Raksha Bandhan at Retirement Center
Posted by seattle on August 13, 2009
By Arun Palaniappan
On the first Sunday after the Full Moon on the month of August, which translated to August 8th, we held the Hindu festival Raksha Bandan in Balagokulam. Raksha Bandan was supposed to be on August 5th, but since that was a Wednesday, a workday, we celebrated it on Sunday. We had our usual activities at the usual time up until the boudhik. We talked about Raksha Bandan and its qualities for 20 minutes, and then called the Balas over. After a few minutes of instructions, we got the rakhis and actually started tying them. We tied them to the people sitting next to us. At 12:00, Balagokulam ended and everyone left, but not for long.
At 1:30, we met up again at the Crossroads Retirement Center. We showed the elders the meaning of Raksha Bandan. We started with a roll call. Next, Hemant, Aadithya, and Athulya preformed a skit about the traditional way to tie a rakhi. The elders liked to see all of us dressed up in traditional Indian way. After that, all the kids got rakhis to tie to the elders. We also passed out Ice Cream and cookies. To end the meeting, Snehalji sung a song on Raksha Bandan which relaxed everyone. And with that, the meeting ended, and we got to eat. I loved the Party Vanilla ice cream. At around 2:45, we all dispersed. It was really nice to see that many of the elders showed up in between their busy schedule (I read the schedule posted near the door.)
The program was very good. Some elders asked for more events like this one. And that is a pretty good idea. Instead of keeping Hinduism a secret, by staying in the shaka, we should show it to the world.
Link for the photos.