Understanding WMD's from previous Yugas..

It is always difficult to start explaining why the Muruga idol in the Livermore temple has a "vel" (spear) in his hand or how our favorite elephant headed god Ganesha got that head in the first place when your kids get to watch Dora or Olivia during dinner time instead of grandmas telling them tales which all center around Mount Kailash, Hastinapura and the families of the gods!

Would have been a lot easier to get them started off with Shiva and Parvathi and graduate to Ganesha and Karthikeya and on and on, but one needs study aids!

Now that Jr. is reading comics, half a suitcase on our return trip from India was allocated for books and comics. The books alone weighed close to 25 lbs! A big part of it was this series of bound volumes of Amar Chitra Katha's...

Jr. has already finished Gods and Godesses once and is on the second round trying to figure out who is married to whom. This is very similar to but slightly less complicated than the grandmas watching sun TV serial reruns to figure out how the dude who acted as the girls husband 6 months ago is suddenly playing the role of her brother!

Nevertheless, jr.is now aware of the trinity of gods (brahma, vishnu, shiva) and that shiva's family tree is very straight forward while anything and everything is an avatar of sorts for Vishnu and he has way too many wives. Every now and then when she gets a brainache trying to figure out why Krishna marries 1600 princesses who were all put in prison by Narakasura and how any man could marry 1600 women and be alive when the man in her house cannot handle one woman who bosses over him, she switches to Jataka Tales or Tinkle double digests.

The little one is more of a silent observer and is content with looking at the pictures or having her sister read to her. She is more curious about all the blood and gore depicted in these comics and how killing by the gods is mentioned so casually.

This year we did not celebrate Ganesha Chaturthi because of a death in the family, but we did read all about Ganesha in the ACK's!

Here is to Ganesha!

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Racco the Raccoon

For the longest time, since Jr. was a child, daddy would tell her scary stories of "Racco" the raccoon who lived in a den and would come out and take bad girls away.

According to daddy's legend, Racco ran a school for bad girls where he would bite them till they behaved.

Needless to say he was a man sized raccoon. The kids have never seen a live raccoon..

So today, imagine our surprise when we had a visitor in the backyard..

Now the kids don't need to be scared anymore. Mommy's wrath is scarier than any Racco these days. They also realized that Racco is just a cat like creature and this poor thing happened to be limping (one leg was almost burnt. They are now very sympathetic to all Racco's.

First Santa Claus resolved itself.

Now Racco is also resolved!

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