....as they call it here, though it doesn't stop most folks from celebrating. Upon questioning, Tamils will claim their New Year is really April 14 and insist they don't observe English holiday, but everywhere the incomplete sentence Wish You a Happy New Year is plastered. Yet another excuse for a festival, ritual, or both.

Every day there is some new amazing thing to see; yesterday I stumbled downstairs for my 8am class to run into a young boy dressed up like a gypsy leading a costumed cow (painted horns, velvet dress and bells) down the busy city street. The tassled team appeared to have stepped from an A&E documentary about the gypsies.

The previous day, I was sitting in my fave vegetarian restaurant when a man walked in carrying what looked like a flaming melon (which later proved to be an Indian pumpkin - not orange but pale green - with a flame on top). He then deposited it in front of the dusty, faded shrine that presides from on high, usually behind the register, in every business establishment (for various gods, gurus or a combination) - then after a suitable moment's time, promptly removed it and smashed it against the sidewalk.

What was that? I asked one of the retinue of waiters - in truth, only one or 2 seem to be genuinely employed there, the rest a type of hanger-on somewhere between waiter and restaurant groupie. This for God, he said, nodding at the shrine. The bearer of the sacred melon disappeared as quickly as he had materialized....to be instantly replaced by a procession of barefooted, loinclothed men - each carrying what appeared to be his own weight in produce; bent double, dwarfed beneath mammoth sacks of onions, coconuts, and tomatoes. They trouped through the front door back to the kitchen beneath their burlap cornucopia. Then someone's cell phone rang. A bullock cart rattled past, tailed closely by a motorcycle. You really do live in several centuries simultaneously here.