Arjun's Travels: My Cousins' Janeo (Becoming a Brahmin) Ceremony

We are in the village Affour, with my family, and village people. Here is a picture with my two cousins from the U.S. who are getting "Janeo-d." A Janeo is a yellow string that you put on top of one of your shoulders and under the opposite arm. It's connected in a loop. It means that you're a Brahmin male. I had my Janeo ceremony last year in Delhi. In the background of this picture, you'll see lights. They are for the wedding that will happen after the Janeo for my uncle Bhutti Cha-cha.

'Twas the night before the Janeo, and here I am with some of the village kids that were there.

Here is the pre-ceremony for the Janeo. This is called a puja where all the food you see goes to the gods. The Brahmin priest is there to chant all of the mantras in Sanskrit. There's a banana leaf on a stick structure in the middle, with a saffron colored cloth on top.

This picture shows my big cousin Bara Babu explaining to Shekhar, Yogi and myself what was going on in the puja.

This is all sugar, except that it's in 3 forms. There's powder sugar, tiny popcorn ball type of sugar, and crystallized sugar.

In this basket, there are cucumbers and bananas - tiny village bananas.

We were trying to get the flies off of the baskets of food.

This is Victormama with groom to be, Bhutti Cha-cha, my uncle.

Now the puja begins with the 3 boys who will become Brahmins tomorrow. My two U.S. cousins and my Indian cousin-brother, Aditya.

This is a picture of the incense holder, and it's pretty small.

Here are three boys, and you see that their hands are cupped to hold rice and some leaves and a ten rupee bill.

The 3 pots represent the three boys who are having their Janeo. I like the way they are painted.

A pile of cow poo-pie...

...now getting burned by the priest

Today Shekhar, Yogi and Aditya will each be wearing one of these cloths with their Janeo begging for money (which I didn't get a picture of, sorry) and the cloths are full of flies