Thai Pongol, mid-January, is the Hindu holiday for celebrating the Sun (God) and harvest. My landlords, Gowri and Shiva, invited me to their Thai Pongol celebration, and I woke up at 4am to help them with preparing the morning feast. Nason, the cook, and I made milk rice, vaddai (fried doughnuts with herbs), and juggery sweets. You must first sweep all the floors, to purify and get rid of all misdeeds, as a start to a new season. The other people who work in the house constructed a kind of shrine for the milk rice. You boil the rice with excessive water, skimming off extra water, until it boils over. When it boils over it signals that the Sun god has taken his offerings, then Hindus can begin their morning feast. People generally go to temple in the afternoon or evening.
And the view from my apartment building's roof, towards the sea. Rooftop Hindu garden where New Year's Eve bash, with mad Hindi music, was held.
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