{"id":12168,"date":"2013-08-17T21:43:30","date_gmt":"2013-08-17T20:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12168"},"modified":"2013-08-18T11:14:30","modified_gmt":"2013-08-18T10:14:30","slug":"an-indian-evening-of-rasksha-bahnam-and-birthday-celebration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=12168","title":{"rendered":"An Indian evening of Raksha Bandhan and birthday celebration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This evening, Vee and I were delighted to spend time with our lovely Indian neighbours Anil &amp; Bharti (grandparents), Manish &amp; Krishna (parents), and Deepa (16) &amp; Anand (12).<\/p>\n<p>It was mainly a celebration of Deepa&#8217;s 16th birthday (which is actually on Wednesday), but it was also an occasion to mark the Indian festival of Raksha Bandhan (which is also on Wednesday). Outside of Manish&#8217;s three staff, who are from various parts of the former USSR, we were the only non-Indians there among a vibrant gathering of around 60 and we felt very privileged to share in this cultural celebration.<\/p>\n<p>In the West, we have Father&#8217;s Day and Mother&#8217;s Day but we have no equivalent to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Raksha_Bandhan\">Raksha Bandhan<\/a>\u00a0which marks the relationship of brother and sister. The sister ties a\u00a0<i>rakhi. a\u00a0<\/i>sacred coloured thread, on her brother&#8217;s wrist, while the brother offers money (not exactly a fair exchange). We ate delicious Indian food and Vee was given a lovely shawl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This evening, Vee and I were delighted to spend time with our lovely Indian neighbours Anil &amp; Bharti (grandparents), Manish &amp; Krishna (parents), and Deepa (16) &amp; Anand (12). It was mainly a celebration of Deepa&#8217;s 16th birthday (which is actually on Wednesday), but it was also an occasion to mark the Indian festival of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12168"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12180,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12168\/revisions\/12180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}