Arriving in India felt like plunging in to sauna.
By the time I had gone through customs, I felt as if I was dripping puddles of sweat. All of a sudden, wearing a rain jacket during monsoon season felt like a very bad idea.
Going through security at the airport was a frazzling experience. People seemed to be very reluctant to both hold me up and talk to me. The immigration officer gave my passport a cursory glance before waving me through. I lined up for customs, but was quickly pulled out and pushed through without a single explanation.
Everyone seemed to be so keen in getting me out as fast as possible that they forgot to fill out the paperwork I needed to get in to India. I was stopped by a soldier on my way out of the airport and asked to show him my customs papers. “Customs papers?” I asked, intimidated. The soldier waved an example of the form in front of my face.
“Custom papers! Like Thiiiiiiiiiiis!” He shouted
I had to admit that I didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. After a minute of staring at me silently, he shrugged and motioned me through.
That was weird.
Prakash, the Deep Griha driver, drove at 100 km and hour with one finger on the wheel, his head bobbing and free fist pumping to the latest Bollywood hit song. Every couple seconds he would honk the horn furiously with his free hand. This honk could mean anything from:
“I’m passing you within a few centimeters of your car, okay?”
To:
“Pedestrians, watch out! I’m driving on the sidewalk because I don’t feel like waiting 2 seconds in traffic”
And:
“Don’t pass me! If you do this, I will swerve in front of you and almost take off your bumper in the process.”
Also, my personal favourite:
“I’m going to squeeze in between you two enormous trucks, so don’t move an inch because you will crush me!”
The car horn was also extremely useful for the intersections that I saw where over six (SIX!) main roads of traffic intersected. There were no traffic lights. It was just a free-for-all of people turning left, right, going straight, doing u-turns, and disregarding lane rules in general. If there was space on the road for you, it didn’t matter what side you were on. There were also people walking everywhere: in the middle of the highway, in the middle of city roads, and crossing the various streets and intersections (since there are no traffic lights of any sort, you just kind of wing it to get across the roads- a hair-raising experience for me... locals often gather to watch me cross!).
To keep my mind off the death-defying stunts that Prakash was pulling, I kept my eye on the scenery outside. Banana trees, coconuts trees, and the smell of spices, pee, and incense wafted through the air.
It was really, really nice to be back.
I’ve only been here a few days, but if feels like I’ve lived here forever. India really and truly feels like home to me right now.
Sunday was the ending of a two-week long Ganesh festival, and the locals were gearing up for large partying. Each block had made a float composed of the various Ganesh statues from each household, where they were then taken during a large street-wide celebration to be placed in the river (this apparently has something to do with Ganesh's origins).
I woke up at nine to find the house -literally- shaking from the music blaring outside. Who knew that Justin Bieber's songs could actually sounds bearable once they had been remixed Bollywood-style? One of the volunteers, Becky, and I went for a walk in the morning, but were disappointed by the lack of festivities. Everyone was very excited to see us (but mostly our cameras!), and many of the Ganesh floats were blaring out music and covered in offerings. But otherwise there seemed to be very little happening.
We were dying to go to Lakshimi Road, where several hundred thousand people go to celebrate the sinking of the biggest Ganesh, but had been expressively forbidden by Munda, our live-in caretaker who also assumes the role of mother hen, from going (more on Munda in another post!). I think if she had had her way, we would have been locked up in our rooms and chained to the house to keep us from going.
So we waiting until Munda had left for church for the day, and planned our jail break.
Lakshimi Road was out of the question- with the hundreds of thousands of people there, we were bound to get lost. A way to be part of the festivities came to us during lunch: people had gathered outside in the street to being the block festival, and the children were chanting and waving for us to come outside and dance.
It seems that there is some sort of stigma attached to women dancing- the men danced, grinding and jumping up against each other in a way that none of us volunteers had ever seen before. But the women stayed off at the side. Good girls, it seems, do not dance in the street.
Wanting to be prudent, we joined the women at the side of the street, but were pushed in to the arms of the waiting children. "Dance! Dance!"... everyone seemed to be truly thrilled that we had come down to join their celebration. Once we busted out our obviously extremely good dance moves, some of the older women even joined in to show us how it was done.
Starting to be surrounded by the locals!
Everyone was extremely excited to have us there. Celebratory sweets were pushed in to our hands, and the children took turns clinging on to us. We live in a very well-to-do neighbourhood, so everyone immediately whipped out their cellphones and cameras to take our pictures. Kids were falling over themselves to give us our first Indian sweets, invite us for dinner, and show us their homes. People left when we arrived and soon came back with their friends and family. Within a few hours of us joining in, there were about a hundred people sitting on the sides watching the three crazy white girls dance. Jemma, the other volunteer, videotaped Becky and I dancing with the locals. It's going to be posted on Becky's blog- I'll put up the link when I get it later! In one of the videos you can see a man (quite drunk) dancing suggestively behind us, and then being told off by the women. Everyone was determined that we would enjoy ourselves, and the grandmothers looked out for us as if we were their daughters- one of them even slapped a man who she thought came too near me.
It took over five hours for the float to be towed the half a kilometer the the nearby river. Finally, once we were ready to collapse from the exhaustion of dancing and smiling non-stop, our hands were run through flames and then we tossed invisible air behind us. The children dotted our foreheads with red dye, and they gave us more sweets. I have a feeling that they were feeding us from the offerings, and I really hope that by accepting them we weren't committing some sort of grave offense...
It was an extremely enjoyable experience- one that I don't think would ever happen in Canada.
We retreated quickly as soon as the ceremony was over- although everyone was extremely friendly, they were all a little too forceful in their attempts to get us over to see their houses and eat their food.
Now that the street festival was over, we looked forward to a little peace and quiet! But as soon as the Ganesh on our street was placed in the river, the street next to ours took their turn to come by, and then the next after that, and after that. And these streets seemed to be extremely determined to outdo all of their neighbours. Some of them had hired live bands, others had dozens of men flawlessly playing the drums in unison. All of them played Bollywood music as loud as possible on speakers that were taller than me. Even after our neighbourhood had finished, we could hear the far-off pounding of music from other neighbourhoods until six o'clock in the morning.
I have a feeling that this is not the last time I'm going to see many of these people. We seem to have captured the interest of the locals for now!
Heather
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