This weekend was the start of a ten-day festival celebrating the triumph of my favorite Goddess, Durga, over the Demon Mahishasura - that dude with the awesome hair and the big sword that Tim and I posed with in Mysore.
According to the story, Mahishasura was the love child of the king of the demons and a water buffalo. He could change into a water buffalo whenever he wanted to, although no one has provided me with an adequate explanation of what the benefit of doing this would be. He was really into Lord Brahma, who in a major lapse of judgment gave Mahishasura the power to be undefeated by man or god. Mahishasura then went on a terrible rampage, causing all kinds of trouble and being a huge a-hole both on earth and in heaven. The gods got together and created the Goddess Durga to defeat him (being a lady, that whole "man or god" thing did not apply). Durga was given weapons from all of the Gods, and got to ride on a badass Tiger. The fight went on for ten days, but at the end, Durga was the winner (she also called him illiterate during the fight, which is one of my favorite details. BURN!!!!) Next weekend will be the end of the celebration, which is called Vijayadashmi. We had a three-day weekend this week, and we get one next week, too! Yay, Durga! Tim and I are going to go here next weekend to celebrate with a little bit of hiking and hopefully an elephant encounter!
I thought you were going to post the video of Romeo (aka Shortzenegger) the world's tiniest bodybuilder?!?
ReplyDeleteThat's my homegirl!!! I like that this holiday coincides with rosh hashanah and yom kippur. Vijayadashmi sounds way cooler though
ReplyDeleteWhen is the holiday where you can pelt each other with paint?
ReplyDeleteCasey, that holiday is called Holi, and it is in February or March.
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