As many conferences as I have attended, very few of those have been in India. As a result, I have little understanding of how it works in India. I remember a few things from school but not really. I became used to the generic conferences, the dull modern, 'secular' version of it. But in India, 'Athiti Devo Bhava' means 'the guest is a form of divine' So welcome rituals for people are not very different from that for the divine, in temples and the similar procedures are used in other festivals and celebrations like weddings and ceremonies for going into a new house. So, when I attended two conferences, and a few workshops, I was overjoyed to see this kind of welcome. The one with flowers above was done for a farewell ceremony for graduating students, the simple one in chalk on the left is outside a very old temple on the campus of Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. 
The above is done all in rose and marigold petals. Can you imagine being greeted by a rush of fragrant rose and a whiff if marigold...and your olfactory lobes are wondering, hmm...which flowers....
The above one are swirls of rajnigandha (tuberose) along with some mango leaves (considered auspicious) around a pole that separated different sections of the all auditorium. it made the entire auditorium smell heavenly. Perfect for hot countries that can be quite unbearable in summers.
Good bye to the students and celebrating 15 years of an institute that teaches video and animation!!
The entrance of the hall, all the decorations on the door are fresh flowers.
Can you see the 'hand?' The two formations in orange on the left is the thumb and the middle finger and the rest three are the index finger, ring finger and little finger, the symbol of this organisation where I attended a workshop.
I loved the above two, just absolutely simply beautiful, fragrant and artistic. A treat for the eyes.
A close up of the green in some of floral decorations (called alplana, rangoli and kolam in different Indian languages)
And potted plant always lights it all up. Aurocaria is something that you will usually find only in north India, --used as Xmas tree, it is native to really cold countries. But in north India it is usually used an indoor plant. I have seen much of this in Pennsylvania and ofcourse now Sweden.
So, I hope you have gotten a glimpse of how colourful, and fragrant welcome is in India (it had its own flavour in Fiji, so I would say the same about Fiji as well). I hope you could feel the coolness and the sweetness of using fresh flowers!!
Swagatam--the sanskrit word for Welcome, refers to health, welcome and welfare.
I wonder - is the India of security of emotions and love and family traditions still as observed..or is it going in the same direction as the West. One comment I hear of visitors to Bhutan, a former isolated country - from people who have been there a few times within a 20 year span. They say - its the same, but I sense a difference! I interpret this as slow change and the recognition within the visitor that Bhutan is no longer separate from the world. Physical items make a difference to emotions and beliefs - electricity - piped water and is India like that? The speed of change in the West changed when villagers did not rely any more on candles and electricity. Matter - physical matter changes us inside our heads. Do I like this change - I don't know?
ReplyDeleteThe color of Indian Festivals always has held a magic for me. I like the openness of it - the vast number of colors -the brightness - primary colors - not shades of pink - but red, blue, yellow - bright like the sun and sky.
ReplyDeleteThanks Pat, I feel the same way. Everytime I arrive in India, it is like a burst of color. While you can have that in some african countries and even Latin America, nothing comes close to what you can see in India and ah...the Indian rose....people say you can easily get high on it...sometimes it is so strong it can cause a headache. But for me, the smell of Indian flowers is always the smell of nature, a reminder that nature took great care in creating colours, and smells----that have continued to delight us.
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