Indus Valley Day

It is hard to study ancient Indus Valley civilizations. Why? Well, this is a civilization that just spontaneously disappeared, leaving very little in the way of clues as to why it disappeared. And to top that off, the Indus Valley civilizations' writings remain largely untranslated.

But not to worry, I have become the master of fill-in-the-gaps. When Indus Valley began to loom large in the headlights, I gave Nancy a call and she came to our rescue! Nancy was born and raised in Lucknow, India, making her the closest thing to the ancient Indus Valley civilization that I could come up with on short notice.

Nancy went straight to work setting up an afternoon of delicious excitement. We started out with a lesson on masalas (spices), kitchari (dal, rice, and vegetable stew), sheera (desert), and chutney. In addition, we got to learn how to say, in Hindi, all of the vegetables that we chopped. If our internet provider ever comes out of the Dark Ages, I will post a video of that very thing.

Rosie stirring the semolina for the sheera.

 Perusing the spice selection with Aly's help.

Lunch all finished and on the table. The chutney is in the middle, with the sheera (imagine cream o' wheat meets saffron, cashews, butter, and sugar) in the foreground, and the kitchari in the pot.




After lunch, Nancy had a Hindi movie all cued up and ready to play. The kids watched the dancing with their little jaws on the floor while the kitchari digested in their bellies. Nancy talked a little bit about weddings and some of the traditions surrounding marriage, and then whipped out her wedding dress and dressed each of the girls in it, complete with make-up. This was Tian's take on the whole process:

 But the others got way into the dressing up thing, with Zara even going in for the whole outfit.

The toothless "bride"

The "bride" who needed to be upheld by Nancy

The demure "bride"

The red-eyed bride

It was rough going, but we eventually peeled them all away from the wedding stuff to come outside and learn about traditional ways of keeping the bad gods out and the good gods in. Nancy took a bag of white powder and quickly made a design at her doorstep. Then she gave each of the kids a bag of colorful powder and had them fill in the design. Finally, she gave each a clay pot, a wick, and some cooking oil and had them light lamps inside the design. This, she said, would bring only good to the house.

There was lots more to see and do but we ran out of time and so we bade a tearful farewell to our Indus Valley expert.

It was possibly the coolest field trip ever.