The festival season has started here. India is a great country in the way that they recognize the holidays of several religions including Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Jain, Parsee, Sikh and Hinduism in addition to the three national holidays they have here. Only thing though is that this leads to quite many days off during the year, which is not very productive. productive. Many companies respond to this by having a set amount of public holidays.
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| First group didn't quite make it |
First out this autumn festival season was Krishna Janmashtami, a hindi festival celebrating the birth of Krishna. The date for the festival follows the Hindi calendar and falls within mid-August to mid-September. This year it was on the 22nd of August. My office did not recognise this as one of the public holidays to get off, but we still managed to participate in it during the evening. In the state we live it is common to celebrate by having competitions where teams of men/boys are making a human pyramid aiming to reach a pot of buttermilk placed high up. The team building the highest pyramid and manage to break the pot of buttermilk is the winner! This does however involve the risk of hospitals around town filling up with men/boys with bone fractures…
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| There is the pot of buttermilk far up there.. |
We walked into town just in time to see the winning team in our local area. It might not look like it, but the pyramids get quite tall and they strategically put the smallest boy on the top, which turns out is a little kid looking quite padded up (though not really sure how much this would help if he actually fell down from the top there..) After reaching the buttermilk pot and manage to break it, they were all dancing and playing in the street –it was fun being a part of this J
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| They made it!! :) |
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| Starting from a solid base... |
Well, this was a short blog about our first experience with the many Indian festivals to come. I will keep you updated on those coming (Indians love festivals) as well as other things happening here.
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