Navarathri Golus - 2010

This year's nine day celebration went by real fast. There was a three day time lapse with heavy pain killers that made it look like a six day festival.

The previous years golu collections are in this link. I know a lot of folks look for how their golus have evolved over time using the blog posts. Thank you all for allowing me to chronicle the fantastic doll displays.

The spirit of this festival is not in the doll displays. It is watching your kids have fun. Go to every one of their friends houses, play, eat sundal, dress up, sing, dance, collect goody bags and just enjoy being a kid!

A few photographs that capture this essence

The elaborate jewelry that kids wear with great love..

The joy of comparing goody bags..

or the joy of making photography really challenging for daddy (had to chop grandma's face because she was not amused by the kids making the photo session difficult!)

Now for this years golus. The HDR ones are obvious (most shots are a composite of 3 images std , +2 eV, -2 eV)and you can see the difference it makes.

This year was fun. Next year as the golus morph in shape, size and color... will have a different way to capture the displays.. maybe go B&W to create that 1980's nostalgia? Go take close up of dolls in a set instead of the entire display?

Your ideas are always welcome!

Note to self: Just like we do an oil change or scheduled maintenance on the van two weeks before any long weekend for an anticipated road trip, always get your dental checkup two weeks before navrathri! It is a bad idea for Sundar to be left out in Sundal season..

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The Chair

The dreaded chair!

Had to sit on it for almost two hours last weekend.

It was not the chair or the usual nonsense associated with it that bothered me.

Have sat on it many times before.. Been there, done that!

We are talking about the Dentist visit here, in case you have not caught on..

This time, they forgot to turn on the water to the drill thingy. Poor me is getting this burning smell from the one nose that is still not numb from the injection (last time it was novocaine, this time the needle said "octocaine".. must be one number lower grade than novocaine!). In spite of the caine downgrade, the mouth did not feel the burn.. The doc figured it out pretty quickly.. called the assistant and said "I think something is wrong.. This thing got extremely hot.. is the water on?" This when the patients eyes are a few inches away from a smoking drill bit that has just burnt some flesh!

They found the water switch, turned it back on and proceeded as though nothing happened. My pain is still there though!

Never listen to a dentist when they say:

"Deep cleaning should be good!"

what they mean is that

"Deep cleaning (your wallet) should be good (for me)!"

Now that all the cleaning has been done, the verdict?

"your wisdom tooth is impacted. We have cleaned everything around it, filled cavities on nearby teeth (which did not hurt me in any way) but still the pain is not going away. So we are refering you to a specialist to get it extracted. It might be a surgery because most of the tooth is in the bone!"

This after the dentist goes "you know it is purely amazing that you have such a big cavity and no symptoms. The more decay I remove from this, the more I see.. this is like Pandora's box!".

I was thinking "Lady, If pandora had the X-ray machine that you used last week to capture my teeth in all its gory detail, she would have never opened the box!".. but because there were a few plastic and metal wedges between my teeth, and a drill a few centimeters above my face, I kept that thought to myself!

Thank you Dentrica!!!! (Dentist in America)

I am soooo looking forward to my next India trip to meet my good old dentist! My faith in the healthcare system has now been downgraded to "Orange". Oh wait, it has always been Orange, like the Security level in the San Jose Airport.. Let me downgrade it to "Red" for a change.

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