I didn’t anticipate many things before coming to India: the traffic, the frequent monsoon rains, the 2010 Commonwealth Games. But more dance-offs with strange men, again? Really?
The Ganpati (Ganesha) festival started on the same day as Eid-al Fitr, and it ended last Wednesday. It is a ten day festival for Lord Ganesha, whose birthday is then. He is the elephant-headed Hindu god of good fortune and prosperity (though his mother is the goddess of wealth, Laxmi. She has all human features). After my interview, I biked back to my family’s flat, thinking I was late. Luckily, the Indian minute is not a New York minute. The family consisted of Aai, Baba, their son, their daughter-in-law, and their grandson, Adu. The cricket game was on, but it was turned off so the traditional Ganpati music, played on a CD, could be heard. Aai and Baba had taken their shiny metal Ganesha idol out of the case in my room and began the ceremony.
The ceremony was a complete sensory experience. Ganpati was adorned with a cotton necklace, several flower necklaces, bindi of a special powder, seeds, turmeric, and more flowers. While the music played and the family gathered around the idol clapping softly with the music, Adu lit incence. We all received bindi between our eyes. After adorning the idol, Aai lit a small, waxed wick on the tip of a metal dish. Every member of the family circled the large flame towards the idol clockwise, kind of as if every family member lit a Hanukah candle. Everyone said their prayers which included raising their hands together to their bowed nose and their eyes closed. One or two slow spins accompanied and we each waved our hands over the candle. Hearing the happy music, smelling the incense, feeling the bindi and the candle’s heat, seeing the beautiful idol, and finally, eating the special Ganpati treat, Moduk (a sweet dumpling treat that Ganesh apparently loves), revealed the wholeness of the ritual. Every part of me sensed the celebration.
But once the song was finished, my brother turned the cricket match back on.
The modern Hindu, right Oma?
They family came over for dinner that night when we repeated, and again the next day.
Part of the Ganpati ceremony is to submerge your individual idol on either the 3rd, 5th, or 7th day of the festival (many go any day during the festival, depends upon individual tradition). The immersion is to give Ganpati a proper farewell and for good luck in the coming year. I did not get to go to my family’s submersion, as their idol is metal. My Aai went to some with her friends.
There are celebrations every night in and around the city that get progressively crazier each night. Pune is supposed to have the biggest and best Ganpati celebrations. People come here from Mumbai, not the other way around, and others come from all over India. Preston, friend Sam, friend Kacie, and I went to downtown Pune the last and craziest night.
The three main East-West streets in Pune were closed to vehicles, and it was alive with a vibrant and humongous crowd.
We walked to the river on a broad street comfortably filled with families, groups of men, street artists chalking elaborate Ganesha’s on the street, and floats. The average float had about twenty people dancing in front of it to what I call religious techno. Red powder, gulal, was flung into the air, seeping into everybody’s sweaty hair, skin, and clothing. Atop the float were usually three or four kids, sometimes blowing bubbles, sometimes dancing, and sometimes just sitting around, and then the idol itself. The Ganpati’s were made of plastic porcelain, painted elaborately. They were surrounded by a hodgepodge of colorful decorations, with streamers and painted scenes and flowers and so much more (can you say strobe light?). Ganpati usually looked jolly, though sometimes a bit elusive and a few even looking menacing.
We made it to the river and saw rows of lights and people surrounding the river. The bridge was crowded. People immersed their idol into the river by one chosen representative dunking it once, allowing the bubbles from the bottom to come out, finally watching it sink like a divine bath toy. In all, the newspaper reported 40,000 idols were immersed into the river in Pune. Also, six died in Mumbai trying to immerse their idol into the intemperate ocean! Now I understand why people say religion is dangerous.
(Was that in poor taste or just a regular bad joke?)
We crossed the unsteady bridge I remembered crossing my first day in India, this time at night and with many people watching others swim with a sinking idol of a deity.
On the other side, the pace picked up. We ran into a family that invited us four whities to dance with them. They banged drums, one snare, one bass, and we all danced to it. This was the last time that we danced with a female, and the three were under 15. The rest were men whom we danced with us, presumably fathers and uncles, while gulal rained on our emancipated, celebratory demeanor. We danced unapologetically, busting out moves such as “the Point-and-Shake,” “The Conga/Eyebrow-Rise ‘n’ Smile,” and the Man-Shimmy, or the Mimmy.
After twenty or so minutes of continuous dancing, they had to move and so did we. We went to the thick of it, Laxmi Road.
The rest of the night became blurrier, not from traditional forms of intoxication, but from the rigorous combination of all-out-balls-to-the-wall dancing your face off surrounded by a bunch of random men and trekking through the insanity—what I imagine Mardi Gras or Carnival or a peaceful riot to be like—sometimes being forcibly moved by the saturated crowd. Eventually we had to stop dancing because friend Kacie was getting her butt pinched too many times, and then we understood why were only dancing with men at the floats. I had many variations of “What country?” screamed into my earlobe. The jovial men were all excited to see us and to dance with us, though they challenged us with many show-me-what-you-got and bring-it-white-boy looks. I thought of my friend Chet from the nightclub.
The main corner, where the Ganesh temple actually is year-round on Laxmi, was inaccessible two ways, so we had to walk around it to get in front of it.
Covered in blinking white Christmas lights, the interior was gold and silver plated with a happy Ganesh sitting in front. Nobody was really inside, that would have been 50,000 too many outside voices inside that one-room temple.
We left friend Sam and friend Kacie to try to find Preston’s host-sister, Preeti. It took us an hour and a half of text messaging her, her telling us to go to various places in the area that we didn’t know. I asked dozens of people, one being a drunken cop who kissed my hand in farewell, and most gave contradictory directions.
You'll have to teach all of us klutzy Isenbergs your cool dance moves...
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