This Week in God

For three wonderfully loud days this past week, we were lucky enough to be considered Hindus and join in on the fun of Diwali, the "other" festival of lights. It really is quite the production. Dinesh and I spent about 8 hours preparing the house with lavish decorations, and we made a makeshift railing out of bamboo spanning the length of the front patio to put oil lamps on. Jenna was on marigold duty (she strung about 2 million of them onto long strings which lined all of the doorways of the house.) Lots of flowers, loads of lights (which were beautiful at night), deafening fireworks, too much food, funny hats, and singing and dancing all were incorporated over the course of the festival. I truly feel fortunate to have been able to play along with my family, because the Hindus do festivals the right way. It's all about family and fun (and celebrating the triumph of good over evil; click here if you really want to know what it's all about). None of the nonsense that is inherent in exchanging gifts. It was very ceremonial and proper. That's not to say that I wasn't glad it was over. Every night we had to suffer through the Hindu version of Christmas carols which kept us up real late. It was funny at first, but after 5 hours each evening I'd had enough. On the last night, it was my turn to go house to house and sing. I accompanied a rag-tag group of guys, young and old, and we tore it up. People seemed to enjoy the idea of a goofy American guy trying to sing in Nepali, and trying even harder to dance. At least there are no incriminating photos. All in all, it was like nothing I've ever taken part in. It sure beats Christmas. But be sure to have the gifts ready when I get back. ;)

Oh yeah, in the tradition on Christmas, and Festivus there was a Diwali miracle. The lights stayed on everynight with the exception of one minor 10 minute outage even though each house was using 4 times the electricity as it would normally.