Snakey Vegetables

Picture-heavy posts for the next few days. Before we leave India at the end of this week I have a lot of things to show you.

Kudos to Dear Friend Don for looking up Nasi Lemak - the dish I wasn't sure of on the Promenade's buffet - that was a combination of coconut with rice. He found out the flag was from Malaysia. I've had it again since and it's surely yummy. We are now back in Chennai at the Marriott Courtyard in the lap of comparative luxury. Many many more dishes on the buffet here and all of them interesting. Today I had "Snake Guard Preparation." Lest you turn up your snoots at this one, there was no harming of snakes involved - it was totally delicious. Turns out that snake guard is actually snake gourd - a vegetable sort of related to the cucumber. It stands straight up out of the ground as if it were a cobra without the hood. Here's a picture, and has a lovely flower too. I also had braised pumpkin with olives. I was in pumpkin heaven it was so good!!! I kept thinking of Mma Ramotswe from "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith. She always eagerly looked forward to the delicious pumpkin she would be fixing for dinner. If you haven't read this serious of books, I highly recommend it.

I talked about Kolams in the blog in my first visit to India and they are worth revisiting. Kolams are beautiful designs that woman make outside their doorsteps each day with rice powder. They are also done by staff outside local businesses and have several functions. They serve as a blessing to the home, a warding off of bad spirits, an invitation to prosperity, and an encouragement to insects and rodents to eat the rice powder and quit at the threshold without bothering the inhabitants. In recent times, people sometimes use chalk dust or other types of powders for convenience, but these are much frowned upon by traditionalists. Here are some lovely samples. On religious holidays the designs can become quite elaborate.

You can see others out in front of the buildings below. Most of the pictures embigify well.

I'm very fond of this one...

And here is its location.

Sometimes they are done in a more permanent fashion with colored paint.

The next two are outside one of the Visitor's Centre stores at Auroville and are done in colored chalk.

Gorgeous, eh? The next one is not a Kolam, but one of the beautiful floor tile decorations from a hotel.

The picture below is of one of the carved pillars in the main park on the French side of town. When Pondy was a French colony, they built a canal to separate the French side from the Tamil side. People used to call the neighborhoods either the "black side" or the "white side" of town. It's become all-Tamil long since, but as the French side has all the ritzier restaurants and hotels and all the government buildings - people still refer to the French and Tamil sides. The President of India (the first woman president!) visited while we were there. There was drastic spiffage-uppage of everything everywhere on the French side for days prior to her visit. Police went a little over the top regulating both foot and vehicle traffic within a half-mile of her route all through town. The normal lathi-toting policemen (lathis are bamboo sticks - they can be short or long) were all carrying rifles during the two days of her stay.

I was amazed to see this sign in a neighborhood. Wasn't working well I can tell you.
Water Buffalo having a nosh on the roadside.

Chinese Fu Dog on a gate pedestal.

Two senior gents out for a walk on the Promenade, wearing dhotis. As you see, the fabric is a very thin cool cotton. Women wear a separate base skirt (always) under their saris to prevent see-throughness.

Blessing of vehicles by a priest. You can just see the fire in the dish he's carrying in the lower left of the picture. He is anointing cars and vehicles with oil and flower garlands and wafting sweet incense over them.

Women carry tremendous loads on their heads, using a yard of fabric twisted tight around the top of the head to make a stable base. In the villages, it's the women who gather firewood - carrying amazingly huge bundles on their heads of four- to six-foot-long skinny branches they've gathered in the countryside. Men carry loads on motorcycles of pots, vegetables and bric-a-brac destined for sale. These loads are tied on and are so big that they almost obscure both bike and rider.

Nicely carved Ganesh statue out at Auroville.

One of my favorite pseudo-bas-relief sculptures from the side of a house.

Another Ganesh statue - seemingly doing pushups on a stool - near one of the stalls selling statuettes and pictures of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother of the Aurobindo Ashram.

These are carved lions on a pillar of the Manakula Vinayagar temple where Lakshmi stands to receive donations and give blessings. They are missing a fang or two (and a claw or three), but are still very impressive. They have an Abyssinian look to me, but I'm basing that on faint memories of a 23-year old art history class.

The police are serious about the embarrassment factor to curb traffic offenders. Don't know if it helps or not - everyone is pretty daring. Other than right after an accident, I'm not sure how police would be able to insert themselves into any traffic pattern to catch miscreants.

Often busloads of students - young and old - are let off on the Promenade on school tours. The only way to get them back on the bus is to lean on the air horn repeatedly - sometimes non-stop. After awhile I was ready to shoot out the tires - but had no tire-shooting implement. Plus, it would have kept them there and defeated my purpose.

More scenes to follow soon...