Another ceremony

Step daughter #3 today had her degree award ceremony, well deserved. And her supervisor told us that he wants and is accepting her on to the MSc course starting in September. Well done SD#3!

See family site for photo.

Degree ceremony

Husband and I took today off to attend the OU degree ceremony at Milton Keynes for my MRes. We were going to nip out of the office at lunch time for a few hours, but thought step daughter #3 was going to come with us, so we would leave home later, get an official group photo and have a nice lunch before the ceremony. However, SD#3 must have missed out a syllable (she's been practising her glottal stops) when she told us that she wasn't coming so we didn't realise until 11 o'clock this morning.

Nevertheless, we got an official photo and had a nice lunch beforehand. We found our seats, watched the great and the goods process on to the stage, listened to eulogies on those who were receiving honorary doctorates and applauded the graduates. The graduates were presented to Will Swann, director of students, the doctorates came first then the masters then those who'd received degrees. There were two differences from when I received my first degree:

1. Then there were postgraduate degrees, and BAs, but now there are doctorates, masters, and all sorts of types of named degrees: BAs, BSc, diplomas, certificates and even foundation degrees. That reflects a change and huge expansion in what the OU offers, from around 40 courses in the seventies to over 400 now.
   
2. Then I knew only the people I'd come with - my neighbour and all his family - and we'd all come in his green single decker bus. Now I recognised some of the people on the stage because now I've been an associate lecturer for nearly twenty years, and because as a full time student I get to know faces on the campus. And it was nice after to raise champagne together with someone who works in our building.
   

I think I was prouder of my first degree because it took so much effort and a change in self-belief to get it. Here are some photos of husband who believed in me and supported me through it, and my proud parents when I went to get my BA.

Navjote - Adrian's report

We started with even more difficulty than yesterday before K with his elder son Z (whose Navjote was to take place that evening) came to take us to the hall where there was to be another communal lunch.

I was able to spend time watching the kites - coming to the idea that they occupied the ecological niche that seagulls do in England - when a couple of vultures appeared and took up residence in the trees surrounding the property. Dhun told me they were white backed vultures (they had large white patches on the under wings) and that vultures were under threat. The use of Diclofenac in the cattle herds was the culprit (the eggs did not hatch?). This in turn affected the Parsis who leave their dead on towers for the vultures to reduce to bones. Green parrots and a type of starling (?) with a yellow beak and white/yellow flashes on the edge of its wings appeared, and in the evening there were cormorants and a heron in flight.


We returned early in the evening so that we could see the public part of the ceremony (the private part involved something to do with the purified/concentrated urine of a cow of spotless white coat, and a ceremonial cleansing bath).


The public ceremony took place on a stage backed with a semi-circular structure draped with cloth representing the sun's rays, decorated with flowers and a large Z.




An urn was burning a fire lit from the perpetual fire maintained in the holy temple since Parsis came to India. Four white garbed and hatted priests, looking more like surgeons ready to perform an operation, led him onto the stage to kneel on a white cloth. Prayers, etc, were said, petals scattered and finally a long white thread was unravelled and tied around Z's waist. This took about twenty minutes and public interest diminished as the ceremony was inaudible, and probably in Sanskrit so would have been unintelligible to most anyway.

An orgy of photo-opportunities then ensued before the band (with leader/drummer and guitarist from the family) started to perform, at much the same time as dinner service started. More Parsi food served on banana leaf plates, with a fish wrapped in a chutney paste and steamed as a new (to us) offering.

The band were still going, but were offering music to dance to, so we joined the group to shake our limbs about, during which a makeshift turban was wrapped around my head (see embarrassing photos)


We were told, during the evening, how the Parsis who fled persia (though there are still some there) came to part of India where the king said his country was too full to take any more people and illustrated his point by showing a full bowl of milk. The Parsi leader sprinkled sugar into the milk without it spilling to prove that they could sweeten life, and would not overcrowd the country, in the same way as the sweetened milk was still within the bowl. They were then permitted to stay, as long as they married only within their community and adopted local customs (such as the wearing of saris by the women).

The Navjote

It's around 10.30 pm, and we've just got back from the Navjote - around 400 people at the Zorastian Hall.

We went in time for the ceremony, though we must have been the first non-Parsees to arrive. If you aren't a Parsi, then you can't go into the temple, but after the ceremony, they come out and the new Navjote (nav means new) repeats the prayers as the priest says them.

He arrived in a procession with his very proud parents and grandparents, garlanded in flowers, newly bathed as the ceremony requires, wrapped in red to be dressed in new garments.

We watched as the priest ran the thread round his waist several times. In future he will have to do this every time he washes. I thought the thread was of 27 threads, but Mr Gai tells me that it is 72 and the number represents 72 scriptures.

We had a lot of photo taking, and video taking, then a meal - a Parsi fish dish for the non-vegetarians.

Then there was music, with Khaizad's uncle Vispee on the drums and his cousin, Harmony singing. Watch out for the recordings I made - I'll put them on our home site. People started to dance, Khaizad with exhuberance and so I tried to photo him, but found myself on the patio dancing too. Next I looked up to find husband, not only dancing, but dancing with a red shawl wrapped round his head like a turban. Everyone was high with happiness, enthusiam and gaiety. Toddlers, teenagers, parents and grandparents danced.

Finally, the music ended, and people drifted off. Khaized put us in a rickshaw to make our own way back to the hotel.