Day 4, House Warming Ceremony

 Priest performing ceremony

 

Manju's brother and family 

 

 The beautiful grand neices

 

 House shrine

 

Yours truly with Manju's brother

Modeling my newly acquired salwar kameez

For the family, the day began at 3:30 a.m. with an excursion to the new house for the Pooja to begin. I joined them at 10:30, after sleeping an additional three hours. When I arrived at the house, many guests were already there. The apartments were all decorated with rangoli, flowers and shrines. Many tables were set for hundreds of guests to enjoy lunch. Everyone was dressed in their finery, and the priests were performing the Hindu rituals involving small fires,and offerings to the gods, creating a festive and somewhat smokey atmosphere. After hours of visiting and congratulating the family, the guests sat down in shifts to enjoy a delicious lunch. Late into the afternoon the activity died down, the guests departed and the family seized the opportunity to get some much needed rest.

Day 3 in Bangalore

Preparations are underway for a house warming ceremony or "Gruha Pravesh" tomorrow. The Manjunath/Shiva Kumar family has built a beautiful new home and before it can be occupied it must be blessed in this Hindu ceremony. Many workers are pulling the final details together to insure that all will be ready.

 Hand decorated for the ceremony

 

 Lalbagh Park

 

 Parrot in a tree

 

 Idly at MTR

 

 Coffee served in two cups

 

 Food preparations at home

 

Pooja or shrine

Today began with an early morning trip to Lalbagh Park in the center of Bangalore. It is a magnificent 240 acres of horticultural beauty where many residents of the city go for meditation or exercise in the midst of the indescribable traffic and hustle of the streets. After our walk through the park we had a sumptuous breakfast at the famed MTR restaurant where one can walk through the kitchen to observe the many staff who interact like clockwork in a small space to produce their fabulous cuisine. Then back into the streets that can barely be crossed for fear of losing life or limb and home to CNN coverage of the super storm back in the states.

Travels to Bangalore





Manju feasting at Heathrow

 Our airport welcome

Manju's family...welcome party

Dr.Kallanna Manjunath, a past Parker parent, and I drove to Newark on Saturday afternoon, left for London at 10;15pm, arrived 7 hours later and after a 5 hour layover at Heathrow, began the second leg, 9 hours with a tailwind to Bangalore! We arrived on Monday morning at 5 am India time. Most of the Manjunath clan was at the airport to greet us with flowers and coffe and biscuits! What a fabulously warm welcome it was. We then were driven through the notorious Indian traffic into Bangalore where the overwhelming hospitality continued. Fabulous food, company and accomodations awaited us. What a wonderful beginning to this adventure!

I'm off to south India to visit Shanti Bhavan, http://www.shantibhavanonline.org/, a remarkable boarding school outside of Bangalore. Our hope is to establish a relationship between Shanti Bhavan and Parker that will deepen our studies of India and help our students gain connections to children of a very different culture. I am bringing work from our 2/3 students telling the Shanti Bhavan students about them, their families and their interests. I hope to bring back responses that will begin a relationship between our schools, students and teachers, with future visits on the horizon.