Dussehra

I’m in the basement now, but I just came down from the rooftop, having reluctantly pulled myself away to continue working. Today/tonight is Düssehra (sic), the celebration immediately after Navaratri. The latter is the Hindu celebration of The Goddess (Durga). Bengalis go the craziest for Navaratri, while for most Hindus Dewali is the major festival of this season; people call Dewali “Indian Christmas.” Some background: for two weeks now, James, Nick and I have been living at our new homestay in C.R. Park, with Shantinu the dancer. C.R. Park is a colony that was originally given to displaced Bengalis after partition in 1947. It has the highest density of Bengalis anywhere in Delhi, and therefore is the wildest place to be during Navaratri. So we’ve been getting quite a show since we returned from our site workshops last week—just a few days into the festival.

The Durga Pujas are the neighborhood holy celebrations. There are 20 in C.R. Park alone. They are held everyday during Navaratri in huge, temporary tents erected in parks and open lots. Usually there is a low stage near the rear (for dancing and singing) and metal detectors at the entrances, manned by guards or police. [In India, anything religious is a target for bombing.] At the Durga Pujas, giant queues inch towards tables where food is given out twice a day in honor of The Goddess—it’s delicious and well-made and not what you’d expect from giant batches of free grub. Over the rows of rented chairs, fastened to the skeletons of the tents, are intestinal-tangles of wire, spliced and patched together—a makeshift artery of electricity, being drawn from all over the nearest street. Near the entrance, a man sits at a table beneath this scary mess, manipulating 6 or 10 archaic looking switches. Apparently they control the coloured lights over the stage.

The three of us (four, when Parker joins) have been going around our little village for the past few nights and trying to take it all in. Last night was the wildest. In market 2, which is the one closest to our flat, thousands of people moved and stood on the main drag—eating, waiting in line, and just being there. We ate dinner at a small street-side carry-out joint, and Nick remarked that the scene looked like a cross between Christmas, the county fair, and perhaps some third, unknown ingredient. Looking out and walking around, it was pure stimulation. The kind of overload where your senses of depth, scale and movement all seem compromised. For a while I felt like I was watching something in miniature.

Tonight, I’m at Shantinu’s alone because James and Nick have gone out to see a play. I was walking thru the living room on my way to the basement, when I stopped to explain to Aunti-ji (Shantinu’s mother) that the other two wouldn’t be eating in tonight. She was watching something on TV, a news network’s live coverage of what seemed to be giant effigies burning in different parts of town. We’ve all been having a lot of, “wow, we’re in India” moments lately, and this was another. I decided to go up to the roof and breathe some night air before restarting my work. Here is the final India moment for tonight, and the last paragraph of my entry, written in the present tense because it still feels immediate.

In the shadowy-glow of Delhi at night, hundreds of rooftops and upper-floors rise to four-stories, and none go higher. It looks like a million facets of orange and brown. [Last night on the roof, I said I felt like I was in Cairo; James, who has actually been there, said he agreed.] Tonight there are two familiar sensations: the smell of cooking and burning leaves, and the noise of cars honking at one-hundred intersections and bottlenecks. However, tonight there is also something new: I count six different fireworks displays on the horizon around me. I see the classic starbursts in green and white and those crackling streamers of gold shooting upwards. Happy Dussehra to all, and to all a good night!