Saraswati pooja

One thing we haven't explored much during our time here is religion. We haven't found any church service here that we're comfortable with, and without the weekly structured Christian teaching William and Patrick would get through a Sunday school program, I don't want to confuse them too much by participating in other religion's worship practices. Even though I definitely want to encourage learning about other religions and being open and tolerate, I just haven't decided for myself yet how comfortable I am with participating in other worships. I'm sure this will definitely continue to develop as we continue to live abroad.

This is why - 20 months later - William only just participated in his first pooja - a Saraswati pooja. Saraswathi is the Hindu goddess of learning (among other things). Today was her festival day as part of the Dussera (Navaratri) festival period. (Wikipedia it - I'm not going to attempt to describe what I only have a very basic understand of!). Our neighbor thus had a big pooja celebration for their daughter, who is William's age (and probably his best friend here).

A priest came to the house, and, in addition to the chanting and blessings, asked the little girl to draw the first letter of the Telugu alphabet in a plate of rice. This marked the official start of her official learning process, and will hopefully bring her good fortune for her continued studies. At least, this is what I understand from the various explanations I've been given.

We were at work, but Sarwari brought William over for the ceremony. Apparently, after about 4 minutes, the daughter was very upset and asked William to come sit next to her while the priest continued the blessings. Our neighbor was hesitant, because she didn't know how Greg and I felt about this, but while she and Sarwari were debating, William just went and plopped down next to his friend and the priest continued. Not wanting to make a double scene with both kids getting upset, they decided to allow the ceremony to continue (which is fine - had I been there, I would have agreed). The priest was only giving the blessings to the daughter, but then she asked the priest to bless William, too ... which he did.

Now I just have to wait for the videographer to bring over the tape so I can see what happened. William tried to give us an explanation when we got home - he was very animated and talked about mixing yellow and white flowers and coconuts and getting "red color" on his forehead, but I'm curious to see for myself.