Happy Diwali to all of you who celebrate this wonderful and bright festival of lights.

I am celebrating this festival in the land of vikings (Sweden!) and it is first time that I took it on myself to celebrate the festival.

All these years, my only resposibility(can I say that!!) was to get as much as crackers from the market and soak them in the sun to make them more loud!!

My Mom and Sis used to prepare everythin for the puja and we waited for my Dad to come home and perform the Laxmi Puja. 

I just waited to complete the entire process and then junt pounce on the firecrackers and blast my through... :) good old days...

This time though I dod not have any opportunity to burn crackers. Since, there is no Indian Community here on Göteborg, we could not go to any community place where they celebrate the festival.

But I did celebrate this one in a more different way. Using my recently acquired cooking prowess, I prepared Dahi wada and invited my colleagues over to my place.

It was a wonderful evening. I will post the pics as soon as I upload them.

Happy Dussehra to all the readers.

I have a tradition in my family to go to all my relatives’ homes and greet them on this festival no matter how far they are!! (but in the same city, of course :-P )

This time it was a double treat.. it was my cousin’s birthday as well..Happy Birthday bro..

I came here 4 months back but never had time to go to any temples. In fact I don’t know if there are any near by. But I knew there was iskcon temple in Gothenburg which is a part of Govindas Restaurant here.

I went there once with couple of my colleagues for having a bite…though we got a polite answer from them to try some other time as the restaurant was closing already. But I got to know that they are celebrating the Janmashtami Celebrations on Aug 24th the Sunday. Being away from home for past 4 months I did not get time to feel myself closer to God as there is no hint of GOD in our Apartment. I have two beautiful nude paintings of women in my bedroom. Now I can’t expect to have some religious portrait in a business apartment.

I just wanted to see how westerners celebrate our Indian festivals, but I was in a pleasant surprise. I celebrations were performed very austerity and I felt near to Godly peace there even midst a huge gathering.

There were bhajans started by the time we reached there (Were we expecting Indian Punctuality??) Then we were told the story of Lord Krsna’s birth in more modernised way :)

Meanwhile people who just came in were offering their presents to the birthday boy(Lord Krsna) it was kinda different when people celebrate even Gods birthday just normally as we do…it didn’t strike to me anytime in India.

After the story, there was the Abhishekam for the Lord and everyone was offered a chance to offer their obeisance. All the time during the Abhishekam, we recited the Ubiquitous Hare Krsna Hare Krsna Krsna Krsna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare and some more Sanskrit bhajans.

After the Abhishekam, We all sang and danced along singing some songs of Lord.

After that we had kind of a dinner which had some nice Indian dishes and Juices.

It was a different experience in a good way. I plan to go there as often as possible during my short stay in this beautiful city of Gothenburg.

pic is from Iskcon temple,Govindas restaurant, Gothenburg

Happy Vinayaka Chavathi (Ganesh Chaturthi) to one all.

We all pray to Lord Ganesha before starting anything NEW.

This festival marks the augment of all the remaining festivals of this year.

We celebrate this festival collectively in our uncle’s place.

pch.. i missed this one…two years back i was in my initial company training in Coimbatore

It is the festival of wisdom and prosperity. What I see every year is that we keep our books and textbooks beside the Lord and pray for the xamz.

We should not see the moon today in the night sky.