Well, of course since
we are into year two, we are seeing the second round of festivals. So here’s a
test to see what you remember from last year: today is Raksha Bandhan; what is
the key element of this festival? If you said spraying each other with color,
you are wrong. If you said throwing popcorn and grain into a bonfire to cast
out evil spirits, you are wrong. If you said sisters tying threads onto the
wrists of their brothers to symbolize the bond and responsibility for brothers
to protect their sisters, ding, ding, ding; you win!
As I mentioned last
year, the basics of Raksha Bandhan are these: sisters put threads or threaded
bracelets on their brother’s wrists. The brother covenants to protect and watch
over his sister. Originally this was a Hindu religious observance. Now it is
fairly secular with people of many religious faiths participating. Also, a
brother’s protection has grown to include giving of gifts by the brothers to
the sisters. It has also expanded from brother and sister to any male female platonic relationship. In fact some girls use giving a rakshi (the threaded bracelets) as a way of cooling off a relationship or letting a boy know she
doesn’t feel about him in a serious way. “Dude, she’s just not that in to you.”
This has been
somewhat of a wasted week, at least for me. I have been fighting some kind of
bug for about a week and it finally caught up to me. I came home early on
Wednesday. Thursday, I stayed home. I went to work on Friday but after a half
day I was done in and came home. I was feeling much better Saturday. Even
though we hadn’t been out, Rae and I decided to go help clean the church. Well,
that was probably a mistake. It was about a 1,000 degrees and 200 percent humidity.
After two hours, I was feeling totally wasted and Rae wasn’t in much better
condition. I ended up staying home today from church but Rae was a better
person than me. She fulfilled her calling and went to Dwarka Branch for their
Branch Conference. It took her an hour to get there but it has been two and
half hours since church was over and she is still not back. She has been
texting me and says the traffic is terrible and there are areas the runoff
water from the rain is very deep.
August is the
rainiest month in Delhi, and today the rain has been trying to keep up the
average. We had about two hours of torrential rain with another hour or so of
softer, slower rain. That has mitigated the heat somewhat but given the fact
our windows are all totally fogged over, I am sure it is not too cool out
there. I don’t suppose we are done with rain. I just hope Rae gets home before
the heavens open again. Besides, I’ve run out of things to write about. She has
to get back to pick up this hand off:
Here’s Rae….
Finally!!!!! I've made it home. As Phil mentioned above, I
went to branch conference at Dwarka branch today. I left 1 ½ hours before I needed to be there
but luckily made it there in 1 hr. That
was definitely not the case coming home.
After a 2 ¾ hr. ride I’m home. The festival that Phil mentioned above
and the rain were the cause of the delay.
Traffic was very
dense and slow, and in some places there was deep standing water. When we lived in Arizona there was a lot of
talk about how people there didn’t know how to drive on wet roads. Well take Delhi drivers and rain and maybe
you can guess what the result might be.
On the way to the Dwarka branch it was just lightly raining. As we went down into an underpass/ tunnel I
noticed that quite a number of bicycles and motorcycles had decided to pull off
to the side, climb off the bikes, have a seat, and just chill out there for a
while, hoping I guess that the rain would pass and they could have a dryer
ride. Don’t know how that worked out for
them. The interesting thing is there is
no shoulder or pull off section so all this takes place in what would be a
lane. It’s always interesting to me how
cars will just stop wherever they want and generally are not hit or run
over. Somehow traffic just squeezes around
them
Coming home traffic was thick in
both directions so I was surprised as we headed up a fly over to look into the
oncoming lanes and see absolutely no traffic.
I thought is this piece of road closed, but why? As we headed down the other side I could see
traffic at a dead stop. Looked like
someone had put up an invisible barricade and every car behind that was at a
dead stop. As we got closer there were
two men, one from each car, (2 cars side by side) having some sort of heated
discussion, or worse. Made me think of
our old driver, just the kind of thing he would do. Didn't mind delaying the hundreds of cars
behind them while they had it out. There’s
always something that surprises me.
As we came to areas
where there was standing water, I’d say 12-18 inches, many of the cars tried to
inch over to the side of the road where the water was not as deep. Some cars took this opportunity to gain an
advantage by racing past the slower cars.
Why wouldn't you speed up and race through 18” of water if it got you a few cars ahead? The one that I really
liked was the motorcycle with the man and his wife, in her lovely sari,
speeding through the deep water and the water spraying up over their
heads. Wonder what she had to say to him
when they got home. I was relieved to
see that they stayed upright and in one piece, although quite wet. Arizona in the rain times 10.
Because of this
festival and because it was a weekend there were many families on the road
today. It continually amazes me how many
people you can fit on a motorcycle or squeeze into a car. So many families of 4, plus a box or package
on a motorcycle. Quite a few families of
5 and two families of 6. Amazing! I saw one minivan, and not the extended type, that was pretty loaded and I think I was able to count 14 separate
bodies as we crept slowly along side by side.
I could go on forever
about so many things that catch my attention as I travel places, but I will
elaborate some of those in a future blontry.
I will end by sharing a picture that I was able to capture on
my way home. I see this all the time but it is so hard to
get a shot of it, and while todays is still not great it may give you an
idea. It is very common to see the auto
(tuk tuk) drivers driving along with their legs crossed, sitting on one foot,
or one knee brought up sort of under their chin. Some very casual positions.
I've also posted 3
pictures of our foggy windows. One is
from our living room looking out into our front yard. Two are of the glass enclosure that surrounds
our stairway into the basement. This is
what happens when it’s warm and humid outside and you have single pane windows.
Until next week,
Namaste.
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