By bluerasberry on March 25, 2007
Ashu begins as a beggar On Friday March 23 I returned to Varanasi from Azemgarh. I had gone for Ashu’s janeu. There were I think ten of us in the van and the trip took two hours. As usual, I slept most of the way and had no regard for crammed conditions. Puja was beginning [...]
Posted in festival, India, religion | Tagged death, Hinduism, medicine, ritual, youth
By bluerasberry on March 5, 2007
Yesterday was Holi and I had a blast. I had little idea of what to expect, but as the holiday approached I began to realize that this was a major festival. For about three weeks now I have watched as piles of sticks and burnables have piled to over ten feet high at crossroads and [...]
Posted in festival, India, religion | Tagged Holi
By bluerasberry on March 1, 2007
Nandan’s mother quizzed me the other night by writing some sentences in English and then asking me to write them in Hindi. I did well, and I was lucky that three of the words she chose I had just learned that day. My routine has been the same for a while. I study old flashcards [...]
Posted in festival, India | Tagged Holi
By bluerasberry on February 18, 2007
I feel bad today. My theory is that this is due to a short course of antibiotics. I took them for five days (five pills) starting January 24, two days (four pills) following February 5, and one day Tuesday January 13 (two pills). The latter two visits included flora treatment for six and ten days [...]
Posted in festival, health, India | Tagged medicine, ritual, sickness
By bluerasberry on February 1, 2007
I am learning the routines of my family. Nandan has been minding me for a large part of everyday. I like spending time with him but I am hitting a major bump in that I still do not have a lot of confidence in Hindi and he is able to express any idea in English, [...]
Posted in festival, India, religion | Tagged blood, ghost, money, ritual
By bluerasberry on January 26, 2007
Today is Republic Day. It is customary to attend a social event at schools today. I told Abiji and Anuji that I would attend one of their’s at Lal Ghat, but when I got there I could not find the school and had forgotten Abiji’s number, and Anuji’s was not working for some reason. So [...]
Posted in festival, India, religion | Tagged license
By bluerasberry on January 17, 2007
We did not sleep at Kumba Mela and decided to go back Saturday instead of Sunday. At the train station we had a problem changing our tickets’ dates. As near as I could tell it would take three queues to get an exchange or two to just buy a new ticket. As our train was [...]
Posted in festival, India, legal | Tagged bribe, Kumbh Mela, police
By bluerasberry on January 15, 2007
Omar humored my aversion to the police and politely segued into probing my expectations of what I would call authority figures. He has a lot of dignity which I would like to learn. He simply does not regard them as punishing overseers. We decided to go to the foreigner camp, Rainbow. We had adventures, saw [...]
Posted in festival, India | Tagged food, hobo, Kumbh Mela