Pongalo Pongal!

Pongal was the most recent festival here in Coimbatore. Being a harvest festival, it is mostly popular among the villages of south India, the inhabitants of whom own or work on large rice fields or coconut plantations.

The first day of this festival is called Bhogi Pongal, and this is the time when many people clean out their homes and burn their unneeded or unwanted belongings. The reason for cleaning their homes is because it is the New Year for many Tamilians and Keralites. Most people do this every day, but during festivals every household gets out the tumeric-cow dung mixture to spread across their gateway area. After laying the base, women will then make a design using rice flower and sometimes flower petals. I am not exactly sure what it is for, but some welcoming thing for Gods.

The second day of Pongal is dedicated to the sun god for bringing light to their crops. In the morning of this day, people boil rice milk which is water that has been mixed in rice then separated, leaving it milky in color. They then add rice to make a dish called Pongal, which is a lot like oatmeal. When the Pongal boils over, the people are supposed to yell, "Pongalo Pongal!" and watch which side it spills over. If it goes to the North it will be a very prosperous year. South- not at all prosperous. East or west means the harvest will neither be great nor terrible. After it boils over, we offer the Pongal to Surya, the sun god, and then either feed cows and elephants the food or eat it ourselves. After our Pongal cooking in the morning, bullacarts came to give rides to kids around the neighborhood.

The third and last day is called Mattu Pongal, and celebrates the cattle and other animals who help farmers be successful. The cow's horns are painted and they get a day off from work, which is a rare thing on an Indian farm. On this particular day I was brought to a nearby elephant camp to feed them sugarcane and put a certain paint on their trunks. It was also an honor to stir the pongal which they were mass producing for the elephants. Our group finished the day at a Rotarian's farm house where we watched and danced with a troop of drummers and dancers all dressed up for the event. Once darkness fell, the entire group went on a long procession around the farm with drums, pots, candles, and other various pooja items.

And so concludes the three day Pongal festival. Most of the people who live in cities don't celebrate it much, but it is still a meaningful time for the farm owners and villagers. 

History Lesson (kind of)

The trinity of Gods- Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva- are the three main Gods in Hinduism. They originate from a feminine form of pure energy called Shakti. 

Lord Brahma is the creator.  Has four heads so he can see all 4 directions. He is usually depicted meditating on a lotus with his wife, Saraswathi, the Goddess of knowledge, sitting at his feet. In one of his hands he holds water to signify it's necessity in life. There are only two temples in the world for him, because he was cursed by Shiva for falling in love with his own creation- a beautiful woman. 

Lord Vishnu is the protector. His weapon is the discus. He has had nine forms, or avatars, on Earth. All of them have been born and died, explaining that all forms on Earth which are born must die. When he takes his tenth avatar, the world will end. His wife is Goddess Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. Lord Vishnu lives in an ocean of milk, and his bed is a five-headed snake. 

Lord Shiva is the destroyer. He is covered in ash of the dead whose spirits he is protecting. He lives at one of the tallest areas in the Himalayas, Mt. Kailash. The Ganges flows from his head. Goddess Parvathi is his wife. Lord Shiva has a third eye which he opens only when he is angry, because it can kill anything which it touches. (Like the basalisk in Harry Potter).  The trident is his weapon. 

When women are married, their first and foremost responsibility is taking care of  their children and husbands. But they cannot do that when their third eye is open because they will be in a state of bliss and look beyond their responsibilities, hence the bindi. Bindis activate and at the same time close the third eye for women. Similarly, men wear a stripe of ash across their foreheads. Once their children are gone however, they are supposed to enter into a state of meditativeness and bliss for the rest of their lives. Of course, hardly anyone does this these days, but that is how the ancient stories go. 

Backtrack to Bangalore

I was in Bangalore, Karnataka for the new year, and one of the coolest things I did there, apart from partying all night, was visit Bannerghatta National Park. We drove about an hour out of the city in search of tigers, elephants, lions, and many more unknown predators- or at least that was what I was interested in. Instead of the traditional walk through the zoo, this place had a safari through five or six relatively small enclosures where vegetarian animals (deer, etc), bears, lions, tigers, and more tigers were able to roam freely in their natural habitat. We obviously weren't at liberty to exit the van unless we wanted to become the first live meal the tigers had eaten in a while, but they got so close to the van it really didn't matter. In the lion's enclosure there were cubs- which were born there- playing. They were in a better state than their mom who was throwing up on the other side of the road...  now that's not something everyone can claim to have seen. One cool fact about this place is that most if not all of the animals were rescued from circuses, or temples in the elephants' case. Our guide was really excited to have a foreigner in his van, and really helped us out by taking great pictures on my camera. Sometimes it can be good to be a white girl in India. :)

Yogini

I am almost halfway through my exchange, and finally I have started the practice of yoga. The yoga school insisted that I start at the very beginning, which was a sun salutation called Surya Namaskar, and the cobra pose. From what I can tell, there's not much difference between this class and O2, except it is 10x cheaper in Coimbatore, and starts pretty slow. My teacher is a tiny man, age about fifty, and thankfully refrains from wearing a lungi to class. (For those of you who don't know, a lungi is a long piece of cloth that men tie around their waists instead of pants. Sometimes they wear it floor-length, but most of the time it is folded halfway, short enough to be in danger although no Tamilian men seem too concerned.) My guru walks around sometimes and is always repeating this phrase: "pradeeeeeeeeep jaroo". I thought that was "inhale" and "exhale" in Tamil, but my host Auntie right now just explained that he was probably saying "breathe deeeeeeeeeeeep, breathe out". I will have to pay closer attention tomorrow.

Christmas in Chennai

For my 2010 Christmas, my new host family took me to Chennai! It was such a great experience.. though we didn't really celebrate Christmas. We were with all their family the whole time though, because the host Uncle's niece was pregnant. The second day we were in Chennai, there was a bangle ceremony for her. What exactly a bangle ceremony consists of is the entire family from the girl's side comes to their house to offer blessings, listen to some mantras and a story about baby Krishna, meet family, and eat food. At the end all the women of the family put a few bangles on the lady because it is said that the clinking sound is soothing for the baby.

On Christmas day they took me to another mall (shopping was our only activity in Chennai), where we were lucky enough to find an ice skating rink! I got so excited, so my little host bro and I strapped up our skates to putz around on what turned out to be plastic. But still, fake ice and skates with hardly any edge was better than nothing. And to satisfy the after-skate hunger, we ventured into Mickey D's. That first taste of the chocolate fudge sundae was indescribably satisfying.