Tomorrow (Sept 4) is another holiday here. It's the birthday one of the g0ds, Krishna. Some people take this holiday VERY seriously. There have been celbrations going on in the temples for the last week. Adam and I went to one of the temples a couple of days ago for some "cultural learning"... This temple we went to is actually an ISKC0N Temple (International S0city for Krishna Consci0usness). It's actually a branch off of H'nduism... it has become popular in the West. In the pic below, you can see people w'shipping inside of part of the temple. Same thing... they were chanting the Hare Krishna mantra over and over again. They tried to give us some "free books" while we were there, but wouldn't give them to us unless we paid something... hmmm.... not really free...
This year, our neighborhood was quite active for Dusshera. At one end of our street, one of the major political parties here, set up a Dusshera celebration. Here are some guys putting the effigies together and filling it full of fireworks! They had quite the political statement for their celebration. (Basically that expensive water, fuel, electricity, diesel, gas, etc and FDI (bringing in foreign companies like Wal-Mart) are like Raverna (the demon god)... and are the evils of today....) Here's their set-up at the end of our street.... you can't see it very well, but they had all three effigies there that they burned.... They burned VERY quickly at this one... So quickly that by the time I pulled out my camera, it was already on the ground!! Our street looked like those CNN videos of rioting cities :) haha!! There was burning stuff all over the street :) Many people will get a piece of the leftover wood/bamboo...
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