End of the Ganeshas

Last Saturday we went to Ulsoor lake to see the Ganeshas being put in the water as the last ritual of the festival.

In the afternoon there were mostly smaller Ganesha's, being brought by families from their homes. First a lot of chanting while arriving, then puja and then specially assigned men will put the Ganesha in a basin filled with water from the lake.
(Monica & Ian, please note the Costa Coffee in the back!!!)

When it wasn't too busy they dunked the Ganesha 3 times before letting it go under water, but when it got busier they were just pushed in and some people just threw their Ganesha over the fence in the water.

These women were more interested in the sail boats on the lake then the Ganeshas.

This group took their time for a photo moment. The guy in front, left, with the big moustache was their leader. He made quite a scene about the fact that their Ganesha was to be put in the water further to the middle of the basin, but the guys in the yellow t-shirts refused and the police had to come in to calm them down.

From 19:00 hour the bigger Ganeshas arrived by truck or bus. Because they were too heavy to lift, they were put on a platform and lifted by a crane to the middle of the basin and pushed into the water from there.
Not a very safe procedure, but safer than walking down the steps into the water and risking losing your balance. Many people have drowned that way over the years.

The guy in the middle of the last photo scared the hell out of us by taking a small child with him on the platform....

After this we left, we had seen enough Ganeshas for this festival and the crowd was getting a bit too rowdy and drunk for our liking.

This festival kicked off the festival season, so more colourful and noisy times will follow.

Ganesha has left Vista

This afternoon the Ganesha from the workers of Adarsh Vista was taken to a lake. It was a slow procession with drums and dancing. The workers got themselves some nice bright t-shirts and had great fun splashing each other with water.

Another great photo opportunity!

Ganesh Chaturthi

Yesterday the Ganesha festival started.

According to Wikipedia, the Ganesha festival is
'celebrated on the occasion of birthday of Lord Ganesha, the son of Shiva and Parvati, who is believed to bestow his presence on earth for all his devotees in the duration of this festival. It is the day Shiva declared his son Ganesha as superior to all the gods, barring Vishnu, Lakshmi, Shiva and Parvati. Ganesha is widely worshipped as the god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune and traditionally invoked at the beginning of any new venture or at the start of travel.'

The streets of Bangalore have been lined by Ganesha idols and palm leaves the last week and most communities buy a statue to display in their neighbourhood during the festival.

Ganeshas for sale, in all shapes and sizes

The festival starts with the puja (prayers and offerings) and then the Ganesha is ready to be visited by one and all.

I went out with some friends to have a look at several different Ganeshas in villages just outside our neighbourhood and in our own area. In Adarsh Vista the maintenance people always buy a Ganesha and put in on display at the community centre.

 

We have seen at least 10 different Ganeshas and they were all decorated and displayed with care and imagination. It is the ultimate Bling-fest.

A selection of different Ganeshas

The Ganesha on the pictures above was the most elaborate one we saw.

This Ganesha was covered in smoke from the fire in front of it.

After the puja, food is handed out to everyone attending or passing by. The food is cooked in huge pots and prepared in make shift kitchens or garages.

Enough food to feed the village

And it is handed out from big buckets

It was a great day. On Saturday we will go to Ulsoor lake to see the Ganeshas being taken into the water.

19 years!

Today is our wedding anniversary. I have been married to the love of my life for 19 years now. He is in Houston for a week, so no romantic dinner or other romance going on here. I asked him if he thinks we will make it till 25 or if he will find himself a young(er), slim(mer) and overall more easy going girlfriend to replace me, like so many men his age seem to do.
He assured me I don't have to worry, he is too old for a young(er) girlfriend... Isn't that romantic? It is on the same level as why he will never have an affair: "That is a logistical nightmare!"

Not "Why would I want a girlfriend when I have you, my love?" or "I love you so much I would never even be interested in another woman". Nothing of the sort.

