First, the answer to yesterday's quiz: "Street Services, what are those men doing?" Those men were getting tattoos. Yes. At the edge of an incredibly-crowded street during a festival, while squatting down, in 100+ degree temperature. Tattoos. And for the record, there appeared to be several tattoo artists plying their trade at the edge of the road in the street festival I ran into yesterday an all were doing a lively business.
There are still some things here I see which shock me, and those street tattoos artists were one.
I was in fact a bit surprised to run into the street festival at all as I wasn't aware there were any religious festivals going on yesterday, but I'm learning that Hinduism is multi-faceted (with thousands of deities it should be!) and that each branch keeps its own festivals. This is what the festival at the temple near my brunch spot looked like on Sunday.
It was too hot and uncomfortable (and I was too late for brunch) for me to spend time figuring out what the festival was about, but as you can see from the below it must have had something to do with babies, spinney-things on sticks, food, air guitars, and spiderman. The women were walking around in their best finery and the temple appeared to be feeding hundreds of people (though, that's not so surprising. A lot of temples here act as de facto soup kitchens).
Sadly, the festival (and the free food) seemed to produce lots and lots of trash, the whole way was lined with disposal food cartons piled high like the below.
There are still some things here I see which shock me, and those street tattoos artists were one.
I was in fact a bit surprised to run into the street festival at all as I wasn't aware there were any religious festivals going on yesterday, but I'm learning that Hinduism is multi-faceted (with thousands of deities it should be!) and that each branch keeps its own festivals. This is what the festival at the temple near my brunch spot looked like on Sunday.
It was too hot and uncomfortable (and I was too late for brunch) for me to spend time figuring out what the festival was about, but as you can see from the below it must have had something to do with babies, spinney-things on sticks, food, air guitars, and spiderman. The women were walking around in their best finery and the temple appeared to be feeding hundreds of people (though, that's not so surprising. A lot of temples here act as de facto soup kitchens).
Sadly, the festival (and the free food) seemed to produce lots and lots of trash, the whole way was lined with disposal food cartons piled high like the below.
If such random, non-wide spread holiday can produce a jam-packed festival like this one, it sure will be interesting what diwali and holi bring. . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment