Diwali

This has been one of the strangest as well as one of the most interesting days I have ever spent.

Diwali is one of THE celebrations in India. It only goes for one day and it also seems to coincide with one of the other puja festivals, the Kali festival, but it is one raucous event. The Kali puja has to do with the wife of Shiva, Kali who came out and killed a number of demons. She is the goddess of anger and the people rejoice and celebrate the way she killed demons. The Diwali part of the celebration relates to Brahma, or Rama. Rama had been exiled to a forest for some 14 years and returned to find his wife had been spirited away by some demon. Rama went after her, but was unable to get her back, so he enlisted the help of Hanuman, the monkey god, who helped free Rama's wife from the demon. This story may sound familiar, and it should if you have been following this blog. It is the story I think I first encountered on the island of Bali in Ubud when I went to the cultural dance. I believe it's the same story, the Ramayana, which was done in the Kecak dance.

And Diwali celebrates that story. But there is more to the celebration of Diwali. It is a festival of light (and apparently noise as well). Much like many people in North America celebrate Christmas by putting up lights to decorate their houses, so do the Hindu people in India. So walking around at night there are light displays on many houses. It is quite interesting. There are special lights that are lit by fire. They are some kind of candle cup, with a little lip where liquid can pour out, and the fire is lighted at that lip. In addition to those sorts of lights, shops everywhere sell fireworks and the night is filled with the sound of fireworks going off. Everywhere. And the haze that filled the air was not fog.

The day was also spent in putting some kind of tree, often made out of some kind of banana stalks. Then candles were placed on the “tree's” limbs. The effect was remarkably like a rudimentary Christmas tree. (Well, maybe not really, but it did call Christmas trees to mind.)

Okay, the weird and wonderful part of the day, then. Diwali also meant that many businesses were closed, particularly anything that had to do with the government. This meant that it was a very good thing that I found the tourist information office yesterday. It was closed when I went to talk to them today. It also meant that the tea research institute was also closed for the day. That was the spot that I decided to visit first. It was one of the things I wanted to get to know about Assam, it's tea. So I got up reasonably early in the morning. I was helped in this by the staff of the hotel who rang my room bell at 8 in order to bring me tea and the morning paper. Quite the level of service here, I must say. A good bed and they bring the paper in the morning. I wonder if they treat all their guests so well.

Because of the paper, I actually got a later start than I had planned and didn't end up leaving the hotel before 9. I walked down to where the buses were and got on the correct one to go down the road where the man gave me the directions to the tea institute. I got out at the spot where I saw the tea institute and entered the gate and was stopped by the security guards. They told me it was closed. It still hadn't really dawned on me that it was in fact Diwali, so I didn't really understand why it was closed. I just figured that for some reason they had their day to be closed on a Wednesday. I was disappointed, but not really surprised at that, given how well things have been working out for the past few days. (And you should read the word “well” with an appropriate level of sarcasm.)

I decided to head back to the Assam Tourism office to make sure of anything else that might be closed this day, so that I didn't go anywhere else and find it closed, making it a wasted effort. This would have been more annoying because the other things that I could visit were considerably farther away. I began to walk back as I wasn't sure when buses or the public taxis would come by. A number did as I was walking, and I could have stopped and gotten on any one of them, but it was a nice day and a walk was a good idea. As I was walking, I passed people putting up some decorations and lights and it still didn't occur to me that there was a reason why things were closed.

Then suddenly I kind of heard a “pssst” kind of noise. I stopped and looked around. Across the road was a man and a girl on a bike. She beckoned me over. The conversation began pretty much with a, “Are you a foreigner?” She was really excited to find out that I was indeed from somewhere else. Her English was quite good and she wanted to speak to me. She wanted to go to North America and wanted to speak to foreigners so she could find out about culture and such. She asked if she could meet me later to ask me questions. I didn't figure I would have much going on, so I agreed to meet her later in the afternoon. She got the name of my hotel and told me she would be there at 4. A bit random, but it looked like my day would be a bit more interesting.

