Ponto de Vista

I know people who make the stars, but I hadn’t thought far enough to the people who make kandils/phanooses 🙂 This lady was on my way home after a walk and she was painstakingly putting papers on the frames and then decorating them with handmade roses – such works of art!
This is really my favorite time of year. Most building in Mumbai have lights and lanterns in their balconies – several even have color coordinated ones. Coming into the city from the airport, the government colonies look like multistoried fairy tale houses, each block uniformly sporting a different colored kandil: 21 houses with all yellow kandils, the next 21 with all orange, then 21 of red. It’s magical.

Which reminds me, we haven’t strung up our lights yet. How will Lakshmi know where to come if it’s all dark here? 🙂

Behind Ta Prom in Angkor Thom, as my fellow travelers meditated on the incredible roots of the trees that have taken over the ancient temple, this fellow came along and perched on me.
I waited for a long time for him to get moving so I could capture how dazzling his iridescent his tiny blue/black wings were – but he flew too fast and in quick bursts which made all the motion pictures totally blurry.
He flew off and came back to perch on my finger three times in total – and I have no idea what made my finger so attractive. But there he was. And I wasn’t complaining about being so favored! 🙂