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Welcome back to This is India! I always have funny/weird stories about India to share with friends or family when I talk to them. This is just meant to be an honest portrayal about my life in India through short anecdotes. I also share here what I’ve been up to online outside Hippie in Heels.

What I was up to other than here:

• I don’t even remember… lol ! I went to the beach a lot this week. Did a little work. Nothing crazy!
• I’ve got a new job lined up which is kind of exciting doing freelance travel writing for a TV channel I love which will mean an ACTUAL paycheck!
• I was also really happy to see I was mentioned in this article by Austrian Adaptation about the best expat blogs to follow in 2016

Now your story,

Desshara (Dasara) is a fun holiday in India. I’ve shared about before when I talked about my time in Mysore, where it is celebrated HUGELY! There are so many ways to spell, pronounce, understand, and celebrate this holiday but I choose the Mysore Dasara since that’s where I learned and understood it- although that would be different than North India or Bangladesh. For Hindus, this time of removing bad fate is a really important holiday, and for some it’s the most important!

It’s a 10 day festival and on day 9 (“Astra Puja”) that is the day to worship “weapons and tools”. For most that means to celebrate the thing that brings you money in life or things you use and help you in life. For drivers, that is your car, for IT guys it may be their computer. So, what do they do? The clean it first of all, then give flowers for decoration and puja as an offering.

The reason is to do with the killing of the demon Mahishasura by goddess Chamundeshwari. (In Karnataka anyways). That’s something I learned with goMowgli on our tour of Mysore where Chamundi Hill tells this whole story. Check it out, it’s fun!

In the meantime, here are some pictures. The security at our house asked to wash our cars the Omni and Bolero but only did puja for the Omni. I think that’s because it used to be Babu’s (we bought it from him) and was a taxi, and was a tool for him. The Bolero would have been our responsibility to decorate. And yes, we paid them for their work!

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These were the other other two cars parked at our complex. Decoration complete!

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This is India!

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