Sunday, December 14, 2008
Sunil's India - Part 4
More of Sunil's wonderful India pictures. I saw Sunil & Fernando yesterday at Ed's annual Christmas party, enjoyed tasty food, and watched 'The Boys In The Band,' a seminal 1970 movie about a group of 7 gay friends. So we were 7 gay friends watching a movie about 7 gay friends. I'd have to say we were the happier of the two gay bunches, but I'm reminded of the movie director who said great fiction is 'life, with all the boring parts removed.'There's a lot more to say about 'Boys', but today is about India, and we continue with a fourth installment of Sunil's odyssey. By the way, Sunil inspired me to post myself about India on Friday, in which I focus on Udaipur, the Switzerland of India kinda sorta...
Sunil: 'sunset in the Thar Desert...' The Thar is the world's seventh largest desert - at 77 thousand square miles, the size of Nebraska. It occupies more than half of India's largest state, Rajasthan, which at 132 thousand square miles is slightly larger than New Mexico. Rajasthan is the biggest Indian state bordering Pakistan.
Sunil: 'in the spice section of the market..' I really love the huge multicolored piles of powder and grains you see in open-air markets.. I guess you wash the grains before using, but you can wash powder (though here at home, you can wash with powder).
Sunil: 'more colors.' India is so colorful that immigrating from there to here must be like trading your color TV set for a black-and-white model... : - )
Sunil: 'hands of the wives of the king; before they committed sati, they placed their hand print on the wall.' Sati is the now-dead practice, among some Hindu communities, where a widow would throw herself on her dead husband's funeral pyre, whether she wanted to or not. It's named after a goddess who did this to herself because she couldn't bear her father's humiliation of her (living) husband, Shiva, according to Wikipedia. Oddly, my friend David named one of his cats Sati...
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