I went the rest of the way to the Assam Tourism office and walked in. I was told nobody was there, and that's when it occurred to me that this was a holiday. It explained the closure of the tea institute, and I began to feel a bit better about how things were going, now that I had a good explanation. The man at the hotel desk (the Assam Tourism offices are all associated with a tourist lodge), told me that the cultural place on the list I had been given yesterday would be open, even though it was a holiday. I decided that I could go and visit there and get back in time to meet Poobali and her father at my hotel. So I headed out to figure out how to get there.

I had to take another kind of public transportation. There seems to be three or four kinds. First there is are buses run by various groups. Then there are public taxis. They are little scooters with a multiple person cab on the back. They go various routes and will take people who get on an off. I wouldn't call it a taxi exactly, but they do here, so... The third kind of transport is a converted little van. They work much like the scooter taxis. I had to take one of those. I found one headed in the right direction and got under way. I was headed to Dekhiakhuwo Namghar, a cultural place of some sort. I wasn't sure what it would be like, or even what I was looking for, so I had my eyes peeled. After a short while, my eyes became less peeled as the distance passed and I saw nothing like a cultural area. It was a long way out of town. It took about 30 minutes on the van to get to the little town where this spot was supposed to be. Then the van stopped and they told me this was where I wanted to be and pointed down a road into the countryside. Hmmm... That was a bit weird. This was apparently not a place one would stumble upon by accident.

I started walking. I walked a long way through rice fields and a cluster of houses here and there that might little villages. It was actually kind of nice. I still didn't know what I was looking for, and I never would because suddenly my day took a turn for the weird and wonderful.

Coming along the road in the other direction was a man on an elephant. That was kind of exciting to me, for this is not something that I usually see. So I stopped to take a couple of photos of the man on the elephant carrying some kind of banana leaves. The man stopped the elephant beside me and the elephant examined my face. With its trunk. Have you ever been kissed by an elephant? Strange.

The man urged the elephant on and then beckoned me to follow. But, but... Ah, what the heck, I thought, and followed the elephant. I followed them back a short way to a lane into the trees. They led me to a small temple that was being built. I was beckoned in and they showed me the temple and tried to explain what it was about, but I didn't really understand. Then they sat me down and gave me some tea and biscuits and some fruit. I was a bit bemused. I had no idea what was really going except they were being very gracious hosts. A couple of them spoke a bit of English and explained a couple of things to me. It seemed this was the land of one of the people there. He was building a temple to Shiva. There were two trees inside and from it came some kind of nuts that could be made into necklaces. Wearing the necklace was good luck. There were a lot of men there helping build the temple and they were all neighbours and friends of the man and his family.

After a while, the man's daughter came over and explained that they would finish the temple and there would be a foundation/dedication ceremony on the 31^st of October and the 1^st of November and I was invited to attend. I was beginning to find this quite fascinating and interesting. And it was far more of a cultural experience than any fabricated cultural place could ever be. I agreed to come to the ceremony, if I could remember how to get to the place. It shouldn't be too hard. Then the owner took me into his house and they fed me some lunch. We sat and talked and exchanged contact information. His family name was Saikia. One thing I found very cool was that his daughter's name was Rapujolie. Or something like that. Anyway, when she said her name it sounded a lot like Rapunzel. I told her a bit about that story and she seemed amused. Maybe I will write out the story and take it to her when I go to the ceremony next week. Finally they gave me a scarf/wrap thing as a present. I was touched. And amazed at the hospitality of this family. This had become a much more interesting day than I had planned.

But it was time to head back to town so I could meet Poobali as I had promised. They took me outside and another friend of his was coming by on a motorbike. He was flagged down and was asked to give me a ride to the main road so I could get back to Jorhat.

On the main road, a van was just going past. The motorbike man flagged them down and I got in and was off. The people in this van all gave me the once over, and a couple even asked me a couple of questions. It got interesting when we got to one point where one of the passengers got out. He tried to pay, but the driver and “conductor” thought he should pay more (I think). The guy was getting all up in the face of the “conductor” and I thought I fight might break out. It was pretty tense for a few moments. The women passengers were all trying to get the “conductor” to just let it go and get back in. But the passenger was sticking his finger and hand into the “conductor's” chest and really acting as though he would like it to get more serious. I was a bit worried. But in the end it subsided and we continued on our way.

