Word: conches
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...Brothers!" Bulganin, tiring in the fast pace of the month-long good-will tour, was happy to play straight man for his buddy: "Oh, that Khrushchev! What a man! What will he do next?" Not Alone. At Bareilly, in Uttar Pradesh, 51 girls dressed in saffron robes and blowing conch shells, sprinkled bushels of rose petals on the travelers, after Soviet secret police first ran hands through the baskets to be sure that only petals were in them. "Fifty-one is the most auspicious number, according to the stars," explained Uttar Pradesh's chief minister, who also happens...
...Lucknow, capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh, 1,000 husbands and wives gathered in a tent colony on the banks of the sacred Gomati. Fifty-one saffron-robed priests lit a sacrificial fire in their midst, blew conch shells and chanted mantras before a large statue of Gauri, wife of the Lord Shiva, god of creation and destruction. Then, in solemn silence, the husbands and wives bathed in the river and sat down in pairs, face to face. Basing their action on Lord Krishna's scriptures, the wives washed their husbands' feet and drank a few drops...
...them with the doggy devotion of submarine St. Bernards, begging with śoulful looks for a handout. The color throughout is poetic and covers an amazing range. It is a pity that the commentary is bad Swinburne, and the musical score banal, like woozy echoes of Tchaikovsky in a conch...
Their art work, much of which was found in excellent condition, was skillfully and tastefully made. Their figurines look as if they had been modeled by a Copper Age Picasso. They cut conch shells (traded from Egypt) into delicate lacework. Turquoise from Sinai they made into necklaces and amulets...
Just before sunrise, a great procession, led by naked, ash-smeared holy men and gold-caparisoned elephants, trod solemnly toward the winter stream in a clamor of conch shells and cymbals. With ritual reverence, the first pilgrims rubbed the water into their skin and their eyes, then drank it. They believed from their scripture legends that they might thereby speed to Nirvana and be spared the pain of countless rebirths in man's universe...