{"id":668,"date":"2012-02-26T15:45:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-26T15:45:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=668"},"modified":"2012-03-02T03:32:24","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T03:32:24","slug":"happy-birthday-to-us-part-2-a-community-celebrates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/?p=668","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday to Us-Part 2: A Community of Families Celebrates"},"content":{"rendered":"

THIS POST IS ALSO UNDER CONSTRUCTION.<\/p>\n

This is part two of a posting that was inspired by two birthdays –mine and Ashish Chadha’s. Ashish is an experimental filmmaker known as Ashish Avikunthak<\/a>. Certainly Ashish’s 40th birthday deserves some kind of social media recognition–if a website like this counts.\u00a0 But beyond getting the event on record–what interests me here is the nature of community and friendship. And how we casually slipped into a ritual (in this case a series of potluck dinners) that becomes deeply meaningful and sustaining.\u00a0 Here are some of the cast of characters.<\/p>\n

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Ok. This is a tale of three, now maybe four families\u2013\u2013but how one makes sense of this group doubtlessly depends on one’s vantage point.\u00a0 I’ve already made clear that film studies provided the opportunity for my connection with Ashish. And yet, truth be told, our wives were really the first to meet.\u00a0 The Threese Serana-Ashwini Deo connection came about when Ashwini first came to New Haven (along with her sister) to look for a place to live.\u00a0 They rented a room on our house for a week.<\/p>\n

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His wife Ashwini Deo teaches Linguistics at Yale, and so Ashish was a trailing spouse for a few years and taught courses in South Asian cinema.\u00a0 Our families began to spend time together–mostly potluck dinners, and then Ashish and I suddenly found ourselves co-teaching Documentary Film Workshop in 2009-10 and becoming fast friends. Two other families are also involved in this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS POST IS ALSO UNDER CONSTRUCTION. This is part two of a posting that was inspired by two birthdays –mine and Ashish Chadha’s. Ashish is an experimental filmmaker known as Ashish Avikunthak. Certainly Ashish’s 40th birthday deserves some kind of social media recognition–if a website like this counts.\u00a0 But beyond getting the event on record–what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=668"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesmusser.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}