Skip to main content

Holiday??

So, a couple of days ago, our neighbor had a parade go down the street. They did this last year also but on Krishna's birthday. Krishna's birthday isn't unil Aug 14th, so I'm not sure what they were celebrating.
They parade went on for a while and then people started lining up in front of our neighbor's house.Ends up they were lined up to see people dressed up as Arjuna (L) & Krishna (R). The two of them are together and in a Chariot like this one in one of the stories in the Hindu holy book - The Bhagavad Gita.
Arjuna is supposed to be the best bowman in the world. Well... this guy definitely was not. he was shooting dull-tipped aarows out at the crowd and hit a few people... it didn't look like it felt good!
There were a few bands that came through. This one was fun because they had these huge drums on wheels that they pulled along on strings. They were also playing Pungis (the snake-charmer flutes).
Next came the ISKCON / Hare Krishna followers. ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) is not that popular here - but is more popular in the west. You've probably seen them at football games or city-wide events, dressed up with drums and chanting "Hare Krishna" or giving out "free" food at universities. Here are some of the guys in the parade that were chanting and dancing.
There were TONS of people on our street!!! It was a crazy parade!

Another one of our crazy cultural days! Keeps life exciting!
Labels:

Comments

Bran said…
That's so interesting. We used to see those guys with the drums in Slovakia.
10:24 PM
Brandon and April said…
wow!! that's crazy that it was right outside your place! crowds are soooo not my thing so that would have made me a little nuts to have it that close to my house! :) yikes!!
11:13 PM
Erin G said…
someone dressed up as a divine archman, then went in a parade, where he HIT PEOPLE WITH HIS BOW AND ARROW???? Ummm. These things only happen to you.

:)
12:03 AM
Anonymous said…
Interesting....
12:45 AM
Shannon said…
It's so funny how they go all out for things in the capitol, but in V-town everything is much more hokey. Like the difference between a parade in small town Oklahoma and a parade in New York. :)
8:06 AM
Emily said…
Awesome! I miss those fun surprises. I love Shannon's comment. I was thinking the same thing about the Himalayas!
9:43 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cooking!

Cooking is sooo much harder here. THis is how you "puree" vegetables when you don't have a blender or food processor (or power). Some people have those things, but most people don't. This is my friend Gita. She's mashing up some onions. It's a marble slab that's not polished and they use a big rounded rock and just roll/mash! It's cool!!
Post a Comment
Read more

Protesting

There's some political stuff going on in our city (and now the country) right now. People are peacefully fighting against corruption. It's been very interesting to follow. Tonight there was some protesting in our neighborhood. Here are some more protesting pictures. There will probably be more protesting to come... we'll see what happens!
Post a Comment
Read more

Funny Things - Random :)

Here's a few random funny things ;) One thing that drives a lot of people crazy is honking! There are things that drive me crazy (like people urinating on the sidewalks - yuck!) but thankfully honking is not one of them because we hear it pretty much 24/7. We saw this poster the other day (below) and thought it was funny... BUT not as funny as the Hindi poster. The Hindi poster pretty much said that 'Honking is bad for your health' - haha ! Horns are actually a pretty necessary part of driving here. You don't really look behind you when you drive (most people either don't use their side mirrors, don't have side mirrors, or just have them folded in). When you drive, you just drive forward and you honk at the person in front of you to let them know that you're there - simple right? Sure, it's a little noisy, but you never have to look behind you :) If you go to that company's website it says: "Have patience at the traffic signals, let the signal t...
9 comments
Read more