I fell in
love with Christmas when I was a kid. Sometimes I feel it appealed to me not
just because of the excitement but also because it was mysterious. Technically,
it wasn’t my festival. I am a Hindu. But I had seen a lot of Christmas in
London, and I was too young for my mother to explain that God was divided. So
she played along. For me, she had to bake a cake with snowy white icing, roast
a chicken stuffed with onion, bake potatoes and boil vegetables and make some
thick gravy too.
Meanwhile,
I was more than ready a week before Christmas with my miniature plastic pine
tree, little shiny balls and stars to hang on it and clean stockings to hang on
Christmas Eve. And I begged my mother for the cotton which would be my fake
snow. As I grew up my collection of decorations grew too, to my mother’s
consternation. Satin ribbons, shiny wrapping paper, with which I even wrapped a
few Alphabet blocks to put under the tree.
And at
night I would wait, for just a shuffle of clothing against the wall, a rustle
of plastic wrappers or a jingle of a reindeer bell. But I never heard anything!
I remember asking about how Santa would come to fill my stocking, since we didn’t
have a chimney. The answer I got was that Santa had a magical golden key which
could open any modern day door. The presents had to come, one way or another.
After I was
old enough to understand who the real Santa was, my enthusiasm didn’t ebb. I
just started thinking aloud what I wanted in my stocking, so that my parents
could hear it. I didn’t always get what I wanted but every Christmas morning my
heart surged happily when I saw the bulge in my stocking.
The bells
are jingling
Hail
Christmas morning
There is
magic in the air
And warmth
in the winter frost !
Since then
Christmas is the new virus in town. People are delirious with sheer good cheer.
On the evening 
We visited
the Rio and were in for a feast of lights. There were cars, ships, air
balloons, clocks, bears, castles and much much more, all made of lights. There
colourful fountains too and the locals had no problem getting drenched in them.
There was a giant sized fair going on too. There was food. Rows and rows of
food stalls selling the local barbecued corn, hot dogs, arepas, empanadas, choritzos,
you name it. There was music. There was a group on violins, a group on guitars,
a group breaking their bodies up elegantly to Reggae, a group on flutes. And
there were toys. There were strange toys that left off rainbow lights, balloons
morphed into swords and Pink Panthers, cuddly soft toys, disco hair bands. My
son was agog.
