Halloween 07

So as I've mentioned in the past, Halloween doesn't really get a notice here. That's weird because they seem to incorporate most celebrations into their own - especially if they're fun!

So I held my second annual halloween party last night and in order to decorate I bought a bunch of pumpkins. I found last year that they actually have pumpkins here although they're green. They're called sitapal in hindi. So we went to Malviya Nagar market since the one we went to last year was closed down. This time I found three fairly big ones, good for carving and actually found two smaller orange ones which was exciting. I was going to have my friends over to carve but Doug mentioned inviting Tenzing's son over, which I thought was great idea. So friday night, Tenzing, her son, sister-in-law and nephew came over to carve pumpkins. The kids drew the faces (basically just the same as the one I did first to show them) and the adults cut. I thought they came out pretty well. (Tenzing's son is the one on the right). Although I didn't do a very good job of explaining why we were doing this - I hope they didn't think it was
work! I said they scared off ghosts...

When I was home this past July I found my old cheerleading jacket and so decided to be a cheerleader for halloween. Found some pon-poms in a toy store before I came back and went to the fabric store to get the makings for the skirt. It was actually funny to try to explain how thick the fabric needed to be. I finally reverted to the fabric used in cricket to describe it. Since this is holiday season (with Durga Pooja and Diwali, amongst others) the tailor took forever to do it! And they had no idea what I wanted - and why I would want this (not knowing what cheerleaders or halloween were). I picked up the skirt about 6 hours before the party and it wasn't quite what I wanted but close enough..... It's still in the 90s here so the jacket was a little warm to wear all night!

Black Eyed Peas

So I have been trying to combine all the work travel I do with social outings. This week I went down to Bangalore and saw the Black Eyed Peas in concert. It was the first big concert I've ever seen in India. The tickets were about $30 for general admission up front (there were cheaper $20 tickets where you stood further back). The area was a dusty fair ground and around the edges were stalls selling various indian snacks and free water (which was nice). I thought I saw tour t-shirts but they weren't actually for sale. I went with my friend/colleague who now lives in Bangalore, Justin and his wife Jyoti.

Doors opened at 5:30, we got there slightly after 7 and there was supposed to be an opening act but they didn't show. So the Peas went on at 8. I worried a bit about crushing crowds - it being india and all - but for the most part, while it was crowded, it wasn't bad. For a while we were standing behind this guy who was doing what I term as the "nixon" dance with his peace signs up and wiggling his hips. It may have been the least cool thing I've ever witnessed. We were maybe 10 rows of people back from the front corner of the stage. They actually sounded good live and definitely brought energy - although I didn't feel the crowd gave them much back. They just wanted to watch fergie. Everytime she came to the front of the stage or on the jumbo-trons the men would go crazy and everytime she wasn't they chanted "we want fergie". Actually pretty obnoxious. It's as if they've never seen a woman in a short skirt (which might be true). Fergie and Will.i.am did some of their solo stuff and mentioned the other two had solo albums coming out next year. I wish they would have gotten a chance to showcase their stuff. Would make me more likely to buy their albums.

So besides a few india moments (where people were squishing too close and didn't seem to understand that if they wanted to squeeze in front of us, we'd have to move back and that wasn't an appealing offer for us) - it was really fun. Great music. Not a huge crowd (my other colleague who went said Bangalore was really more of a rock city - as evidenced by the last concert he had seen, The Scorpions!). Show ended promptly at 10, which felt really strange but all in all, good times.

Next time maybe I'll try to get a press pass and take photos!

All about the picture

Yup - this post is all about the picture.

I was in Chennai yesterday watching a magic show about sexually transmitted diseases and noticed this little guy didn't seem so interested.....

Ellora and Ajanta caves

Ever since I visited the fake caves at the Hyderabad Bollywood movie sets I've been dying to see the real Ellora and Ajanta caves. They're in central Maharashtra (the state of Mumbai). Doug had some work to do this week in Mumbai and I hadn't visited our Maharashtra activities in a while so I spent half the week in Nasik (wine country, India) and Malegaon and we met up near the caves for a long weekend.

The town that's the jumping off point for the caves is sadly .. nothing. The first day we did a government sponsored bus tour to Ajanta caves which is like 2.5 hours away. Once we got to the caves we ditched the group - as I'm really adverse to moving in packs and explored ourselves. It's a semi circle of caves dug into the mountain side by buddhists sometime between like 400BC and 600AD. It wasn't discovered until 1875 or something. From the movie sets I was expecting lots of cool sculptures but Ajanta is actually more about the paintings. I mean pretty impressive and rare that these paintings from 2000 years ago are preserved but I'm not really all that into paintings. At the back of most caves was a huge buddha statue - and those were impressive. In the last cave it was shaped like an arc (will full fake wooden beams carved out of the rock) and had tons of sculptures around the perimeter. Including the reclining buddha pictured, which was as least 10ft long. The whole thing was really impressive but I was vaguely disappointed versus the fake ones. Also - due to the paintings they don't allow flash photography (fair enough) but they also don't allow tripods or any camera stands. That I don't understand!

The second day we went to Ellora, which I had expected to be the duller one of the two. It's only 20 minutes or so outside the town. Ellora is newer than Ajanta - like 800AD-ish - and was built in three waves, first the buddhists, then the hindus and finally the jains. These were really cool. Tons of stone sculptures. Some of the caves that were dug out were three stories high and were all carved from the top down so they didn't need scaffolding. The biggest cave is a hindu one and is called Kailasha for the Mt Kailasha of the Himalayas. In the middle is what's meant to be a chariot, covered in sculptures flanked by two huge elephants. It's said to be bigger than the coliseum! The guide we hired for that cave really annoyed me (between his trying to relate to our culture by telling me a chariot was like an Amish buggy - I just said I was from the States, no other info and believe me it looked nothing like a buggy, a chariot would have been a better explanation - and his patronizing explanation of Indian culture and female gender roles and finally is sometimes completely inaccurate explanations).

The hindu and buddhist caves were right next to each other and while some of the depictions were clearly of different religions they also had a lot in common. The Jain temples were about 1km away and really did look different. They also featured a really pretty waterfall. In the one picture you'll see the women's breasts have been touched so often that they are totally shiny. I saw this in Ankor Wat in Cambodia as well. Universal temptation?

One thing, besides the clear artistic merit and incredible effort that went into these caves was the acoustics. There were some where knocking on the beams (solid rock) at different parts of the cave would make different reverberations. Obviously lots of echoing. At one point we were surrounded by SCREAMING school children and with the echoes it was one of the most overwhelming moments of the last year or so! But various points in different caves had amazing acoustics.

Overall a great trip - one I'm really glad I made. I have to try not to get so jaded (oh, ANOTHER 10 foot solid stone buddha from 2000 years ago?).