Day 1326

This annual festival for the local Indo-Caribbean (largely Guyanese) Hindu population is named after the Ramayana, an ancient Indian epic poem that tells the story of Rama, the seventh avatar of Vishnu. Ramayana in the Park features concerts and dance performances, as well as readings and explanations of the epic poem Ramcharitmanas, a 16th-century telling of the story of Rama, by a number of different pandits, or scholars. (The English word "pundit" comes from "pandit".) The festival is held on a lot owned by the Arya Spiritual Center, a Hindu temple in Briarwood located in the old Church of the Four Leaf Clover.