As I said, I'm several festivals behind.
Let's start the catch-up with this year's Ayudha Puja, the day on which South Indian Hindus worship their tools. It's an effort to awaken the divine being within the tools and ask it to perform well throughout the year. This sounded absolutely nuts to me the first time I heard it explained, but I've since been doing some thinking. I believe everything was created spiritually before it was created physically, so I suppose that means everything does have a spark of divinity. While I don't think it's right to worship anything other than our Heavenly Father, I can understand how this particular practice might have developed.
The four drivers in our compound view the family cars as their tools, and so they asked that they be allowed to do the puja on the vehicles. Our gardener, Melan, participated with his gardening tools.
We had quite the celebration with all four families participating this year. Here are the cars lined up for cleaning and decoration.
Including our trusty bucket of bolts. We never did name this car ... odd. I wonder if it's because we aren't the primary drivers and so don't feel as much ownership. Hmmm.
Shanti used the kids' sidewalk chalk to draw kolams in front of each vehicle.
Here are Ramesh and Vijay smearing the tamarind paste and vermillion on our car.
All of the kids' vehicles (and the toy lawn mower) were included.
Here's Vijay circling the sacred fire over Alex's scooter.
Here are Praveen and Ramesh preparing the main offerings.
And I love this picture (taken by my neighbor) of Shanti lighting one of the puja lamps.
Pumpkins were smashed, sweets were eaten, and a good time was had by all. AND hopefully our car will continue to run until we leave.
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