Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Tamil New Year

Still in Chennai ...
In front of his grandparents' apartment, Amartya is admiring his grandmother's design and telling me he doesn't want his picture taken. She does this almost everyday, but there are fancier ones around today because of the Tamil New Year.
The sun is quite bright so distorts the images, but you can get a sense of them.
One of the amazing things about India is that anything ever gets done with all of the holidays being celebrated by one group or another. Today is Tamil New Year, so we ate special foods (some really yummy mango dish as well as a more normal vermicelli with milk and sugar), and some priests visited my in-laws to perform some pooja service in memory of ancestors.
Another amazing thing is how much commerce occurs around these holidays. I need to do a more thorough analysis of this, but for New Years three of these carts have popped up around the local temple. One table sells oil in little clay pots as diyas for the temple, one sells both greens used as offerings and flowers, and one sells only flowers.
Making garlands by stringing jasmine and bouganvilla together.Here is a poorly shot video that captures some of the sights and especially sounds of the nearby temple. I couldn't shoot anything inside the temple, and there are also lighting problems, but you get a sense of it.

3 comments:

Leesa said...

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Leesa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
kennady said...

Ya I don't forget this moment ...Its very enjoy them.. Tamil language is one of the popular language ...I love Tamil