Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

In their PBS interview with Hari Sreenivasan, Tariq described the 30 Mosques trip as an opportunity to see how people are living the religion of Islam. Ali highlighted a Muslim community in San Francisco called Ta’leef Collective that impressed him with its inclusive attitudes and “come as you are” philosophy.Their 2011 journey was successfully funded through Kickstarter. You can see the entire 30-day route on their website. It included trips to Alaska, where there is no mosque but there are thousands of Muslims, and Hawaii, where during a 10 hour visit they stopped at heiress Doris Duke’s Shangri La, a public center for Islamic arts and culture.

Along the way, they met many interesting people including a gay imam in DC, a Native American convert in South Dakota, and a female priest in Seattle who practices both Christianity and Islam. The two young men also got permission to enter the women’s space at a Little Rock, Arkansas, mosque. All these trips and others generated some fascinating blog posts, photos and videos, not to mention discussion on their website, where they posted as they traveled.

Ali and Tariq note that their project has inspired others to do their own Ramadan-related explorations. Break_fast at night, for example, is a photo-focused site sharing the Muslim-American experience of Ramadan through images of Muslims partaking in pre-dawn meals at all-night diners, praying at home and at restaurants before breaking the fast, and hitting up piñatas as part of Eid celebrations.

Yes, we’ve posted this before, but I’m going to post it every single year on Christmas Eve.

Seriously, how many of y’all believed in Santa? My parents never pretended he existed, and my classmates all knew better. We had no chimney, no fireplace, and I knew there was no White Man keeping track of whether I was naughty or nice. Whole thing made around as much sense as the Easter Bunny. Were you a Santaphile growing up? If you’ve got kids, do you want them to believe?

And… an oldie but a goodie of my favorite Christmas song ever and in what looks like No Doubt circa late 90s running through the streets of India.

Oi! From our mutiny to yours: Happy Holidays, y’all!

I took my own advice and set up a video camera in our kitchen yesterday. I learned to roll parathas and then flipped them to my brother to cook up.

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Okay, full disclosure: I have no idea whether my title is inapposite or borderline offensive. If it IS either of those things, I apologize in advance. I was just trying to be cute while exposing my lack of knowledge for a good cause– learning more about Vishu! There is no better way to understand something than to admit my ignorance to all of you. Because if there is one thing I have learned over these past six (!) years at the Mutiny, it is that when I mess something up I will be corrected by commenters and trolls alike, faster than my Dad could say, “Edi, MANDI!” back in the day.

Could I have looked Vishu up instead of harassing all of you? Sure, but how much can one read about the unknown without one’s eyes glazing over? But just to prove I Googled it, here’s the obligatory blockquote from Wiki:

Vishu is a festival celebrated in the state of Kerala in South India. The same day is also celebrated as New year in several other parts of India such as Punjab (Baisakhi), Assam (Bihu), Tulu Nadu region in Karnataka where it is known as Bisu as well as in Tamil Nadu. The festival marks the first day of Malayalam Year and falls in the month of Medam (April – May). Vishu generally falls on April 14 of the Gregorian calendar…”Vishu” in Sanskrit means “equal”…

Although Vishu (first of Medam) is the astrological new year day of Kerala, the official Malayalam new year falls on the first month of Chingam (August – September). However, 1st of Chingam has no significance either astrologically or astronomically. Chingam is the harvest season in Kerala and southern parts of coastal Karnataka.

The most important event in Vishu is the Vishukkani, which literally ” the first to be seen on the Vishu day”. The Vishukkani consist of a ritual arrangement of auspicious articles like raw rice, fresh linen, golden cucumber, betel leaves, arecanut, metal mirror, the yellow flowers konna (Cassia fistula), and a holy text and coins, in a bell metal vessel called uruli in the puja room of the House. A lighted bell metal lamp called nilavilakku is also placed alongside. This arrangement is completed the previous night. On the day of Vishu, the custom is to wake up at dawn and go to the puja room with the eyes closed so that the Vishukkani is the first sight of the new season.

According to that entry, Vishu is bigger in Northern Kerala. My family is from South-Central. I wonder if that’s part of why I’m so ign’ant about Vishu…or if it’s the whole “Christian” thing. No matter, I’ll happily welcome any excuse to consume more Mampazhapachadi. I looooove eating pachadi, especially if it’s Paavakka-based. With tortilla chips. DON’T JUDGE ME.

So what inspired my whirlwind interest in Vishu? This:

Jinal is a co-founder of Dsplaced, “A collective storytelling experiment” which features many stories with a Desi bend; the three “largest” tags in the site’s cloud are “Bombay”, “New York” and “Mumbai”. She is based in New York. I follow her on Twitter and initially felt bad about not being able to suggest anything in response to her tweet, since I love being Malayalee and sharing all manner of coconut-tinged goodness with the world. But that’s where you come in, dear Mutineers– especially if you’re in NYC. Do you have any suggestions for her (and everyone else who may be wondering about the same thing)?

How do you celebrate Vishu? And if you’d be kind enough to indulge my curiosity, how do you define it or explain it, for those, like me, who’d love to know more? Finally, if you want to leave lyrical comments reminiscing about Vishu or relating childhood memories of it, well, you know I’ll swoon.

