I wore a saree for the first time today! Rathi lent me a traditional Onam saree, which is cream with maroon trim, and when the girls saw me this morning they went crazy (and each told me that the colors of the saree looked MUCH better on me than on Rathi…shhh don’t tell). We took many pictures and they all talked about how excited my parents would be to see pictures of me in a saree. We celebrated Onam, a Keralan festival that remembers the reign of a righteous king. The king was cheated out of his rule by an evil god, but has consequently been allowed to return once a year to visit his earthly kingdom. In celebration, the community comes together, greets the king, eats a huge meal, and plays games. I have been looking forward to this day for quite awhile mostly because the dish of the day was red rice, which is my absolute FAVORITE Indian dish. (Well, absolute favorite might be a bit extreme…I also love chicken biryani, tamarind rice, dhosa with potato curry, and a myriad of other foods…but red rice is definitely up there). Imagine Thanksgiving, Indian-style. After lunch was served, we hung with the girls all afternoon and it was fun watching the students both humiliate themselves and dominate during the games that were played. To wrap things up, the girls brought out their drums and invited everyone to dance…only a little convincing was necessary to get me to join the circle, and we danced so hard and so long that I got a sideache. Later that night, when I was hanging out with the night guards waiting for the second round of students to get back from their evening out, they told me that I looked like an Indian queen in my saree and that I was dancing like an Indian queen, too. That definitely gave me warm fuzzies J What a great day.
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