Party weekend!

The week before our next guests arrived was a bit of a week of parties (just preparing for the UK!). 

We had seen advertised an event at a restaurant on the rooftop of the 30 floor World Trade Centre where 2 contestants from Masterchef Australia were cooking a 6 course meal and matching wine was also included in the price. We had a nice evening. Although it probably would have been better if we had actually watched more than about 10 minutes of the show! 

It turned out that the contestants didn't actually do the cooking, they "designed the menu" with the help of the chef of the restaurant. The contestants actually just drank a bit too much and answered the audiences questions (mainly slagging off other contestants). The food was OK, and the wine was good, even if the all inclusiveness led to a slight hangover on the Thursday!

Saturday night was our wedding party. I know, a little after the event, but we have been meaning to celebrate with friends and colleagues in India since we got back in October/November. 

We hired out the terrace of a hotel fairly close to us and they put on a lovely Indian buffet. It was a very nice evening with friends, good food and an excellent excuse for us all to get out our traditional outfits again! 

Ben and the girls

Kathryn and the boys

Everyone

Time to invest in a vase!

Sunday and Monday Shravan and Sowmya were holding their housewarming ceremony for the new house that they have just finished building with Shravan's parents. Housewarmings are a really big deal here, and it was really interesting to be there for parts of the ceremony. I'm not sure what time the ceremony started on the Sunday, but we arrived at about 6.30pm, and it then went on until 11.30. We left before that though. It then began again at 4.30am! And was finished at about 12.30 on the Monday morning. For some reason early in the morning is an auspicious time for pujas (Hindu religious ceremonies). Needless to say I came a little later; 9.30am seemed a little more sensible. Ben was working, so unfortunately missed the Monday celebrations.

Each puja basically involved chanting prayers in Sanskrit and then a number of mixtures of rice, coconut water, oil, flowers and fruits were offered to the god in question. Apparently the pujari (priest) did explain each puja and tell various stories about each god and why they were being invoked on this occasion in Kannada (the local language of Karnataka) as well as not very many people speak Sankrit. Not that this really helped us much!

The purari (in yellow) performing part of the ceremony

A break from the rituals

Shravan and his family decided not to let a cow roam around their house and instead used a cow idol for some of the ceremony. Getting a cow to enter your home during your housewarming ceremony is very lucky in Hindu culture. However, the cow's were not to be perturbed; they arrived the following morning and sat outside the house in a kind of vigil!

Cows.......outside Shravan's house!

Food was provided both in the evening and at lunchtime the next day which was really excellent. It was a thali style meal (although I think that actually means the stainless steel dish it is served in), in this case served on a banana leaf for easy cleaning. It basically means you get a little bit of everything. Except for Shravan's parents who were involved in all the pujas, the rest of the guests were kind of expected to come and go through the proceeding and get food whenever they fancied. It was a really interesting event to be part of. Even if we didn't really understand what was going on!

My lunch!