Another Dasara festival, that means its been a year nd more

I was clicking pics of the Dasara celebrations in my office, suddenly I realized that I had put up Dasara pics of the 2011 Dasara. that means this blog has been around for more than a year now... I'm thinking to myself, "wow, that's amazing". I dint really think I was going to persevere so long with this blog!

The ladies in the office were generally busy; cooking lunch, tidying up the place, applying vermilion on everything in sight, decorating the goddess' picture. The men were busy getting the 'take home' sweet packets ready and decorating the vehicles.


Here,our office assistant is applying vermillion on the cupboard. When she came in, there was already a vermillion mark on it and she was offended that someone beat her to it. We informed her that it was there from last year's Dasara and she happily rubbed it off before reapplying this year's mark.

This is the one on the door...

Well, nothing much is spared, even the vehicles. This one's got it on the tyres too...

The ladies were busy applying rangoli..

 .... and this is how it finally turned out...

...they had a busy time decorating the place....

The mango tree leaves are strung up for auspicious occasions, this time accompanied by a garland of chrysanthemum flowers

No 'Ayudha puja' is complete without the cucumber. So innocuous looking, this one, but its fate later on is interesting.

As you can see, there is a triangular cut made on one side. A triangular wedge is cut out, the resulting hole is filled with pink 'Kumkum' powder and 1 or 2 rupee coins. a piece of camphor is placed on the top, which is later burnt, as we will see later....


Another important player, the lemon, which is placed under the wheels of all vehicles. After the pooja, the vehicles are made to run over the lemon. The driver in the pic is placing a lemon under the wheels of his vehicle.

The 'David and Goliath situation', going down under.....

The bikes are also given their turn at this face-off.

The pujari takes his time with the puja, first the goddess....

...then her other instruments....

Now comes the times the much anticipated time for the kids who had assembled... He looks to the skies with a small prayer to appease the goddess with the cucumber and the lighted camphor.... (if you look closely in the pic, you can see the flame of the camphor burning on the cucumber)

The kids are getting ready too...for the coins inside the cucumber...

Now's the moment...he raises his hands dramatically and smashes the cucumber on the ground...The kids pounce on each other to collect the coins...

All this was topped with a sumptuous lunch afterwords, prepared by Shobha and co. ... too bad my hands were too engrossed in my plate to hold a camera :).

This pic is the cooking team at work.


Happy Dasara to one and all...