These were my fingers on Sunday evening after attending the Phagwah festivities at the Aranjuez Savannah. They're almost back to their normal colour now, except for the cuticles. My hair, on the other hand, still has a magenta cast (this photo explains why). Looking at my head yesterday, a former beauty queen (clearly a non-Hindu like me) told me, "I see you had a good time at Divali."
It's hard to blame folks in this country for getting their festivals mixed up, since we celebrate so many here. On March 30, Trinidad and Tobago observes Shouter Baptist Liberation Day, which commemorates the 1951 repeal of the 1917 Shouter Prohibition Ordinance that made practising the Shouter or Spiritual Baptist faith illegal. Then on May 30 it's Indian Arrival Day, which commemorates the arrival in Trinidad of the first indentured labourers from India in 1945. Both of these are public holidays, which is one of the many benefits of living in a multi-ethnic society, but this never really means that much to a self-employed deadline-chaser like me -- though at least clients (locally-based ones, at least) don't call, nor do the people trying to reach the junior secondary school whose telephone number shares all but one digit with ours. To tell the truth, the public holiday I'd really appreciate is Wrong Number Day -- in fact, it doesn't even have to be public!
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