Diwali 2008
Diwali this year was a lot of fun.... for the first time in a very long while, I actually felt like I celebrated Diwali in the spirits of Diwali (though it would have been fun to blow some crackers :-)
We had been preparing for this occasion for months now, but actually started really preparing for it since the last week only. We discussed the menu, worked on the layout of the apartment, started cleanup of all those dusty creepy corners where we would normally not care to go. Everything was going on as expected till we realized that we need to decide as to how are we gonna involve our friends with the "aartis" and "chalisas" which we would be reciting during the "puja" ? In the increasingly globalized society it is very important for people to include their friends, coworkers etc in their religious customs, traditions and believes so that others become aware of them and appreciate each other....
Of course, the first thing that came to out mind was just to google :-) and find out if we could find the hindi version of these along with the english transliterations and also the translation so that people can not only read hindi thru english but also understand the meaning of it..... googling thru thousands of websites, we found that we could either get scanned hindi texts or transliterations and very few translations.... since modern OCR software are not so capable of understanding anything but english, it became very apparent to us that we will have to do the hard work. I started by playing with Microsoft word and it's support of hindi. After a few trial and errors, I started typing some basic hindi alphabets and started making small sentences.... but i soon realized that it was a very tedious task and given the time constraint which i have, it was almost impossible to finish it.... a little more googling ---> and finally i got the break thru, google's very innovation Hindi transliteration tool.... www.google.co.in/transliterate/indic ... looked like a very breakthru technology to me, very easy to use and very accurate indeed..... i soon became a master of typing hindi :-)
I was very excited by the overcoming of this technological barrier... I came back home, we started preparing food: one sabzi, chole, plain rice, pooris, gujarati daal... and of course D's favorite yogurt and tamarind rice were yet to come to add spice in our lives:-)
Everyone came on time, though we started our prayers a little later than scheduled (yeah you got it, IST)..... I was a little nervous about where and how to start... i gave a little overview of Hindu Gods and then started my recitals.... it went much better than I had expected and my doubts about my hindi skills proved to be very unfounded (kinda excited about that)..... following the prayers we sat down for the most important part: food :-) everyone was very hungry and we ran towards the food like vultures.... the food was delicious (even though till that point we had not tasted it). We decided to sit on the floor instead of the sofa and chairs (thot it was more fun that way)... T and friends talked a lot about law school.. and law....
As people started leaving, we sat there thinking... that was a lot of fun... and for the first time in years I wish that Diwali comes soon next year.
We had been preparing for this occasion for months now, but actually started really preparing for it since the last week only. We discussed the menu, worked on the layout of the apartment, started cleanup of all those dusty creepy corners where we would normally not care to go. Everything was going on as expected till we realized that we need to decide as to how are we gonna involve our friends with the "aartis" and "chalisas" which we would be reciting during the "puja" ? In the increasingly globalized society it is very important for people to include their friends, coworkers etc in their religious customs, traditions and believes so that others become aware of them and appreciate each other....
Of course, the first thing that came to out mind was just to google :-) and find out if we could find the hindi version of these along with the english transliterations and also the translation so that people can not only read hindi thru english but also understand the meaning of it..... googling thru thousands of websites, we found that we could either get scanned hindi texts or transliterations and very few translations.... since modern OCR software are not so capable of understanding anything but english, it became very apparent to us that we will have to do the hard work. I started by playing with Microsoft word and it's support of hindi. After a few trial and errors, I started typing some basic hindi alphabets and started making small sentences.... but i soon realized that it was a very tedious task and given the time constraint which i have, it was almost impossible to finish it.... a little more googling ---> and finally i got the break thru, google's very innovation Hindi transliteration tool.... www.google.co.in/transliterate/indic ... looked like a very breakthru technology to me, very easy to use and very accurate indeed..... i soon became a master of typing hindi :-)
I was very excited by the overcoming of this technological barrier... I came back home, we started preparing food: one sabzi, chole, plain rice, pooris, gujarati daal... and of course D's favorite yogurt and tamarind rice were yet to come to add spice in our lives:-)
Everyone came on time, though we started our prayers a little later than scheduled (yeah you got it, IST)..... I was a little nervous about where and how to start... i gave a little overview of Hindu Gods and then started my recitals.... it went much better than I had expected and my doubts about my hindi skills proved to be very unfounded (kinda excited about that)..... following the prayers we sat down for the most important part: food :-) everyone was very hungry and we ran towards the food like vultures.... the food was delicious (even though till that point we had not tasted it). We decided to sit on the floor instead of the sofa and chairs (thot it was more fun that way)... T and friends talked a lot about law school.. and law....
As people started leaving, we sat there thinking... that was a lot of fun... and for the first time in years I wish that Diwali comes soon next year.
posted by javatarian at
8:23 PM
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