Reamker Inauguration

This blog was supposed to be posted a while back. April 2010.

I found these notes off NyoNyum magazine (Free! Coupons. 45th issue Feb – March 10 – Cambodian Life Navigation in Japanese and English). Indian epic poem, Ramayana, morphed into Cambodian lit as Reamker.

“The former story praises Vishnu, while the local version contains Buddhist ideas. It’s about Prince Rama’s adventure, namely his trials in rescuing detained Princess Sita with great help from Hanuman, a monkey warrior, don’t you know? There are 16 volumes to the story in Pali and Sanskrit. Some scenes are especially famous and performed in traditional Khmer dancing or… “

inaugurated in statue form, atop a circular base that echoes the roundabout that marks the center of my little charming village.

^^ABOVE, 2 of my World Map painters in the crowd of smiles.

People are on TV, in my village! It’s moving on and becoming a town,I think. Not the small place it used to be.

The police here told me to step back, so the road was fully devoted to important people who sat on Persian carpets in the middle of the road. But all sorts of people were on the main road, trying to get a closer look.

When I arrived on the scene, 3 large tents were placed in front of the statue: one for the speakers (monks, I believe), one gave shade to about 200 students, and the other side with community leaders.
On the street were fuzzy, colorful carpets. None of that normal plastic mat stuff. This day was fancy! There was a roasted pig and a great many ways to fold leaves to make money trees and flowers.

The representative from the government of the Kingdom lit the candles around the flowers, fruit, roasted pig, and other things to wish the town well with its inauguration of the epic Indian story-based statue.

^^ABOVE, Jasmine gets thrown on the statue!

Our statue gets blessed with a brave soldier/police man who is asked to climb to the top of the statue without any ladder assistance, and to place a laurel of most intense perfume-d jasmine flowers on the arrow somewhere. It was scary watching, and afterwards I left, and didn’t take photos of the cutting on the ribbon; who knew it was similar to America’s ribbon cutting? I thought the wreath of flowers ending was appropriate way to see the memory end for statue blessing.

Weird thing I noticed about the statue was that the tale of Hanuman (? ) is a different kind of sand(?) stone. For structural stability purposes or hey, we went Hanuman to have a slightly sepia tale vs the grayscale theme..