Holi 2008

Holi is a Hindu Festival of undetermined significance (well, if you ask five people, you get five answers) where they throw colored water and colored paste on each other. We did not actually partake this year, as we live in a neighborhood where no one plays, but I thought I would post a few photos. So below is a seven year old photo of my wife, plus some friends, plus one I found on the internet.

My Aunt Lydia is really good at Photo Manipulation

Last August, my Dad climbed Pikes Peak in Colorado, with my two sisters. This my Dad's sister got ahold of the photos.

And yes, I do have a canister of Raleigh's Medicated Ointment here with us in Varanasi, for emergencies.

Maybe I am getting ill...

I keep my phone on "vibrate" mode (in addition to ringing) because I often I cannot hear it ring when I am outside. And I store my phone in my front pocket.

Three times on my way home yesterday, I thought I was recieving a phone call, and picked my phone out of my pocket. Each time, I was wrong. In stead of the "vibrate" mode, it was just my stomach churning.

I wonder what that means for the future?

Confluence of Holiness

This weekend marks a lot of celebrations for a lot of communities in India.

As the Muslims follow the Lunar Calendar, the Hindus use a variety of astrological means for determining their holidays, and the Christians use the moon to tell when Easter is coming... all this adds up to all three of them having a holiday on Friday. Hasn't happened all at once in quite awhile.

So the Christians celebrated Good Friday on Friday (Easter is pretty much unknown to Hindus and Muslims, but Good Friday is known because it is a Bank and Government holiday). It also happened to be Mohammed's birthday. (The more "Protestant" types of Muslims don't celebrate this, but the more "Catholic" types of Muslims -- who are the majority-- celebrate with much fervour.) And then the Hindu festival (the unfortunately named) Holi is on Friday and Saturday. As the Hindu Holi festival is a bad time to be out on the streets, we took Friday and Saturday as "stay at home" days, and enjoyed the family together.

It's Friday... but Sunday's a'comin'...

Way to Use Your Head, Son

Nora Grace has had a loose tooth for about four months now. It is one of her front ones -- the other front one having fell out some months ago. Although we have encouraged her to wiggle it, it has stubbornly stayed in or she has stubbornly refused to wiggle or some combination of the above.

Until today.

Sam was in a wrestling mood (when is Sam not in a wrestling mood?) and tackled Nora Grace. With clever use of his head, he smacked himself into her mouth, thereby dislodging said tooth once and for all. As expected, there was blood everywhere.

Way to use your head, Sam, you did a good job.

So how many rupees does one get for a tooth under the pillow?

Prime Minister in Town

Varanasi has not had a visit from a sitting Prime Minister in over 20 years, so I guess it was time. But my oh my does it mess up traffic.
We only have half a dozen roads wider than ten feet for our two million people, so if one of those gets shut down, the whole city grinds to a halt.
The PM will be visiting a major temple in the center of the city, and to get there will need to drive on most of the main roads in the city. So all of those roads will be shut down for most of the day today.
There are probably 10,000 armed men of various sorts on the road today, mostly acting as traffic cops. As the typical "man on the street" in Varanasi pays no attention to Traffic Cops, when something important actually happens (such as today), the only way to get those "men on the streets" attention is to deploy large numbers of heavily armed men with very large sticks to beat and berate people into staying off the road.
So I am sitting in a chai shop, waiting for a lull so I can dash around to the next appointment I have.

Family Commotion

We often have a Family Devotions after supper, where we read a passage of scripture, sing a song or two, and pray.

We had not had a Family Devotions for several days, having been visiting, or otherwise detained. So the other night, when we finally had a quiet night at home, Nora Grace asked, "Can we have Family Commotion?"

Which we did.

Weather Change

I am always amazed at how quickly the temperature changes here. When it goes from hot season to cold season, or vice versa, there is very little "in-between" weather, just one or the other.

Two weeks ago we were wearing long johns, and couldn't get the house above 62 degrees. Today it was 100 degrees outside, and we can't get the house below 75. So we are packing up our winter clothes, and pulling out the short sleeved stuff.

Flag March

It being another Hindu festival (Shivratri, the details escape me), there is again some tension in the city, so there are troops all over the place. They all appear to be bored, so presumably that is a good thing.

They held a "Flag March" today. A Flag March is when they all get in their best uniforms, shine up their weapons real well, and walk or drive through any "problem neighborhoods" to just to show any potential malcontents that they are a real force to be reckoned with.

Problem being that the "problem neighborhoods" are the ones I go through every day. So I was stuck in traffic jams for close to two hours today. Good thing I brought my crossword puzzle and Teach Yourself Urdu book.