Post Tagged with "Hinduism"

Galungan celebrations with a Balinese family

“Three more day until biggest Balinese holiday” he says, mouth wide, grinning ear to ear. Scooters buzz by us in the dozens, each laden with food, flowers, forty foot long bamboo rods, or sometimes, entire families of five. As I glance to my left I see a man in his teens driving a scooter, precariously balancing a long perfectly formed bamboo rod on his shoulder, which has been cut and curved “just so” for the traditional penjor that the family compound will proudly display.

“Two more days!” she remarks, giddily. “Today, I wake up at 4:30 to begin the lawar. This morning…” she says, then pauses, raises her right hand to her neck and slides her finger across it “This morning, we cut pig”.

Penjor

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Holi Colours all over India

Last week was the Hindu festival of Holi. Holi celebrates the coming of spring and is also called the festival of colours.

Hindus celebrate Holi by throwing coloured powder and water over each other – looks like a lot of fun!

Image credit: REUTERS/Amit Dave.

This is just one of a set of fantastic photos of the celebrations from different cities around India published by The Boston Globe. Go here to look at the rest of the photos.

Multicultural online training

Multicultural.co.uk is a website written for UK businesses, to help them work better with multicultural employees and customers. However if you’re just interested in learning more about how people of different cultures and religions think and behave, you will also find some useful information here.

In particular, you can follow short online courses to learn about the major faiths (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism) and country-specific courses on China, Russia and India. At the end of each course there is a downloadable pdf guide.

The country courses contain many cultural tips such as:

• Chinese people may find it difficult to say ‘no’ even if they mean it. It’s unlikely you’ll ever hear a Chinese person saying something like ‘speak your mind’
• Indian names often do not follow the same pattern as western names. Some Indians use their occupation, caste or even ancestral village as a sort of surname
• Russians prefer to eat a hot and substantial meal at lunchtime

An interesting read if you want to learn more about any of these cultures or religions, and will also come in useful for anyone planning to visit or do business in Russia, India or China.