Yes, that's right, a rice feeding ceremony!
So yesterday was interesting! We were able to go
to an old Hindu temple for Momoksha's rice feeding ceremony. Momoksha
is the baby of Durga, the cook, and Ranju, the laundry man. Momoksha is about 6 or 7 months old. Hindu's have
this ceremony where they bless the baby and his family and this is where
they set up objects that he will crawl to that will represent his life
and they feed him his first rice. It's almost like a baby blessing in
our religion. But before we got to all of that, we actually got to go
inside the inner sanctum of the temple where the shrine of the god
Krishna, I think, was. Not many people get to do that, and those that do
either have to pay a lot of money to do so or have very influenctial
friends. Which is what we had, a friend of Dr. Nuckolls was able to
arrange it so that we could go in.
Once inside, we
listened to a ceremony that I think had to do with the birthday of the
god, so it was a longer ceremony than usual. We were also blessed by the
temple priests.
When that was done, we headed outside to a
pillar, that Dr. Nuckolls said that when you hug it, it's supposed to
bless you with many pregnancies. That was interesting to participate in
as well, as you have to hug the pillar, then they said that if you hold a
wish in your hear when they bless you again, your wish will come true.
After
the pillar hugging, we headed to the area where we could watch
Momoksha's rice feeding ceremony. Now that was really cool! We all sat
around as the temple priest went through the ritual, blessing Momoksha
and his family, as well as Momoksha's future. When he was done with
that, Sallaja, one of the servants that works for the house, set up a
series of objects when Momoksha would crawl towards and pick. The first
three that he picked would be what influenced his life. It was cool to
see that he was actually looking at everything to see what they were
before he chose them. The first three that he picked were money, a book
and pen, and flowers. The money represents him going after money, or
having money in his life. The book and pen represents knowledge, and the
flowers represent the appreciation of beauty. So he did really well.
And you could tell that everyone, even those just walking by, were
really getting into the ceremony. When Momoksha chose the objects
everyone was cheering. I think it scared him a little as he pouted when
everyone started to cheer. But he's such a happy baby! And so cute!
We
were also intereviewed by three journalists yesterday! Which was kind
of cool. Well, not really interviewed, but we had our pictures taken and
one of them showed up online. I hopefully will be able to get a hold of
it so that you can see.
So yeah, that was my day! I hope that everything is going well with everyone else!
Talk to you soon,
Ashley
