Christine's Journeys
  • Home
    • About Me
    • Resources
    • Contact
  • Blog
  • Europe
    • Iceland
    • England
  • Africa
    • Tanzania
    • Morocco >
      • The North
      • On the Road
  • Asia
    • Thailand
    • Cambodia
    • Laos
    • Vietnam
  • The Americas
    • Costa Rica
    • Peru
  • Blog

CHENNAI, INDIA

1/29/2017

0 Comments

 
​Our first stop in the morning was to have our bus blessed to ensure a safe trip by a priest at an animist temple in town.  He performs a small ceremony called “Puja” which entails placing lemons under the tires, smashing a coconut on the ground, lighting a small pot of fragrant smoky camphor, then walking around the bus to bless all of it.  He then anoints our foreheads with spots of vermillion powder.
 
Outside the temple, a family cooked a simple Dosa (thin crispy pancake) meal on the concrete against the temple wall.  The couple was there with their 9 year old daughter and newborn son.  They’d been coming here for years to pray for a son after their daughter was born (sons are much more valued than daughters – see more on this later), and now that the woman had finally born a son, the extended family had returned to thank the Hindu gods for this blessing.  The dark spots on the baby’s face are applied as a protective sign.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    It's said that life is about the journey we take more than the destination, and although my entries here are mostly about destinations, they also  reflect some of my inner journeys that happen along the way.


    "I cannot be awake, for nothing looks to me as it did before. Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep."     
                             - Walt Whitman

    Archives

    January 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Contact me here 
This site and all materials featured within, including photographs, are protected by my copyright.