Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Divali Celebration, continued

The first picture here shows Kathleen and Roland with their dinner all arranged on leaves.

After dinner we walked throughout the village for hours. This is a popular town for viewing Divali lights and many people from all over the area come here. Everyone is dressed up and those of Indian descent wear their traditional costumes. These two young girls are a charming example.
A combination of electric "Christmas" lights and lighted clay lamps decorated almost every home and the streets themselves. Sections of the village coordinated their displays with arches of lights over the streets or rows of lighted lamps along the sides. Bamboo frames are built to display the lamps, which are glued on at the joints. Our photos of the lights are very poor I'm afraid. One shows a fence frame along the street and another a lovely home lit with lamps with the family sitting out front to welcome guests. We talked to many people and were given gifts of sweets in small bags. The most popular was a farina, ghee and honey dough, at it's best warm and fragrent with what I thought was cardomen. The bags also contained frest sliced fruits and other candies.

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