Leaving India and moving on to Burma....or is it Myanmar????

Well, my two months in India has come to an end.  I slacked off a bit in the last two months and wrote about half as many posts as usual, which is why I stayed in India double time. I hope to be back on target  in September!!!

It was fun learning more about India. I certainly spent a lot of time learning about food. I probably cooked Indian food six or seven times and visited a few Indian grocery stores. I looooooove Indian food, and Indian leftovers are even better with age:) I was blown away by not only how many spices I used in the food, but by the quantity of those spices...tablespoons sometimes!!!!  I will definitely keep cooking Indian food and thanks to sweet Manjula for all the great recipes!

I listened to some Indian music off and on during the month - mostly off "The Darjeeling Limited" soundtrack, which first introduced me to my favorite Indian soundtrack duo - Shankar Jaikishan. If you haven't seen it yet, check out my post with a clip from one of their movies that features a song of theirs and some groovy underwater scenes.

I started reading a couple books by Indian authors and I'm sad to say I have as of yet not finished either, but I will!  I'm reading "A River Sutra" by Gita Mehta, which is the story of a retired Indian bureaucrat  who  retires along the banks of a holy river and encounters varied passersby who tell him the stories of their lives. I also am reading "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy, which tells the story of two fraternal twins growing up in Southern India in the late 60s and shifts to them being reunited in the 1990s. The book touches on the impact of communism and the caste system, weaving these themes through the stories of the well crafted characters that enter into the twins lives.

Altogether, I enjoyed my time exploring India in the last two months, and especially eating a ridiculous amount of Indian food.

For my next month, I'm not traveling to far afield from India. Due to my monthly blog dinners, cousin has requested Myanmar as my next country - no good Burmese restaurants here in San Diego, so it's time to take our love of Burmese food into our own hands!!!

I've gotta be honest - the first time I can remember hearing about the country of Myanmar was because of the show Seinfeld! Here's a clip to refresh your memories.....



Hahaha! Man, I love Peterman. But, why the name switch?????   To find out, check back in with my blog in a few days - my first post will look at the name change and a bit of the history of the region.

The dying "art" of snake charming - a good thing?????

I recently saw an article about how the iconic folk art of snake charming is dying away in India, partially as a result to animal-rights activists that feel the tradition is based on cruelty.  It has become increasingly difficult to locate snake charmers, often old men with loosely wrapped turbans, sitting cross legged on the ground in front of flat baskets.  However, during Nag Panchami, a yearly festival in honor of the king cobra, additional snake charmers tend to come out of the woodwork to celebrate. Lord Shiva, the blue-skinned Hindu god I mentioned in regards to a painting in an earlier post, is often portrayed with a king cobra around his neck, hence the festival. 

A snake charmer in a New Delhi market charms a snake during Nag Panchami,
a yearly festival in honor of the king cobra. 

Snake charming is NOT what I expected. I always thought something about the music entranced the snake, but actually, snakes don't have ears and cannot hear the music. Instead, the snakes see the gourd flutes used by the charmers and interpret them as menacing, and are drawn to the swaying motion.  Some charmers break off the snake's fangs or sew their mouths shut to keep hem from biting, which often results in the snake being unable to eat and starving to death, although some charmers adamantly defend their work saying they merely tame the animals through training.

In 1972, the Indian government made it illegal for people to keep snakes, however, until recently the law was not enforced much.   The government has started to implant identification chips under the skin of some snakes that were already in captivity to be able to monitor charmers to make sure they are not capturing new snakes.

A representative from the animal rescue group "Wildlife SOS" holding a rat snake.

Some snake rescue groups have developed to attempt to lure some charmers to new occupations like removing venomous snakes from urban areas and returning them to the wild.  This has had some appeal to charmers as much of their traditional audience has been lured away in recent years by more modern entertainment.