Dusshera: Part II

I returned to a Ramlila fairground for the 9th day of the celebration--the day on which the Ravana effigy is ritually burned. Fascinating! I really have so much to say on what the experience of this final day was like, but since I won't be able to say it all, let me just impress this upon you--these festivities really should be better overseen by (a) crowd management people and (b) pyrotechnic experts. In other words, damn--effigy burning is dangerous!

But I get ahead of myself. Before any effigy burning was done I first needed to sit through the final scene in the Ramayana. This, of course, is the epic battle between Rama and his monkey brethren and Ravana and his minions. It was very exciting and, although a bit long--just the final final fight scene took about a forty-five minutes--the audience got really into things

I filmed it for you. I'm really hoping that this can upload with audio, because my commentary is priceless, if I don't say so myself. (What can I say, I just get very emotional whenever monkey fighters are involved).

Ok, so after the actual Ramayana was finished and before the effigies were lit on fire, something very strange happened. I can only really describe this as being forced to watch someone else's kid's crappy middle school dance recital. Basically, the stage was given over to various groups of kids who, all dressed to the nines, performed exactly the kind of dance routine you would expect from a group to regular (re: non-dancer) middle schooler, probably forced to do this by his/her parents. It was pretty painful.

But then, on to the effigy burning!!! However, there was something very strange going on with the set-up; I understand that normally there are three effigies burned--those of Ravana and his two evil side kicks. But, wait, there seemed to be three smaller effigies (still 10-12 feet high) set up in front of the big Ravana effigies...all dressed like terrorists. They seemed to be guarding a barbed wire fence, behind which the larger Ravana effigies stood. And wait, does that say "LOC" on the fence?!?!?!"

For the uninformed, "LOC" stands for "Line of Control" and it means the line separating Pakistan from India. So, basically, the organizers of this Ramlila had set up three effigies of Pakistani soldiers at the fake India-Pakistani border, positioning the evil demons squarely in Pakistan.  And then they filled the Pakistani soldier effigies with fire-crackers and exploded them, to the joyful glee of the crowd.

Basically, this was the most crazy nationalistic things I've ever seen.

But on to the main event, the burning of the Ravana effigies! As you can probably see from the photos, these things are HUGE--40 or 50 feet high. What you can't see in the below photos is how closely pressed the crowd was to these effigies. As I had entered the Ramlila with a VIP ticket (courtesy of a lovely and very hooked up friend) I was promptly shuffled by the event organizers to the front of the crowd and, about 2 minutes before the damn things were about to be lit up, realized that I was standing maybe 15 feet from an enormous paper-maiche statute filled with explosives--tightly hemmed in on three sides by the crowd.

Holy crap.

I panicked, and made a dash around the crowd. Because I have sharp elbows, a New Yorker's instinct for crowds, and was motivated by the primordial desperation of a woman who fears for her life I managed to get to a further and safer viewing point just before the fuses were lit. And thank goodness, because as any crowd-controller should know, as soon as stuff starts exploding on people a few things happen (a) loud scary noises (b) lots of burning ash (c) stampeding.

Actually, even from my safer viewing point, maybe 60 feet away it was still pretty scary. I'm not sure the below video truly captures the experience witnessing of a bunch of fireworks tearing through a 50 foot paper demon, but I can assure you that the sound alone is reminiscent of every WWII movie I've seen where the Allied forces storm the beach.

The good news is that, to my knowledge, no one was actually hurt during these explosions (at least at the Ramlila I attended--apparently every year there are a few, mainly stampede, casualties). But I think I've learned my lesson. Next Dusshera, I get a seat at the back.