Holi Festival Celebration in AMES
After enjoying the cooking class from Hindi 101, we were really excited when Kusum Ji began to discuss plans for our cooking class for this semester. We discussed many ideas for what to cook this semester, including pav bhaji, bhel puri, and roti sabzi, but we quickly settled on one idea that sparked universal excitement from everyone in the class: pani puri. In fact, Kusum Ji even challenged us to eat as many as we could, as one of my classmates said she would try to eat 30! Kusum Ji told us she would buy the ingredients for over 200 pani puris for our small class, along with Maagi noodles and rasgulla. Kusum Ji also told us we were going to celebrate Holi, which happened to fall on the same day! We all really looked forward to the class!
Soon, the day of the cooking class came, and we left the usual classroom on West Campus for the kitchen in the John Hope Franklin building. While cooking our own food in Hindi 101 was a really fun learning experience, this year’s cooking class provided the opportunity to step away from the classroom and focus on enjoying our time with our classmates and professor while we celebrated Holi! We walked in and saw huge trays of puris and a variety of ingredients and chutnies. Hungry and excited, we immediately began to make and enjoy our food!
For most of us, this began to remind us of fun childhood memories, as this was almost everyone’s favorite snack. We began to tell each other about our stories from our childhoods, how we used to eat pani puri, and other foods that we really loved! However, for some students, this was their first time eating pani puri, and we got to share with them the joy and excitement we felt, as we all learned more about our Indian culture! Whether it was their first time or thousandth time having pani puri, each student really enjoyed the food and the overall experience!
After this, we made the Maagi noodles. We decided to make 13 packets of Maagi, and added a few more ingredients for flavor. After it was completely ready, we all enjoyed the food together, as many of us hadn’t eaten this in years! While some students joked that they were “never making this much Maagi again,” we all had so much fun and got to tell each other our childhood memories again. Finally, we concluded the food portion of the class by enjoying rasgulla for dessert. Personally, rasgullas are one of my favorite sweets, so this perfectly completed the simple, nostalgic, and enjoyable meal!
Since it was Holi, we also got to touch on the more cultural aspect of the event. While some students wished we could have gone deeper into the story of Holi during the event and following classes, we did get to talk about the festival a little and some of its traditions. In fact, Kusum Ji told us her stories of Holi celebrations in India, which was really nice to hear! Also, Kusum Ji surprised us with plates full of pink and green color and told us to play Holi! We went around the room and got to put some color on each other, as a nice, small way to celebrate the traditions of Holi. Although some of us were hesitant at first, we ended up having a lot of fun!
Overall, all the students had a lot of fun in this special class! One of my classmates, Samhitha Sunkara, said “Pani puri is my favorite food and eating it brought me back to my childhood.” Similarly, another classmate, Shreyas Gupta, said, “The cooking class is truly one of my favorite parts about taking Hindi at Duke.” He thought it felt really warming to celebrate Indian culture with peers and professors, especially on Holi!
This experience was a great chance to have a more hands-on learning of Indian culture outside of our everyday classroom setting, and it allowed us to relax and enjoy the presence of our peers and our professor. I really enjoyed this event, and I really appreciated the opportunity to connect with everyone in my class. Overall, we all want to thank Kusum Ji for giving us this opportunity and organizing this class! We really enjoyed our second cooking class, and we’re looking forward to more, as we learn to make more food, share more laughs, and understand more of our Indian culture!
