Pooram part 3

First, my sincere apologies for leaving you all on the edges of your seats like that. It's been a long day of driving. I was blogging from the van but had to take a break. Then when I might have commenced writing we started climbing up into the hills on switch backs with crazy drivers passing on the blind curves (ours included) and it just wasn't going to happen.
But back to the pooram. Let's pick up where two sets of 15 elephants and their entourage of musicians, flag men, yak tail guys and peacock feather fan wavers are going into battle.
One group removes one set of umbrellas and replaces them with a new set. The crowd goes wild. Team B counters by changing out their umbrellas for a different set. The crowd goes wild again. Then Team B goes first and tosses up a different pattern of umbrellas. Mayhem ensues until Team A tosses up their next set and the momentum shifts. Now imagine this goes on back and forth and forth and back for TWO HOURS!
It's like a tennis match but way noisier and you have to crane your neck or stand up or sit down or climb on your chair to see what is happening - even though it means precious little to you what color or pattern the next display of umbrellas reveals.
Yet, if you are lucky, as I was, you will have an enthusiastic young Indian chap standing on the next chair and he will have an infectious enthusiasm for not only the beauty and ahtleticism of the competition but also the strategy of the order of the umbrellas. He will tap you on the shoulder and declare, "oh look they've put up the white ones" as if those are the trump-cards of all of the parasols. Or he will exclaim, "oh, my, look! Look! Team B has balloon umbrellas! Magnificent! Those are the secret special ones that noone but the manufacturer knew about until this very minute!"
And you will find yourself trying to look simultaneously both left and right so as not to miss what comes next and especially eager to see what 'secret special' umbrellas Team A will pull out of their proverbial hat and when they will make this move.
Then when it is all done and the crowd disperses and the elephants head off you may find yourself doing math in your head and calculating 200 years of Thrissur poorams with even an average of 200 foreigners per year (which is surely a generous estimate) and you'll realize what a nearly-secret, truly special group you just joined.