Pongal Party

 

January 14, 2026, Tuesday

We are still waking up early because of jet lag, so we were almost the only ones at breakfast this morning. We were sitting next to an Indian couple and I could tell they wanted to talk to us. Finally, the husband struck up a conversation, and we had a lot in common. They were both born in India but they immigrated to the US and live in San Jose. They asked where we were from and then they told us their daughter taught for one year at a small college in Washington. Turns out, she taught biology at the University of Puget Sound! Karl didn't know her because she taught while we were in Taiwan, but we were suddenly fast friends. The wife wanted our email addresses to check in with us later in the trip. She is here for a knee replacement surgery. Their son and daughter-in-law live in Chennai.

Mr. Faiz Rahman

We spent several hours in class today. We attended Elisabeth's first class on classical Hinduism. Then, we attended a talk by a guest lecturer, Mr. A. Faizur Rahman who spoke on "Interpreting Islam in a Plural World: Pathways to Interfaith Harmony from a Practitioner's Perspective." One of his points was that the other two religions of "the book" (Judaism and Christianity) do not have a pure text like Islam because versions of their sacred text have been corrupted by translators. He talked about how the Koran was given to a prophet straight from God in Arabic and so Muslims can go straight to the source. He also said the message of Islam taught in the Koran is to seek peace. The root word in Islam is "salam", which means peace.

After class ended, we were invited by the hotel management to attend a staff Pongal Party. Since we have been here a while, we know much of the staff. But at the party, they all were dressed up in their fancy local attire. It felt a little like the upstairs people were mixing with the downstairs people. They were very nice and thrilled to have us attend.

The party began with this couple dancing their way into the room carrying the boiling-over rice pot, a symbol of Pongal.

The dance.

The next activity was greetings to the important people seated at the head table. Some of the students paired up, and each couple made their own entrance. They walked together to the head table and bowed to the hotel manager and his assistants.

The first game was a sugar cane peeling challenge. The challenge was a race to peel it by only using your teeth and spit it out on the floor. One of our students gave it a go, and Karl gave him pointers on how to do it. He has sugar cane eating experience from Taiwan.

The man who won was super fast! He is on the far right.

The next party game was musical chairs! It started as a British parlor game, so it makes sense they might play it here.

One student made it to the final four and then didn't get a chair.

After musical chairs, they invited people to sing and or dance. Two of the students are on a dance team at school, so they performed. The hotel staff finally convinced one of the workers to sing a solo. He did great and sounded just like a Bollywood number.

The final activity was held in the basement. They led us to the freight elevator and our entire group fit!

The final activity is what we would call a pinata and the Tamil call a Uriyadi. The goal was to the smash the overflowing Pongal pot. We have three students who have Spanish as their first language and pinatas are a part of their heritage. They were eager to give it a try. When it was finally smashed, some water spilled out, as well as some flowers and a little candy. The tradition is that the first water to splash on a boy and girl means they might get married.  It was a very fun party and we were happy to have been invited.