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| Dwayne opens his stocking on Christmas day 2020. |
I am listening to Beethoven's Missa Solemnis for which I wrote my Friday curtain-raiser today for AIR FM Goa. As we find we are alive in 2021 one must often be beset like Beethoven about 'reconstructing one's life and finishing one's life's work,' as one biographer put it. A new year is about new decisions and can be a step in that direction. One just needs to remain focussed.
There were no entries, I see, on this blog after 13th December. The last fortnight of 2020 was hectic. Christmas is not Christmas if you don't make the effort to observe it as such. So the decorations went up on 23rd night and 24th December. But even on 24th night no gifts could be seen under the Christmas tree.
Dwayne (9) was most upset fearing that Santa had forgotten him (courtesy COVID). We tried to gently explain that Christmas was, after all, on 25th. Mass at Don Bosco at 6 p.m. on 24th set the mood. It was the first Mass in a very long time that we attended. It lifted our spirits amid the general depression. When we opened the paper on Christmas morn we saw that we had made it to the front page!
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| The Goan newspaper, 25th Dec. 2020, pg. 1. |
Miraculously the Christmas tree was filled with gifts for all of us on Christmas day my mid-morning. Dwayne's stocking was also filled to the brim with chocolates, stationery, shuttlecocks, sketch books, a noodles packet and even a packet of biryani masala! He finally got, not one, but TWO monster trucks. It was so much fun opening the gifts with the family. I was happy that I followed Queenie's advice: 'Enjoy what you have,' when I said I wanted to go to Vasco (from Porvorim) to hear another Christmas Mass on 25th morning.
Christmas time is the time when we buy things for the house. A notable purchase was a bench for the keyboard for sustained playing. On 25th night we realized we did not have a bedsheet for our bed - ours was at the laundry service. So we went out and before the shutters downed we came away with a white bedsheet bedecked with mauve roses.
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| School boys' reunion at Babazin, Nerul, Goa. |
A reunion of school boys and their families on Sunday 27th December at Babazin, Nerul fostered a feeling of togetherness. We even played mini-football. It was 'Reds versus the rest.' Dwayne captained the Red House and got to take home the leftover prawn curry.
In the run up I helped to cut the pork bits for what is Christmas without sorpotel. It tastes particularly in the cold months. And the Christmas pudding - gifted to us by my brother - was delicious. As directed, I sprinkled Mansion House brandy and watched the flames lick the cake before I tasted it.
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| Breakfast of sorpotel, fried egg, and roti during Christmas week. |
The anticipated New Year Mass was at 8 p.m. on 31st night at Holy Family church, Porvorim. The homily dwelt on the feast of Mary the mother of God. That it was the end of the year, was only incidental. Because in the realm of the divine all is timeless.
I look at the Havana guitar strap which we picked up at Vibes, Margao. Its Latin American print relaxes me as I take in the crisp winter breezes in the morning on my balcony. I am right now in Paraguay in How to Travel Without Seeing: Dispatches from the New Latin America by Andres Neuman. I picked it up in a sale at St. Inez where books were being sold by the kilo.
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