Diya Studio

Holly’s Hand, painted on my first Friday open day.

I have to say, I have been extremely touched by the support, for making my friday open days such a success. I was a bit concerned, not being sure of which day of the week I could totally block for doing Henna at the studio. Turns out Friday works fine for most people to get a Henna done, as a lot of them,  like to go for a party usually on a Saturday night, or a Sunday lunch, giving just the right amount of time for the Henna to mature and give the best color, when the time for show off comes.

Also as growing up in a Muslim family, Fridays were the best days because there was a whole ritual of  Zuhur Prayers connected to it. These are the special afternoon prayers, done usually before lunch, and only the men go for the prayers to the mosque, primarily for praying but also for socializing with the other people in the community. On their coming back home, the wives prepare a feast for them and the whole family has to be there, and some times relatives drop in too. In my house, we used to generally have very traditional long lunches, sitting back and pondering over so many different things in life, my parents enjoyed long discussions and we were meant to share stories form school or friends or just anything in our head, really.. and me being the talkative one used to do ALOT of talking and learning from my paretns during these sessions. Of course, after that followed a nap, which again was a very favorite part for me!! So, for me Fridays were generally the days we kids always looked forward to because all in all it was like having a special party, to help maintain the family bond!!

Looking back to those days, I feel extremely gifted to have been growing up in a family who used to celebrate not just some festivals around the year but made each friday so special. So now, in the memory of my parents, I have officially decide to celebrate my Fridays special and sacred too, by inviting the people in Adelaide, to come along to share and experience the food, stories and music with me in my Diya Studio!!

This entry was written by Humna Mustafa, posted on 19 June 2009 at 9:25 am, filed under DiyaStudio. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.