one more thing: Happy (belated) Vishu!

Oh yeah, and it was also Vishu on Thursday, April 15. Vishu is Malayali New Year. I was in a meeting that entire day, so I don't really know what people do. But on the way to my meeting, we drove past some celebrations. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of women were lining every street with makeshift stoves, made of three bricks standing on their sides at 90-degree angles from each other (with the space for the fourth brick used to insert the burning twigs for fuel; apparently pots can balance just fine on only three bricks), so that they could cook Vishu feasts. The fire for these stoves comes from a fire in the main temple of the city. The fire is passed from one woman's bunch-of-twigs to another woman's bunch-of-twigs, etc etc, so that every woman's stove fire originated in the temple. Must have taken hours for that fire to go around, because I swear every street in the city was lined with these women and their stoves; I didn't see a single free spot on any street! By the time we left the all-day meeting, the feasts were over, and all that was left were humongous piles of bricks every several meters. (Unfortunately I have no pictures of this because I did not take my camera with me to the meeting, and I didn't know I should expect anything awesome.)