Janet's Entry January 21, 2009

Now here we were in this foreign place. No phone, no friends or family, in a cold dark apartment. We felt like prisoners with all the bars on the windows, drawn curtains and bars and blots on the doors. The apartment wasn't what or where we thought originally, but in an old middle class neighborhood. So we sat there looking at one another, prisoners in our own home and scared to death about the whole appalling situation outside.
After naps and showers (I was still in my bathrobe), we heard a huge racket outside. Fred yelled at me to hurry out. To our amazement, right down the side street one house down from ours, a parade was happening. I rushed back in to get dressed then ran back out and started taking pictures. I missed the first of the parade but it circled around and came back on the other side street at the end of our row. At the first of the parade were twenty or so white horses with their turbaned riders. Then several different bands with colorful uniforms sauntered by making a lot of racket with drums, horns, and large melon sized brass rattles and various other noise makers (no order, just a sauntering mob of color and noise). If anyone saw me trying to take a picture, they would stop right there and pose.
You can always tell the Sikh boys because they will have a black nylon stocking cap covering the little hair bun on the top of their heads. The men never cut their hair or their beards and they pull their hair and sometimes their beards back and twist them into the beautiful turbans that they wear. Sometimes the men wear the stocking caps also.
A decorated truck loaded with little Sikh boys had come to a stop a little ways away from me and some of the boys saw my camera. They jumped off of their truck and ran over to me begging, "Take picture of us lady, take picture of us."
There were many beautifully dressed ladies parading past then finally a decorated wagon with some priestly looking fellows kneeling behind an ornate trunk which held their holy book. Ahead of this float beautiful women swept the road with their little Indian brooms (which even I use everyday now). The broom consists of a couple of handfuls of dried reeds tied together at one end onto a stick about two feet long and one and one half inches in diameter.