The little gift box🎁!

 

The Ryanite Nostalgia!

Yesterday while driving around the city, I saw a Christmas procession with a lot of Santa’s on the truck, road and on their scooties. But the surprising element was the song that was being played in the backdrop. It was a Christmas song in Marathi. For a minute I thought I heard it wrong but I was not wrong it was actually a Marathi Christmas carol. Well I think that is how beautifully cultures and celebrations have blended in our society, we have an Indian version of almost all the festivals celebrated across the world and in fact within the country also we celebrate each festival in its local version!

With Christmas round the corner, I recall the best Christmas celebrations that we used to have in school. Just before the Christmas week we mostly had our exams in school so post that we were all relaxed and ready to celebrate, enjoy and rejoice before we had almost a week's holiday, probably the best time in school.

It used to start with carol singing competitions, the winner of which got a chance to sing in the Christmas special assembly. The carol singing got all the singers and non-singers to sing to the tune of Christmas carols. School is the place where we don't have these stereotypes of being a singer, non-singer, dancer, non-dancer and so on and so forth, of course we used to be placed in rows according to our performances but still everybody got the chance to perform. I remember becoming a christmas bell once for the carol singing, sounds funny but I really did wear a bell shaped decorated cardboard like an apron and  looked like a jingle bell!

Then we had a special Christmas assembly, where we had bible reading, prayer, prayer songs, carol singing by the winners of the competition. But the highlight of the assembly was always the skit which narrated the story of Jesus' birth. I remember performing in it once, I became one of the angels that bless and dance around new born Jesus and Mother Mary. Dancing and singing together in assemblies was such a vibe that is unbeatable till date.

Well then after that we had a class decoration activity where we decorated our classes with Christmas trees, mistletoes, bells, those little gifts, stockings and other wall decoration items. Then we used to go about the floor and see how other classes looked but at the end we used to convince ourselves that ours was the best. After which we used to align all the benches on the sides and the middle circle was for playing dumb charades, antakshari, singing songs and rejoicing. 

I also remember opening the little decoration gift boxes, thinking there would be something inside it. But over the years I have realized it's always empty and it's just for us to believe that it is a gift and nothing else. But over the years I have also realized that our future is also like that little gift box, sometimes it looks empty when we try to open it before time and otherwise it is like that tempting gift that may have infinite possibilities in it, all we need to have is a little bit of patience. The gift will someday automatically open and unfold, till then let's believe it's going to be something fascinating.

The Little Gift box!

Last but not the least, for every Ryanite the Christmas special plum cake, peppy, frooti, waffy and some chocolate was like a Christmas ritual. Our Christmas was complete only after receiving this! Even today if I come across any of these items in the grocery store it brings back those merry Christmas memories.   

While going back home after a day full of enjoyment, everyone had their decorated Christmas trees in one hand and wished merry Christmas and a happy new year with the other. And then cracking the conventional joke of meeting next year!

Similarly I wish all my dear readers a merry Christmas and a very happy new year!

Meet you all with a fresh new blog in a fresh new year!!

Happy Reading,

Warm Regards,

Siddhi Bhosale.