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Dusshera 2007

Holiday season is pretty fun here. People are in good moods, the weather is nice and there's a lot of excitement in the air... as well as tons of stuff to do, see & eat :) Yesterday was Dusshera (or Dussehra)... It's a holiday with a long history based off of their stories from the Ramayana. It is a festival to celebrate the triumph of good over evil, and marks the defeat and death of the demon king Ravana in the story. So, to celebrate this, they have a big festival and burn huge effigies of Ravana (which is actually pronounced more like Ravern). If you want more info on the holiday, click here: Dusshera Info. If you want to see our Dusshera blog from last year, then click here: Dusshera 2006. In M-town, this is a HUGE holiday... the stories say that Ravana (the demon g0d) married a woman from M-town...

So we first went to an area of town to see some of the effigies during the day time... the one in the middle is Ravana - the one with 10 heads - and the other two are part of the story.
This park was already filling up fast!! We got there 5 hours before they were going to burn the statues... and it was FULL! We had to wait in a line that was a couple of blocks long and before we left it was a REALLY long line.
Here's another picture of these statues... They're HUGE... someone told us that a lot of them are 10 stories high!!Later that evening we went to a park closer to our house to watch them burn... They have firecrackers inside of them and it's LOUD - but it's pretty fun to watch :) This one below is of one of Ravana's cohorts (one of the two on the sides).
Here's a picture of Ravana burning (below)...
Adam took some video, so I'll try to post a video of it in the next couple of days! :)

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Emily said…
Those pics are pretty incredible. I'm bummed we missed it, if nothing else than for the pictures!
1:12 PM
Jonathan said…
I love it - we have good memories of seeing them burn last year and meeting people in the park. That was the first night my parents were in town last year, and it was quite the cultural welcome for them!
6:18 PM
Anonymous said…
Great pictures! Really interesting... thanks for the links. Seems like there are holidays all of the time where you are! These people know how to celebrate!
9:01 PM
Anonymous said…
What a cultural banquet going on around you all the time! Such a different mind set, to expend time, energy, money on these 'holidays'. When I really think about it I guess it is not so different. There's Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Labor Day, Father's Day, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's. When you throw in Martin Luther King Day, Flag Day, President's Day, there are a lot. I guess we still celebrate all of these as individuals not as a society. That presents the difference.
9:50 PM
allhisblessings said…
Whoa! Those are crazy statues! I bet the people that made them felt like I felt when we carefully crafted the pinata and then let the kids beat it to pieces for a few bits of candy!
7:01 AM
Heather Henderson said…
That actually looks like a lot of fun! It reminds me of "Burning Man" in Nevada. I have never been but it's the same idea of a burning figure. I think maybe Dusshera has a little more meaning. Those are some great pics.
12:28 AM
The Agarwals said…
Wow! Those things are so huge! Incredible! The pics with the explosives are awesome! I can't imagine how loud that was... did Jellybean get scared?
10:22 PM
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