I got back to my hotel in plenty of time and then sat in the lobby reading my book and waiting. At first I thought that Poobali might not show up. We had agreed on 4 o'clock, but by 4:30 she was still not there. I hadn't finished my chapter, so I was just sitting and finishing it. They walked in. I gathered that they had been putting up lights on their house for Diwali, but there had been some kind of problem, so they were late. She was very sorry.

We chatted for a while and then suddenly they invited me to their house to celebrate Diwali. It was more the girl who invited me. Her father didn't seem to be overly enthusiastic about the idea. I asked him a couple of times if it was all right. He said there was no problem. So off we went. The three of us sat on the one motorbike, and despite the fact that only one of us had a helmet, it still didn't seem to be that dangerous. There are too many things wrong with the road for anyone to be able to go too fast.

We drove into the night, listening to ever more firecrackers and other fireworks being set off. The air filled with haze and smoke and sound. It's a kind of celebration that is no longer possible in Canada because someone might get hurt, or some piece of the explosives might go and start a house or something else on fire, or basically someone who should and probably does know better might do something stupid, and so nobody is allowed to have any fun. On the other hand, the big ones are quite loud when they explode nearby.

We reached Poobali's house and she shouted out to her mother that Ken the foreigner was here. I guess her mother was excited to meet me. It was another one of those rock star moments that I've been having in the less travelled parts of some countries. I was invited in and we sat down and talked for a while. They are a nice family, but the father was very, very pro-George Bush. I guess nobody is perfect. He also claimed to have a solution for the world's economic problems, some kind of formula for countries to use that could make them all better. I wish it was true, but I doubt something like that is going to come from a backwoods town in northeast India. Then again, Albert Einstein came from humble beginnings. Poobali's father wants to work for the Pentagon someday and sees nothing wrong with the way the US operates in the world today. He thinks that the US should attack everywhere and force them to the yoke of their world vision of democracy. In fact, he predicts that Iran is next for war and that it will happen soon. I hope he's wrong on that one. I would like to visit the country before it goes to war with the US. Possibly predictably, he also thinks the British did a very good thing for India, and that they treated the country very well. I don't know enough about the whole history to know, but it seemed that Britain had to be sent away and freedom taken from colonial rule. In any case, he was a very colourful man with lots to say. And he was nice and friendly in the end. So I shouldn't criticize too harshly.

After we all chatted for a while, Poobali took me to meet some of her neighbours. We chatted for a while, then Poobali wanted to take me down to see the Kali puja site. But when she told her father, he nixed the idea. In particular he didn't want to let his guest go because he felt it would dangerous. A lot of the people in the puja site would have been drinking and they could become violent or difficult. I didn't see that there would be a problem. I haven't been faced with anything like that anywhere in the country yet, but I let him have his way. I have seen puja shrines before and so it wasn't a big deal. But Poobali was a bit upset with him. I could tell that she was kind of the boss of the family, and used to getting her way.

She and I chatted in her front yard for a while, and then she decided she wanted to put her pet foreigner on display a bit by calling a friend and having me talk with him. When I put it like that though, she got a bit upset with me. It wasn't like that at all, she said. She was just excited to have a foreign friend. I apologized and let it pass, but I did feel a bit like some kind of exhibit. I don't really blame her. I don't think she gets much opportunity to meet people from elsewhere and she really, really wants to go to North America someday. She actually wants to be on the X-Factor, and she does sing quite well. She was a bit crushed when I told her that she would probably not be able to be on that show because she would probably need to be a US citizen. But she brightened up again when I told her she should just write songs and become famous and then people from the US would come and get her. One of her favourite singers is Bryan Adams, which was a bit interesting.

Then it was time for dinner. Poobali's mother had cooked some food and they brought me in and we ate. Her mother actually didn't eat at that time; she served the three of us. Then when we were done, she had something herself. I thought it was a bit strange, and even wrong given North American cultural standards, but this is a different place with different rules.

After dinner, they gave me another of the Assam scarves as a gift, got my address and gave me their contact information before Poobali's father gave me a ride back to my hotel, ending my weird and wonderful day.

I don't know if it was just Diwali, or if that is the way the Assamese are, but that was a very touching day for me, to be invited into not one but two homes and fed and given gifts, all with no expectation from me except that I have a good visit. It is much different out here.