This past week has been the Ganesha Festival. It is a party in the streets every night.
Our driver is Hindu so he was telling us all about it, his English is very good, but still I had a hard time with some of the story. As far as I could understand...Ganesh is the God with the Elephant head. His father is Shiva, and I can't remember his mothers name, but the story goes that his mother wanted to bathe so she told Ganesh to stand at the door so no one could come in while she was in the bath. Shiva came and Ganesh wouldn't let him come in because his mother was bathing. This made Shiva mad and he cut Ganesh's head off and when the mother saw this she was very angry with Shiva so, Shiva went out and found a sleeping elephant and cut it's head off and placed it on Ganesh's body. That is why he has an elephant head. I am pretty sure they are celebrating his birthday, but not positive. The people keep these Ganesh statues in their home for anywhere between 5 days to 10 days and then they take them to the lake and put them in. They send Ganesha off and he takes with him all of their misfortunes. Sunday was the begining of the festival and we went for a drive to see the parties. I videoed some of the activity, but again...you'll have to wait until Tuesday for that.
When I went to pick the kids up from the bus on Thursday (the day to put Ganesh in the lake) it was a party. At the same place where the kids get dropped off, inside Adarsh Vista, they were taking Ganesh.
We stood and watched for a minute. There was drumming and dancing all in front of this tractor that was pulling the Ganesh. They were also chanting something, but I didn't understand it. When I got the kids back to the house our driver asked if we would like to go and see the lake that they put the Ganeshes into. That night he took us to Ulsoor Lake. It was amazing.
These are some people carrying their Ganesh to the lake
The had a big crane lifting the big Ganeshes in. The statues range anywhere from 3/4 inch tall to 25 feet tall
Again Annie steels the show. In this picture the man on the left is our driver Vijay. He was very protective of her. He was a little nervous I could tell because there were so many people there. He wanted all of our children holding someones hand. He offered to carry Annie so that I could hold Ellie and Maddie's hands while Alan took Ethan.
I think he was kind of excited that Annie actually went to him. She usually will go to our maid, but she doesn't usually let him hold her. She was happy that night and I think it made his night.
2 comments:
I was showing Betsy the pictures. She asked who was holding Annie...I told her it was your driver who drives your car. She said, "that's Alan?"
hahaha.
Looks like fun! Annie is so cute and getting so big. Yes Chase is walking around the furniture and is teething too so he can get so mean sometimes! I went to SLC yesterday and had to get a big Dust Collector for the shop, we needed a crane so of course I called Wagstaff. Ronney was the crane operator and was asking about you guys, he told me to tell you hi and wanted to know if alan got TV so he could watch the BYU games. I think he was worried Alan might go through withdrawls without sports. We miss you!!
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