has actually written that. We all surely seem to be moving towards those feelings.
  
  
• From: IRfan (@ gw4.awo.com) on: Thu Sep 3 11:51:00
  
  PK:
  That's right. As an Indian living in the US, I find it difficult to accept other things that come with the USD! :-)
  
  
• From: kiruba (@ slipper.watcom.on.ca) on: Thu Sep 3 19:44:12
  
  IRfan,
  That was a very good article. No wonder in Tamil/India we refer to our language and land as mother tongue/land etc. So for us it is difficult to change our 'motherland'. How can one change their mother ? Similarly, you can take language/pronounciation courses and get rid of every trace of your accent (my friends have been quite successful with that) does that mean English is your mothertongue now ??
  
  Land and Language create strong emotional attachments. Even if we live in US/Canada we will never fail to be Indians. The next generation is what will be the real sons-of-the-soil.
  
  (Ofcourse, koththu barotta, dosai-vEr kadalai chutney, murukku-athirasam, kozhukattai, aappam-thEnga pAl,
  and a good tamil song (from IR :-)) will invoke feelings of nostalgia for us !!!)
  
  Have you guys ever collected matches (labels) ? or bought cocoa or paal ice from a street vendor ? or had the gooey/sticky candy rolled into a watch and tied it around your hands ??
  
  Or flown kites with powdered glass for maanja ??
  
  Have you ever been hit accidentally by a 'killi' (killi-thaandu) ? or hit somebody else.
  
  Have you rented bicycles and spent too much time with it and had difficulty paying the 'vaadagai' ??
  
  (re: food. Tamil restaurants in Toronto are catering to my nostalgia a lot and IR's Nothing but Wind playing on my headphones right now).
  
  This is all nostalgia for me !!!
  
  
• From: Test (@ spider-tn041.proxy.aol.com) on: Fri Oct 30 23:14:05
  
  Testing
  
  
• From: MOVERS AND SHAKERS (@ ) on: Sat Mar 20 14:06:03
  
  MOVERS AND SHAKERS
  
  

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