The People in My Neighborhood

Our car was having brake issues one day last week, so Sarah and I walked to Samuel's preschool. It was about 25 minutes of terror and delight. The terror was related to dodging traffic, power lines and gaping holes in the sidewalk. The delight was related to our up close and personal view of my neighborhood.

Looking back toward my driveway ... Isn't it pretty?

My neighbor's sweeper at work ...

Here's a man ironing clothes in his stall along our street. Check out the ancient, coal-filled iron ...

An auto-rickshaw parked on the sidewalk ...

... just begs for a photo like this ...

Clarification: The rickshaw's for hire ... not Sarah.

Bicycles in the shade ...

Another man ironing clothes (a very common sight) ...

... with a bit of beauty at his stall ...

You can grab a late breakfast at a cart ...

... or at a "fast food" restaurant ...

My kids are sick of people snapping their pictures on the street, but I turned paparazzi on this poor child ...

Looking down a side street ...

We passed a lot of these little shrines ...

... and a couple of small temples ...

Sugar cane juice for sale ... tasty for the locals but a sure ticket to giardia for me (alas) ...

Grabbing a snack from a street stall ...

And our destination! We picked Samuel up and made his day by taking an auto-rickshaw home. He kept sticking his head out the side like a dog. Small pleasures!

And here's our car (the first one we haven't named ... not sure why) undergoing extensive remodeling of the brake system. The good news is that it only took a day, and the mechanic makes house calls. Isn't India great?

Nine years old!

I'm a little late in posting this, but my baby Johnny turned 9 years old on July 22! I can hardly believe it. Most of Johnny's friends were out of town in July, so we're planning to have a friends party sometime this month. His actual birthday was a low-key affair.

It was a Sunday and Evie wasn't feeling well, so while the rest of us were at church, Nana and Evie made the birthday cake.

Here's the birthday boy with nine candles plus one for luck.

It was actually an eventful day for Johnny. Not only did he blow out candles and finally get the Harry Potter Wii game he's been dying to play, but he also gave a talk in Primary and passed off the 12th Article of Faith!

He passed off the 13th Article of Faith today, the first Primary student to memorize them all. That's my big boy!

Fun in Mahabalipuram

John and Sarah took the kids to Mahabalipuram last week for a little fun among the ancient temples. I've written before about the amazing history of the place, so this post will be a quick one.

Here are Sarah and the kids in front of Arjuna's Penance, otherwise known as The Descent of the Ganges. Photos of this bas-relief just don't do it justice at all, partly because there's a trench dividing viewers from the carving, and it gives the illusion that the art is pretty small. It's actually pretty huge. You'll just have to come on over and see for yourself.

Here they are holding up Krishna's Butterball. Yes, that's really what it's called, and just a couple of days ago I had the eureka moment that cleared it all up in my little mind! When Krishna (avatar of Vishnu) was a toddler he loved to eat butter, and he was constantly stealing it from his mother's kitchen and from the neighbor women. When they caught him at it, he'd bowl them over with his charm. Sounds a bit like Samuel. Anyway, I finally connected that story to this huge piece of rock, and suddenly the absurd name makes perfect sense.

Here they are trying to look like part of a small temple they found near the butterball. If they were all dressed in gray you wouldn't even know they were there!

Sarah as bas-relief beauty ...

John as regal raja ... I think ...

Kids posing as adorable tourists (don't be fooled) ...

The elephant at Pancha Rathas ...

Sarah said this little temple at Pancha Rathas made her think of a play house.

And it was all capped off with lunch on the beach! Sweet!

St. Thomas Basilica

Did you know that one of the 12 Apostles of Christ, the one most people call Doubting Thomas, traveled to India in AD 52? South India has one of the oldest Christian populations in the world, though it's always been a tiny minority. I had never heard this interesting bit of Christian history before I moved here.

Thomas did most of his work in Kerala, our neighboring state, but was living in Mylapore (now a Chennai neighborhood) when he was killed by Brahmins. His followers buried him near the site of his murder, where there's been some kind of shrine for almost 2,000 years now.

Sarah and I spent an afternoon exploring the current shrine, St. Thomas Basilica (and here), built directly over St. Thomas' tomb, which you can visit by accessing a stairway that leads under the church.

Behind the church, there's a little museum with relics, art, and bits of the old Portuguese church that was removed when the basilica was built. The image of a peacock appears frequently in the artifacts, which is interesting because it's the Hindu symbol for the Mylapore area. The ancient Kapaleeshwarar Temple, not far from the basilica, is supposed to be the place where goddess Parvati worshipped Shiva in the form of a peacock.

Here are some pillars and a baptismal font from the old Portuguese church.

A copper relief showing St. Thomas performing a miracle ...

This supposedly contains some slivers of Thomas' bone.

Another relic, more bone from St. Thomas ...

And just to remind me that we're still in India, here's what we found around a corner from all the history and relics ... no explanation, of course. What?!

After seeing the museum and tomb, we did some exploring around the church.

That's a wooden vaulted ceiling ...

People have signed their names all over the case containing the statue of Christ.

Here's the front of the church.

Another interesting connection to the Hindu temples ... The flagpole at the church, which is wrapped in colored cloth during festivals, is exactly like the poles found in the larger temples (except for the cross on top, of course) and serves the same purpose.

Sri Krishna weds Deepa, part 2

We crashed a bit more of Sri Krishna and Deepa's wedding last Sunday, this time dropping in on the main ceremony in the morning and the reception that night.

A traditional Tamil Brahmin wedding has several days of festivities, so our dropping in and out of things was perfectly normal. In fact, I've noticed that guests often don't pay any attention to the ceremonies at all, preferring to socialize at high volume while the priests chant away up front.

Sarah and I saw about an hour's worth of the actual wedding ceremony in the morning. We caught the building up of the sacred fire, the seven vows with walks around the fire, and the bride's name change. I threw flower petals at the appropriate time, but Sarah stashed hers in her purse for a souvenir. Sneaky! We left just as the bride was changing into her new sari (provided by the groom's family and passed around so the wedding guests could bless it.) I hadn't seen much of this before, because Cheryl and Suyash's wedding was considerably edited.

John and Sarah went back in the evening for the reception, which was apparently quite the carnival. 

Sarah even had her fortune told by an astrological parrot. She's going to be fabulously wealthy in three months ... and she's supposed to share her money with family and friends. Woot! That's the kind of prediction I like to hear, even if it's coming from this shifty-eyed parrot keeper.

An Indian wedding isn't complete without vast quantities of delicious food.

Here are Cheryl and Suyash getting their portrait drawn.

Thanks to Suyash and Cheryl for letting us have this Indian experience!