Lying in bed listening to the high pitched waily-waily temple music issuing from tinny loudspeakers all through the night (oh the delights of Pongal festival) and to the scream and chuff of endless trains, with fan whirring noisily to blend all the sounds together, I realised that in yesterday's blog I left out several important things. Thinking of Andy - still struggling to reach us despite snowstorms, air traffic control strikes and broken down planes- I realised he would want to know about the complete solar eclipse which happened yesterday, 300 miles south of us, peaking at 1 p.m. The sky was just a little darker and it was mercifully cooler but lacking a glass to look through we dare not do so. All around the locals kept shaking their heads and obviously warning us not to look directly at the sun. However whilst we were cycling Marilyn and Brian noticed some boys looking through X ray film and stopped to have a look and had a really good view of a full black sun, as it was a cloudless day. We desperately tried to think of how to contact Arabella, our visiting doctor from England friend, who we knew was really keen to see it.
The other forgotten incident happened as we were cycling home, through Veppenari, which is as they would say in Bristol 'all trimmed up' for Pongal, with pretty lights strung along the main street. In the middle of the village they have erected a stage and there are obviously all sorts of entertainments happening over the 3 days of festival. Yesterday there was a pole-climbing competition. Teams of three young men were competing to reach a bag of money right at the top of the pole, whilst buckets of water were thrown to put them off. As we watched one lad, standing on the head of his friend, who was on the shoulders of a third, managed to pull down the money, to great cheering from the crowds.
The other forgotten incident happened as we were cycling home, through Veppenari, which is as they would say in Bristol 'all trimmed up' for Pongal, with pretty lights strung along the main street. In the middle of the village they have erected a stage and there are obviously all sorts of entertainments happening over the 3 days of festival. Yesterday there was a pole-climbing competition. Teams of three young men were competing to reach a bag of money right at the top of the pole, whilst buckets of water were thrown to put them off. As we watched one lad, standing on the head of his friend, who was on the shoulders of a third, managed to pull down the money, to great cheering from the crowds.
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