Durga Puja

This post is about a month overdue, but I wanted to tell you guys about my Durga Puja experience. October is basically a month filled with Hindi festivals in India (which explains why I got two long weekends off from work in a three week span). I've already described my experience with the Dusshera festival in this blog (see below for tales of outdoor theater, exploding effigies, rampant nationalism, etc) but what I neglected to mention was that falling smack dab in the middle of the Dusshera festival which runs for 10 days is the Durga Puja festival.

I actually still haven't figured out if the Dusshera festival is in some way related to the Durga Puja festival since the two seem to basically celebrate the same thing--the triumph of good over evil--or if these are two totally separate events, each being celebrated by different sects of Hindus. (I've actually asked this question to a number of Hindu friends, but there seems to be no consistent answer.)

Basically, Durga Puja celebrates the victory of the 8-armed goddess Durga over an evil buffalo demon. It's seems to be celebrated by large fairgrounds filled with people eating chanting and dancing around an effigy of the Goddess. Also, from what I saw, there seems to be much ritual blessing going on--though that is pretty common all over India (and not just during a festival).

So, on the date of Durga Puja off I went with a friend to a nearby fairground. Here's the thing, in India, and especially in Delhi, there are just SO MANY PEOPLE everywhere that events get pretty big, pretty quickly. Below, for example, is one view of the fairground we attended (after standing on line for 40 minutes just to get in the front gate); that big structure is housing the effigy of the Goddess Durga.

The inside was packed by of chanting people trying to dance around the effigy and it was hot and sweaty and I couldn't get close enough to even see the effigy and it was not a very pleasant experience. So, my friend and I left the large tent, ate some delicious kulfi (Indian ice cream).

Other than see the effigy and eat there really wasn't much else to do on the fairgrounds, so we decided to leave and wander around the area, which was dotted by smaller celebrations.

And that's when we stumbled upon this:

Off of the main road we came across a small tent filled with people, smoke and incense. In fact, the air was so heavy with smoke that it was difficult for me to stay inside even for a few minutes. But for a few minutes I took shallow breaths and enjoyed the spectacle laid out before me.

An old priest, sitting before a small but richly decorated effigy of the goddess was giving his blessing to all comers. From my vantage point it seemed that the blessing consisted of a few words of prayer, marking the supplicant's forehead with red dye and rice, and eating some for the food offered by the priest. My friend urged me to step forward and be blessed, but I declined since as an agnostic-leaning-towards-atheism it can make me feel a little uncomfortable to play with other people's religious practices. (Which isn't to say I mind being blessed, of course, if someone wants to bless me of his or her own accord I'm all for it. I just think that it's a bit disingenuous for me to put myself forward as a supplicant.) I did however get a magnificent picture of my friend during her moment of blessing.

You could like, feel the spiritualism dripping from the walls of that tent. But after a few minutes I couldn't take the smoke anymore so we left and resumed our wandering, coming across many several other smaller effigies of the goddess and attendant dancing and/or blessing ceremonies. The whole area had a truly celebratory and spiritual vibe about it. Though, when it comes down to it I think I have to say that I preferred the exploding effigy celebrations more.

And you thought the CIA was bad

Last Thursday afternoon I was cranky and beginning to get a bit frantic--my boss had been MIA all day despite the fact that we'd promised to get a time-sensitive affidavit out the door for a South African NGO who was filing a class action suit against a consortium of mining companies. The South African NGO had already chased me twice that day to ask for the missing affidavit, so as you can imagine I was chomping at the bit once my boss entered the office around 5pm.

He was in a good, celebratory mood. "We had a good, big victory in court today," he said. "The judge made an important interim decision in our favor."

I didn't care. I was like, "That's great, Mr. Bossypants, but we need to focus and get this affidavit out the door now." I then grumpily sat in his office for the next hour while he rotated between going through the affidavit with me and accepting phone call congratulations. "Focus, Bossypants! Focus!"

Well, when I opened the paper on Saturday morning, I felt a bit ashamed of myself. My boss's courtroom victory had made front page news. And not just in my morning paper--every paper I've looked at in the past few days has been talking about it. Of course, as I've been reading the story I'm beginning to understand what a HUGE deal this is.

Basically, my boss just took down the head of India's central bureau of intelligence (CBI). (This is like India's FBI.)

It's like this, see. My boss has been appointed the Special Public Prosecutor by the Supreme Court on a nationwide corruption case called the 2G scam case. To make a long story, very very short (though you can read more about the case here if you're interested), companies bidding for the right to internet providers in various states bribed high ranking government officials to ensure their tender won the bidding process. This is a BIG deal; the amounts in question are about USD $490 million and, according to Time magazine, the scam was listed as the second biggest abuse of power, just after the Watergate scandal. 

 Now, as a side story, once the corruption of these officials came to light a number of them went to go see the head of the CBI who was overseeing the investigation against him. When asked if he had met with the allegedly corrupted officials, Mr. Head of the CBI denied it and produced his office's visitor's log to prove none of the officials had come out.