I guess I should be happy with whatever reason, as long as he sticks to his word, right? He has never asked me about my interest in other men... probably knows nobody can come close to the great husband material I have at home...hmmmmmmm

Still, I am confident we will make it to 25 (Deo Volente/Inshallah) even if we are not the most romantic couple. We have gone through so much together in the last 19 years (and a few years before that), we have survived many stressful events because of our love for each other and we have shared many, many happy occasions. Only 6 more years to go to get to that mile stone and knowing our track record, it will be eventful years...Looking forward to it!

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning 8:00 o'clock (and every afternoon on the other 6 days):

Next week Saturday Joshua will finally have a swimming competition again.

A euphemism and some other funny stuff

I always carry my camera with me to capture the weird and wonderful. These are some examples.

This is how (living) chickens get transported: tied together by their feet, hanging upside down on the back of a bike.

And this is where they end up:

I guess transit is a nice euphemism for being butchered....

This is the shop next to the Trazit Chicken Centre. By the end of the day the fresh pork has turned into smoked ham, thanks to the traffic.

Another thing that is unique to India: water with a special ingredient...

Nandi Aqua actually sells water with H2O!!!!!

The next was has puzzled me for a long time. Bangalore is not known for being clean. There are piles of garbage everywhere and a lot of people throw their litter in the streets. I think someone got fed up with this, but why????

The Fresh Beauty Parlour must be using some toxic herbs by the looks of it. At least it is still ok to dump plastic bottles and other rubbish.

The red line on the wall marks how wide the road will be sometime in the near future. Talk about downsizing your business in the times of crises.

Finally a sign that has to keep our neighbourhood safe. Adarsh Vista must hold a record for the highest amount of speed bumps and still we all break the speed limit, but that is not hard.

How many miles/hr is that?

Sorry?

With the exception of Libya, we have always had postings in English speaking countries, but in every one of them we have had to adjust our school-learned English to the local English.

Being Dutch means you have to learn different languages to be able to communicate outside The Netherlands, a part of Belgium en South Africa (Afrikaans is based on 'old Dutch'). It also helps while living in The Netherlands, since most of the songs on the radio are in English and most television programmes too (Dutch subtitles).

Our first posting in Australia taught us some Aussie slang, but we still can't pronounce it the right way. When we left we spoke about bathers instead of swim suits and an eski instead of a cool box, but other than that we were fine ;-).

In Nigeria the English is so different from what we had learned that it took us a long time to get a feel for the local slang. We managed to make ourselves understood and got most of what they tried to tell/ask us, after some time. The hardest thing was to not fall back to a sort of 'child speak', with short sentences and simple words.

Now that we have been in India for a year, we have learned some basic Indian-English and Ruben has a proper Indian accent, complete with head wobble, but phone calls are still a struggle. Indian people tend to speak really fast and I usually manage to understand a few key words, but mostly my response to them is: "Sorry?" I have even asked people if they can please speak English, because to me it sounded like they were speaking one of the many local languages, just to find out they were speaking English already....

Sometimes I see signs along the roads here in Bangalore and I wonder what went wrong. Even in Indian-English the spelling is wrong. It surprises me that shops have signs made to advertise and then pay good money for weird texts. Surely there should be some sort of spelling check before things get printed?

These are some of the signs that caught my eye. Most of the photos are taken from the (moving) car, hence the less than sharp photo sometimes, but you will still get the picture.

 Besides the mes instead of men's and kidus instead of kids, if you spell wear correctly once why don't you continue spelling it the right way?????

I always thought it was spelled puncture, but all the repair shops have puncher on their signs. This is not even the best example, I saw a shop once with a sign that said: "All your punchers done here". So that's where you go and ask them to put a hole in your tyer (tyre) and then get the repaires (repairs) done?

What can I say, they are selling Fancy Items indeed!



Disclaimer: I am not trying to make fun of Indian people and I realise my English is far from perfect, but I just want to share my observations. Please don't take offence!