All photographs copyright Maya Wallach, AliaTerra
For weeks now, we've been seeing roadside stands cropping up full of gaudily painted paper mache statues of Ganesh, in preparation for a big Ganesh festival. Ganesh is the elephant headed god, patron of travelers, among other things. According to the local paper, he was created when one god killed his wife's boy-servant. Oops. Quick, he said, go get me the head of the first animal facing north, and I'll fix my mistake. So he was brought the head of an elephant, which he put on the boy's head, and brought him back to life.... Ganesh is always portrayed as a *very* portly figure, but he'd have to be to support an elephant head. (To say nothing of what Indian cooking does to a body! Though Ganesh seems to be the only god to succumb.)
Anyway, the festival finally began yesterday. It was a holiday for everyone -- except the construction workers sawing marble next door. They NEVER get a day off. Sher and I got up at 6:30am when the air smells indescribably sweet and took a walk with Barathi. People were busy hosing off their driveways and painting mandalas on the cement with chalk and red dirt. Why? Sher and Barathi weren't sure, something to do with the 7 colors of happiness, except we only say one colorful mandala. (In the north they use more colors, supposedly.)
We walked down to some wide open fields owned by the military. Farmland, really. And nice because it is open and green. But not nice cause you're not supposed to be there, and people get mugged there with some frequency. We watched people on the driving range of the Miranda Golf Course for a while, and then headed home to finish our night's sleep.
We joined Barathi and her 2 sisters, Savitha and Shashi, for lunch at a local Chinese restaurant that makes wonton soup that tastes just like my recently departed grandmother's chicken soup. Then we went back to our house and tried to watch Spartacus, but it was too slow. Sher wanted something more like "Gladiator." Shashi fell asleep and the rest of us were dozing, so we shut it off and put on loud music and Sher and Shashi and Savitha danced around the living room while Barathi and I worked on the computers for a while.
Then it was time to go out and see the festival. All around the neighborhood people had decorated various streets with strings of colored lights (Christmas lights, I want to call them, but I guess they're not), and welcome arches of brightly colored wool and palm fronds, putting up makeshift temples to augment the existing ones. Music blared from various quarters. The 5 of us walked over to Cambridge layout to a party organized by one of the instructor's at Sher & Barathi's gym, Balai. He was happy to see us, and even though the place was packed, he produced chairs and put us in the front row to watch the show.
It was more of a performance than a party, really, with lots of 10 year old girls and 20 year old boys getting up on the stage (separately!) to dance. I kept thinking my young sister Brenna would have been quite at home batting her eyelashes and voguing with the girls. I don't know if my brother Elishama could be enduced to dance with the boys though. What american boy would? But here it is different. No men (practically) get to have sex till 24, so ....they dance! It was all choreography from music videos and Bollywood movies, and some of them were quite shy, but mostly they enjoyed showing off and everyone enjoyed watching and hooting encouragement. Some people ran onstage to pin money to their favorite performers; others put garlands of flowers on them -- right in the middle of the dance! Very distracting. The last performance was the man who organized the show: he tied his feet up behind his thighs so he looked like an amputee and danced and sang like that -- again mimicking some Bollywood film bit. Very peculiar.
Bala invited us to come behind the stage to do "puja" -- give an offering / make a prayer -- to Ganesh. There was a large statue there, and many small ones with flowers and other offerings all around. We put our hands near a flame, just very quickly -- it reminded me of Jewish Sabbath rituals -- and then a daub of ash on our foreheads, and that was it. Then we were given some saffron rice in a bowl made of palm leaves, which was quite tasty. We followed it up with dinner at a local restaurant called "Food Joint" -- nothing special, but the company was good. Except Sher was teasing Savitha and Shashi mercilessly, ceasefires nonewithstanding.....
What are those pre-packaged ice-cream cones called, the ones with chocolate and nuts on top? Drumsticks! Here they're called "coronets." We only found one, but we shared it for desert on the walk home.
Very low-key festival, but very pleasant. We didn't see any immersions: people are supposed to take their Ganesh statues down to some body of water and sink them. Which wreaks havok on the already incredibly polluted water, more so because of all the toxic paint now used on the statues.
Today the postman told our servants to tell us to come get our long lost package. On the way I noticed a motorcycle beside us still decorated with the red powder and palm fronds from the festival. It took 20 more minutes of waiting at the post office, but, FINALLY, they gave us the parcel. At last. Sigh. And for those still wondering, yes, the kidnapping saga has NOT been resolved yet. Soon, they say. Sher & I are planning a trip to Kerala next week, mostly to get away from the marble-sawing and Bangalore's polluted and allergy-inducing air.