So, Onam is ended, but life keeps getting more interesting here. Today I went for a little ride on the scooter and bought flowers at Mukkola, a very small junction very close to our house. Indians have an artform of stringing fragrant flowers together to make hanging decorations and necklaces like a Hawaiian lei. Imagine wreaths of moist, fresh fragrant flowers. There are stands everywhere selling these, and like I said, there's one near our house.

In the mornings Indians buy these flower wreaths and put fresh flowers around pictures of their relatives and other things they cherish for their morning prayers and meditation. They also take them to temple and leave them as donations. And they put them in their hair (women do), and in other places in their homes.

I've just begun to take notice of this, and I also have a place to do my morning prayers and meditation, so today I went to get some fresh flowers, and as I expected, it was another of those moments when I am delighted with some beautiful Indian way of doing things. I pulled the scooter up in the mud puddle outside of the stand. This is a quiet, dusty little junction. The closest thing it feels like to my imagination is a little town in the old west. The man was stringing flowers together and had many flowers laid in front of him on a table and in a burlap bag and some strings he had already made hanging from the roof of the stand. Two young boys, maybe 4 0r 5 years old, stood on the patio behind him and looked at me with wide eyes, but he continued with what he was doing. Eventually we had a nice conversation. One of my favorite types of conversations are with people who only speak Malayalam, but don't get nervous about the language gap. When we both stay calm we can have a really enjoyable conversation without understanding many of each others' words. He wrapped my lei in a beautiful package (lily pad), sprinkling loose flowers in with it. Here it is being unwrapped in my meditation space. Indian homes have a sink for washing your hands in just about every room.

To other things:

My favorite part of the Onam celebrations downtown were the cultural performances.

This watchful man is the spotter for the dancer you see here. I suppose toppling over is one of the risks of dancing in this costume.

These drummers and singers provided the music.
We also watched this classical Indian dance amongst a great crowd of people at a large outdoor amphitheatre.
Here are pictures of some of the crowds, lights, elephants, vendors, etc. These celebrations went on for ten days; each night the downtown was full of carnival rides, performances, and people. The carnival rides here make ours look like kiddie toys. Apparently, Indians don't think it is as fun if it isn't actually dangerous. The ferris wheel was huge and spinning so fast I couldn't believe it. I was amazed. I explained to JoJo that ours back home go much more slowly, to which he looked puzzled and asked "Why?"




























And I'll leave you with a couple of fun photos Itook inspired by Ryan Galagher's camera tossing techniques. The Onam lights presented a good opportunity to have some fun with the camera. These two turned out the best of all the ones I tried.




Oh, yikes, and I just remembered the huge vampire bats we saw circling in the sky at dusk that night. Their wing span had to be at least two feet. They were awesome, but too high and moving to fast to get a picture. Love and blessings to you! -Asenath