A day of excitement

The new Sai Baba temple has been the main topic of conversation at Sri Chaitanya for over a week now and the children were more than a little bit excited for its opening (and the holiday) on Thursday. For me there was a second excitement, Balu's function. So I took tiffin at Siva Kumari's house, put on my saree with her help and set off, with flowers in my hair, on Ramana's bike to one of the villages, full of anticipation.

Sitting side saddle on a motorbike wearing a saree is a lot harder than it looks and walking through the crowds and crowds of people at Ramana's quick pace was equally as challenging, but finally we made it to Balu's house - although this year he's living with us because of his tenth class morning and evening tuition. The one roomed house was already full of people but I was greeted by an even more welcoming than usual Venkayamma and her sister who led me to a chair in the outside area. Three ladies were working their way between the chairs, putting kumkum below our bindis, two streaks of yellow paste on our necks and covering our feet in the paste too. The paste was made from turmeric symbolizing goodness, and even though Ramana told the ladies only to paint my toes rather than my whole feet (maybe he thinks 'goodness' isn't a quality I possess?), I felt almost completely Indian!

Whilst I ate a huge second breakfast of various fried treats and some sweet ones too, Balu was dressed in his white pancha which is like a loin cloth. Then different relatives and friends took it
n turns to sprinkle rice on his head, be given a small parcel of Indian treats and pose for a photo - including me! Afterwards we sat, chatted (although I was mostly just waggling my Indian head waggle) and drank chai, before heading to the temple to take meals. The amount of people at the temple was insane. Everywhere I looked there were crowds and crowds of people all heading for food, or queuing to get inside the temple. Venkayamma madam had to fight her way through the crowd to get us all plates for the meal. And then it was my turn to fight my way forward, in my saree, to be served the five or six curries, as well as rice, chips and sweet things. With an overflowing plate, and my phone, camera and gift from the function in my left hand, I struggled to balance everything standing up, whilst eating with my right hand and keeping up with everyone else's fast eating pace. But somehow I managed not to spill anything on my saree, although I definitely could have done with a lie down after the huge plateful of curry!

The excitement continued into the evening, when Ramana let me come to the cinema with him! We sat on sofas - apparently a Tangutur special - and waited for the curtains to part and the film to begin. In general, Indian theatres show only one film each at three or four different times during the day, but that still didn't mean I had a clue which film we were seeing! Ramana told me it was 'fantasy', and fantasy it certainly was. In Telugu films everything seems to be overly exaggerated, which I suppose is lucky, because by and large I managed to follow the plot. In the interval (yes, there is an interval!), we stepped outside ears ringing from the ridiculously loud music, and drank sprite. Afterwards, Ramana told me it was an excellent film and I guess I'll just have to believe him!