All images (c) Preston Merchant

With most of their aggressive workers identified and picked up by the police ahead of the release of My Name Is Khan, Shiv Sena members have admitted that their annual Valentine Day protests will likely be low-key, if they happen at all.

Every year, Sainiks denounce the concept of Valentine’s Day and warn couples against celebrating it, but this year, they say, the agitation against Shah Rukh Khan and his movie are of more immediate importance. [Link.]

Perhaps they’ve turned their sights to virtual protests? Alongside the other factoids on Wikipieda, I came across this interesting new poster, which was uploaded on Wikipedia’s ‘Valentine’s Day’ this past Saturday. I thought SM readers would find it as amusing as I did.

Beware of Valentine’s Day, huh? SMH. That’s web-lingo for ‘shaking my head.’ So ‘Valentine’s Day’ which is all part of ‘Western culture’ leads to ‘external attraction,’ which leads to ‘unethical conduct,’ which leads to ‘A Moment’s Happiness,’ which leads to ‘Immoral Behavior,’ which leads to ‘Destruction?’ I’m pretty sure I saw the same posters in the Sunday school class at the Mennonite church I attended as a nine-year old. Oh, the common threads that bind us.

This ‘scientific’ information is good to know, thanks HJS. God forbid children should exchange sweets. What if they haz the sex? Or the inter-religious marriages? Tsk, tsk. What is this world coming to?

Related Posts: The state of the union, Hindus and Muslims Find Common Ground, Kamdev’s Little Helpers, Don’t be Loose

Here’s a little song to get you through the next couple of days. Happy Holidays!

(Related Post: Finally Indian Christmas Carols)

No more. Now there’s a new menu, artfully seasoned by the loving hands of my aunts and uncles and eaten alongside cousins whose English still has smatterings of Urdu. Little wonder that Thanksgiving has replaced Christmas and New Year’s Eve as my favorite holiday. This year, we were all especially grateful. One aunt lost her job when the budget in Pennsylvania cut funding from the daycare she worked at. An uncle had to move to Texas, when his company moved operations to Mexico. It was a tough year – for everyone. But it was also a good year, one of new beginnings. The first-grader started school and was learning to read. The three-year old had begun speaking in full sentences. The 17-year old liked her new college. We were together. There was food on the table. Little things – but something to celebrate. And why not be thankful for the little things in life? So when my grandfather and uncles took out the tabla and the harmonium after the meal and began loudly singing hymns in Punjabi – I didn’t shy away like I usually do. I sang along.

Anyway, that’s my crrrazy family in a nutshell for you, mutineers. Hope your Thanksgiving was as chaotic as mine. Anything your family did for Thanksgiving that drives you up the wall? Humbles you? Makes you thankful? And any creative ideas on what to do with all that leftover turkey (or tofurkey)? An article in last week’s New York Times called “The Turkey That Went to India” had some suggestions for all you turkey-eatin’ folks out there (h/t to Ennis). It suggested concocting a turkey curry.

Sandwiches may be delightful, but those happen Thursday night. By Friday, you may have had enough of traditional American food and may be craving something on the opposite end of the spectrum, something with a bit of spice. Something, perhaps, with curry powder and coconut milk: a turkey curry.

Hmm, don’t ever recall my mother making that – but there’s no time like the present. The article goes on to differentiate between ‘curry’ and ‘curry power,’ “A curry can be made with curry powder, a generic term for a blend of what we think of as Indian spices.” Watch the accompanying video for the recipe. (I kinda muffled a groan at the end when he says “you could almost say exotic” of the dish.) And if you have any turkey curry recipes that you think can top that (and I’m fully confident you do), feel free to share.

It was for this reason, my friends and I joked around about how we needed an Eid goat. Easter has the bunny rabbit, Christmas has Santa Claus. But growing up as a Muslim kid in the U.S., we didn’t really have anything equivalent. I was always told Eid was my version of Christmas, but then, why did all the other kids get presents and we didn’t? As we got older, it seemed like the Eid goat would have been the perfect solution.

Thus, I had already goats on my mind when maitri tweeted the following “I Want a Goat” video [NSFW]. It’s promoting a program, I Want a Goat, where you can design and donate a goat to a village in India. The modern twist is that this video has hipster charm splashed all over it.

I realize the tie between this video and Eid is tenuous at best. I found the the song amusing and the cause seems legit. The project was started by a woman Debbie who volunteered in the village for seven months and saw a similar program run successfully in India. For only a $20 donation, you will be donating a goat to a village in Koraput. Why goat?

For tribal people who are landless, raising goats is a great alternative source of income. Families who breed goats can earn a good profit selling the kids in the local market. The extra income provides a safety net for families that can be used for things like medicine, food during lean periods and farm equipment. While I was volunteering in Koraput, I personally witnessed a village that was transformed by a similar goatery program. Three years ago, Goats & Hopes, a UK-based charity, gave a goat to each of the 37 families in the village. I went to visit the village and was greeted by 96 goats and their families who told me stories of how the goats have given them the extra savings they needed to break free from their debt to moneylenders. The success of this program demonstrates the long-term effects of goats as a sustainable income-generation source. [iwantagoat]

It seems like this project is new and just getting off the ground. Abhi’s already jumped on the goat wagon (“I donated a white goat with gold uggs that I named Darwin using that site.”) If you donate and play on the site, you can even enter for a chance to win a flight to India.

So there you have it. Eid Mubarak and go design your own goat today!