Dear Friends,
National Geographic, because the art of animal sacrifice is alive and well. There’s nothing like a good throat-slitting of a goat to start of your morning. And FYI, they don’t die right away. Needless to say, I’ve stopped having breakfast until the goats are back on the farm.
The cherry on the Ulsoor Lake cake is the revelers’ lighting of endless streams of fireworks, firecrackers and what I suspect may be cannons, all night long! Not even the dying cat wailing on the loudspeakers can drown out the “rat-tat-tat-boom-bang-KABOOM” that has become my lullaby. I’m usually the first to sign up for cultural heritage day, but this is excessive. And apparently this four-day fest is extending for another four days. It’s like a very terrorist Chanukah.
If the noise is the cherry, then the vegetation has to be the icing. Throwing spinach, flowers and vegetables into the lake is, I don’t know, a healthy birthday present or something. He’s an elephant God, why they don’t give him peanuts, I don’t know. Well, the extra vegetation in the lake is too much of a temptation to the 50,000 water buffalo that have come to Bangalore for the monsoon season. It’s like a buffalo buffet at my house.
Check back next week for Part 2 of this adventure. – Meredith
Meredith Billman-Mani was married earlier this year, and moved to Bangalore, India with her husband. She’s a former staff writer for the Hudson Reporter.