Happy Diwali, DU!

[Recursion]

(Diwali per se is Sunday, but today is Dhanteras, which marks the first day of the festival.)

Also, it's weird to see swastikas painted everywhere, but that's just how they roll. Wish me luck avoiding getting struck by bottle rockets!

[petronius]

1. Wonderful picture! Is that middle lamp a crab shell?

Also, good luck with the whole bottle rocket thing...

[Recursion]

2. I think it's a... ummm... *ahem*

You see, when a man and a woman love each other very much... birds and bees... and... umm..

It's a festival for a fertility goddess, so if that helps...

[petronius]

3. In that case, I'm a little worried about what that boy is

using for a sparkler!

[KamaAina]

4. The swastikas face the opposite direction from the infamous Nazi ones

much the way the Satanic cross is upside down.

[Recursion]

5. Good point

My Sanskrit teacher mentioned that but said it won't be time for that until Unit 8, which is 3 weeks away.

[KamaAina]

6. Your Sanskrit teacher?!

[Recursion]

7. I'm taking Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, and Telugu

Yeah. So. If I seem out of sorts... I can't imagine why...

[Chan790]

8. My new roommate is from India (Delhi) and handed me a Sanskit textbook.

All I have to say is you're a better man than me...it made Latin and Farsi look easy. Latin and Farsi are not easy to learn.

It's a 160 page book and the forward suggests that's 2-3 years of language lessons.

[Recursion]

9. I took a semester back in college, plus I'm constantly surrounded by the alphabets

And I did Latin and Greek in college too so I'm pretty familiar with Indo-European classical forms (they're surprisingly similar in some ways).

I'd rate Sanskrit about like Greek; slightly harder than Latin but easier if you're around its descendants; that's why Latin is so easy in Europe.