Week 9: Reading Diary "Through the Fire"

Fire:  

• It seems to start off in a girls room and her nurse is reading her a story 
• While she reads the story she comes up with fancy names for herself "off-spring of vengeance, the unexpected one." 
• What is the significance of the "fire ceremony"? (they pray from sun up to sundown and a there are over 100 priests that perform at the ceremony, they can only eat one meal each evening consisting of rice that was soaked in milk.) 
• Yaja and Upayaja are brothers who lived on the banks of ganga 
• King Drupad would thought that he was too good for the meal and would only drink water that was carried up from ganga. 
• He felt like that Gods would be obliged to answer any of his prayers 
• Why did King Drupad want revenge so badly?  
• What is the significance of rice and milk? 
• Dhristadyumna: (was the son of Drupada and brother of Draupadi and Shikhandi in the epic Mahabharata. He was the commander of the Pandava army during the Kurukshetra War.) Also means "destroyer of enemies" 
• Draupadi: (she is the "fire born" daughter of Drupada, King of Panchala and also became the common wife of the five Pandavas.) Also means "daughter of Drupad". 
• Were girls treated differently than boys in the palace? 

Draupadi: "fire born"

Blue: 

• Refers to herself as dark-skin because she did not have an almond hue 
• What I find interesting is that she spent hours in skin-whitening ungeunts, scrubbed with different exfoliants.  
• Found a friend in Krishna who was the same complexion as her. (Krishna is one of the most widely revered and most popular of all Hindu deities). 
•  Krishna was quite the ladies man and had multiple wives. 
• Krishna was born in a dungeon where his uncle Kamsa imprisoned his parents with the intentions of killing him at birth. 
• Refer to page 34 
• Meaning of Krishna: "The dark one" or "ones whose attraction cannot be resisted". 
• What is the significance of the term "blue" for skin color? 
• "A problem becomes a problem, only if you believe it so"