Yet another long weekend has gone by. And while most people we know spent it soaking up the sun at the beaches, or sightseeing and shopping at hotspots, we decided to do nothing. Well, near to nothing, as the highlight of it was a housewarming party we attended. Yes, there surely was a house, it was new, and there was a party to celebrate it. But it was nowhere close to the housewarming celebrations as I know them, from back home.

There was no sign of a deity whatsoever, given that the hosts were Indians, theists, and rather pious, to boot. So that rules out any impressions that come from a ceremonious puja that is typical for an occasion such as this. Just a clean house with presents stacked up in a corner, and a bunch of bouquets and cards in another. Of course, there was plenty of food, and several desis to indulge.

Understandably, this evoked a feeling of nostalgia in me. I vividly remember the day my family ritualized our new home back in India. Lord Ganesh, considered the harbinger of goodwill and prosperity, was worshipped initially, to kick off the celebrations. A series of prayers and offerings to many other deities followed, and when the walls were laced significantly with the fragrance of holy smoke, burning incense, flowers, camphor, fruits, and ghee-doused semolina pudding, the rites came to a close. Of course, a formal lunch and dinner for friends and relatives followed, but that wasn’t the focus of the entire affair.

There was something about the air in the house that day that made me heady with pride, peace, and a weird sense of triumph. It made me admire my parents a little more, and fall in love with the house. I could feel the rhythm of the sacred chants in every brick and stone, and that made me shudder with sanctity. Thereafter, I felt, strangely as it were, secure and sheltered, to live there. Every special memory associated with that house has a sense of righteousness about it. So much so that this silly fact - that our first homegrown coconut was offered to the Lord before being eaten in the form of a delicious burfi, makes me ebb with delight.

At the party we attended, there were many redolent features too. Pigtailed little girls dressed in resplendent lehengas, women in heavily embroidered six-yard splendors, and some men in their Indian finery too. Tiny voices with squeals of hide-and-seek play, noisy adult chitchat, fused with the clanking of ladles and bangles, filled the atmosphere, making it homely, but in a peculiar way. Also part of this strange atmosphere were several aromas, sounds and sights, none of which was spiritually soothing. The aromas came from - samosas, mixed in a painstakingly cosmopolitan manner with nachos and crackers, complete with cheese-dips and salsa, and the main course. The sounds were several - right from the crackling fizz of soda and beer (at times it was hard to keep the kids off), to the click of high-fives, symbolic of a curious bonding amongst desi software pros. The sights were colorful - clothes, food, flashy cameras, and jewelry, to name a few. The interiors of the house were too spic and span, no tinge of warm and welcoming turmeric or vermilion, no scent of incense, no scattered petals of flowers, no chants or hymns. That’s not to say there’s something amiss or wrong with the set-up, but it just felt a trifle one-dimensional and bare for my conservative and perhaps silly, values.

In this world of luxury, novelty, progress, and high-speed life, even the Honda-driving, cell-phone-sporting priest clad in a silken kurta-veshti and sleek Reebok sneakers seems to send out a homespun kind of signal to me. I always find a sense of divine merit and peace sipping the pint-sized drops of holy water, eating the sanctified pieces of almonds and raisins, while resting my feet on the carpeted floors of the Hindu temple. I experienced a bone-numbing, gratifying, consecrated sensation when my little daughter was blessed by the high priest on her first birthday, after a formalized service.

Maybe it is just a state of mind, and the religious aspects of the whole thing are always debatable, needless to say. But it feels, to put it mildly, good, and fulfilling to be in the presence of indigenous traditions and customs. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy some wine on a special occasion, or spread festive cheer with a beer. It’s just that sometimes too much revolution is a little too much to handle. Besides, that elephant-faced, pot-bellied, adorable little demigod - sitting pretty on the dashboard, nightstand, and in various forms in my arty clay collection, reminds me of my roots, and to be proud of them.