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 to keep in their house for the coming year as good luck.
Next we went to the school that is next to our house. They have been having big celebrations all week performing the Ramlila (story of Ram's life). My kitchen window overlooks the school... so we're really close. We could hear all of the celebrations all week. On Dusshera there were thousands of people there!
We hung out inside the school for a little while and rode the carnival rides while the Ramlila was going on (I'll post pictures of the Carnival rides on the other blog) and when it got insanely packed, we went to our roof to see the effigies burn. It looks far away, but it was really close... the roof that's in the picture is the school's roof....
Here they are when they are burning... right on the ridge (I'm sure that violates some kinds of codes....)
It was SUPER loud!!!! Here is the first one burning....
Here is the last one (Raverna) burning....
We had fun hanging out with our neighbors on our roof :) It was an eventful holiday!
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