Course, it turns out Mr. Head of CBI kept two visitor's logs--an official one and an unofficial one--and only produced the official one to show that he hadn't been meeting with the allegedly corrupt officials whose improprieties he was investigating. However, the unofficial log, which eventually came to light, shows that the allegedly corrupt officials and Mr. Head of CBI were BFFs.

So, yeah, basically the Mr. Head of CBI is sketchy as hell and almost certainly totally corrupt. (I mean, just look at his picture--doesn't he just look slimy?) The victory in court consisted of my boss accusing him of interfering with the investigation into the corruption, and the Supreme Court agreeing and removing him from the head of the investigation. If you ask me, it sounds like this CBI dude should also be investigated for being corrupt as hell, but since he's led a "storied" career and is set to retire next week, apparently the Supreme Court will let this one slide.

Indian, man. Never a dull moment!

On hiatus

Dear readers,

I know that I've been quite naughty this week in not posting regularly; please forgive me as I've been on vacation. Actually, I'm heading off to another two week vacation shortly, and am so unlikely to resume posting until the middle of November. So please, check back in then!

Yours,
Kate

More pictures of street foods and street food markets

Because I know there are more than a few food porn fetishists in my readership...  

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.

Dusshera, part I

 

October is THE month for Hindu festivals, so I've been very busy trying to attend them all! Here's one I've learned so far about Hindu festivals--they involved idol-worshiping, amazing food, crowds and crowds of people, bright lights and larger than life theatrics. All in all, a pretty good time.

First up is the festival of Dusshera, which is a festival revolving around the Ramayana, an ancient Hindu epic that is to India (and much of the Eastern world) what the Iliad and the Odyssey is to the West. Or, more so, actually, because the West still doesn't worship the Olympian gods while as worshiping of the gods and heros of the Ramayana is still very alive in India. The Ramayana consists of 24,000 versus and is hella long. But this is the plot, as I understand it in a nutshell.

Rama is human incarnate of some god, and one of many sons of a king. His wicked stepmother forces his father to banish him for 14 years so that her son can become king instead. Rama's pious wife and devoted brother go into exile with Rama. While in exile, the sister of demon tries to seduce the brothers but fails. She gets pissed off by the rejection and tries to kill Rama's wife, but is stopped by Rama's brother who cuts off her nose. Her demon brother, Ravana, is pretty ticked off that Rama's brother cut off his sister's nose, so he kidnaps Rama's wife and takes her to his evil kingdom (Sri Lanka). Rama hangs out with a monkey god, who agrees to help him get his wife back. Rama, his bro, and monkey god dude all go wage war on Ravana. They win after Rama kills Ravana with a burning arrow.

So, basically what's being celebrated on Dusshera is the life of Rama, and his triumph over Ravana--symbolically the triumph of good over evil. This is celebrated by a 9 day performance of the Ramayana called the Ramalila, culminating on the last day by the burning of an effigy of Ravana (and his evil side-kicks). Basically, it's a big ole party with lots of food and a carnival-like atmosphere.

So, a few weekends ago I went to check out the festivities...wow!

On the first day of the festival, I went to see the artisans making the actual effigies of Ravana, which will later be burned. These things are huge! It's not like they can be kept in a warehouse somewhere so what tends to happen is that the artisans congregate in one area of the city where they make the bodies and heads of the Ravanas (to be joined later) out of paper-maiche, paint them, and leave them out on the streets to dry (and to be admired by passersby). Walking around all of these giant demon heads and disembodied torsos was a truly weird, but kind of magical experience.

After viewing the effigies, I headed to the north of the cities where one of the larger Ramalilas was being performed. What is a Ramalila like? Well, it's a HUGE outdoor theater where the play is performed in traditional theatrical style, combined with a fairground and basically the best food court ever to grace a carnival.

 

[This was the scene where Rama's wicked stepmother convinces Rama's dad to banish him]

[A huge fairground, just packed with people]

[Ok, this stuff that the guys are spinning is actually long strands of ice cream....]

[...which is served to you covered in pomegranate seeds and nut spices. Delicious!]

[This is a mango, frozen and stuffed with ice cream (kulfi), the sliced for easy dining enjoyment.]

[Yep, I was pretty happy with all of the food offerings!]

So, that was my first experience with Dusshera--but as the festival is 9 days long I obviously needed to return on the 9th day, for the effigy burning....

It takes a village

Ok, here's what's going on in the above photo. Three young women got on my train and spotted a very cute baby. They then proceeded to relieve the tired-looking mother of said baby for an impromptu photo shoot with adorable accessory. (Adorable accessory himself was less than impressed).

Then, each of the young women took turns walking the adorable baby up and down the train car, with all riders smiling them on. (At one point, when the baby almost fell over, there was an audible gasp from the train car). They then returned baby to its rightful owner.

I post about this event not because it is hilarious--which it is--but because this is actually not an uncommon occurrence in Delhi's "Women only" train cars. In fact I would say that a good 25% of the trips I've been on are characterized by the temporary theft of someone or another's baby.

I guess it takes a village....