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Headline: Out of India: A carnival of colors and cultures spices up the Garden State.
Source: The Newark Star Ledger,NJ, USA. Sunday, November 07, 2004 at http://www.nj.com/living/ledger/index.ssf?/base/living-2/109980994344860.xml
BY CHRISTINE V. BAIRD
Excerpts:
As the sun goes down mid-week, many an Indian home will begin to sparkle.
A drive through Edison or Parsippany will reveal a stoop here, a porch there, alight with the glow of diyas, oil lamps set out to illuminate doorsteps that seem to dance with complex geometric designs, each hand-sprinkled with richly-colored sand or rice powder as a sign of welcome to family and friends.
One good wind and poof! The rangoli, as the shapes are known, will be gone. But that's okay. In time firecrackers will brighten the sky as many of the more than 170,000 Indians in the state celebrate Diwali, or Deepavali, the Hindu festival of light.
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Often overlooked are the Indian Christians, many of whom are Catholics from the beach-lined western state of Goa, which until 1961 was under Portuguese control.
"Perhaps because of our Christian names, that to Western eyes and ears do not seem to be at all Indian ... we Christian Indians become submerged in the bulk of the population," said Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, an award-winning novelist living in Princeton, who emigrated in 1956.
He often sets his stories in India to keep it alive in his mind and occasionally speaks his native language at home. "We speak English, but if we don't want the grandchildren to understand we will speak Konkani," he said.
His fluency in multiple languages, a skill many Indians possess, helped him land interesting jobs, including working with Jesuits on the secret archives of the British East India Company, which once ruled India.
Full text at http://www.nj.com/living/ledger/index.ssf?/base/living-2/109980994344860.xml
For a photographs and brief profiles of Rangel-Ribeiro, see: http://two-bridges.home.att.net/rangelribeiro.html and http://www.milkweed.org/4_catalog/4_1_1_0193.html
For an interview of him see: http://www.milkweed.org/4_catalog/4_1_1_0193.html
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