With Navratri and Dussera behind us but Diwali around the corner, we're still officially in the throes of festival fever. There are smashed watermelons and crushed lemons in the most unlikely of places like in the parking garages of malls. Sandalwood and kumkum is applied liberally to all kinds of inanimate objects including the elliptical machine that I clambered onto this evening in our clubhouse to try and burn a few calories. And so while the agnostic in me still maintains a safe personal distance from the many religious rituals of the season, it's impossible not to be drawn into something that's as much cultural as it is religious.
In August, Ganesh Chathurthi provided the opening act to the bigger festivals. There were multiple stalls set up in the friendly neighborhood village outside our development to house the Elephant God and we woke up every morning for the next ten days to the sounds of bhajans that traveled in with the breeze. Enthusiastic devotees first installed Ganesha on the road just outside our community gate until it was pointed out to them that cars may also need to use that road from time to time. They then whisked him off to another undisclosed location where they could continue the party. One hoped that, in the interest of the environment, somebody checked to make sure he wasn't made of plaster of paris or covered with a lead-based paint before dunking him in a body of water. But it's impossible to hold that against lovable Ganesha though, with his rotund, child-friendly persona and his fondness for modakams and laddoos.
Muslims celebrated the end of Ramzan on September 20th this year. Since this was during Navratri, pooja-related activity was also at its peak at this time, largely for the leading Goddesses of the Hindu pantheon: Durga, Lakshmi, Saraswati, a religious nod to female power. In Karnataka, Durga Puja is also called Ayudha Puja and it's a day when one worships any tools or implements used to do one's job. And so Ravi, our driver, spent a good two hours decorating our Toyota Innova with flowers and patches of smeared sandalwood. It looked quite spiffy at the end of that treatment. It reminded me of the time in California several years ago when I took our new car at the time to the Livermore temple for a vahana pooja and the priest ended the ceremony with a flourish by painting a big red swastika on the hood. I couldn't imagine motoring down Highway 580 with that in the front and so I hastily rubbed it off as soon as he was out of sight. Ravi's handiwork looked better and was infinitely more tasteful.
For Dussera, our community hosted a cultural program that ended with the traditional burning of Ravana's effigy. He may be the dark lord of Hindu mythology but you can't help feeling a little sorry that he has to be subjected to this year after year. After all, as legend goes, he was also well-read, a talented musician, practically a Renaissance Man in Lanka circa 7000 BC...you have to cut the man some slack. The kids enjoyed the display, however. A. came running up afterwards to gleefully inform me that "the fire guy" was dead.
So that just leaves Diwali...a childhood favorite - for me at least. The one day of the year when it was fun to wake up at the crack of the dawn and acceptable to have greasy oil rubbed in one's hair. A time when we enjoyed delving into our small but respectable stash of fireworks to work our way up the bravery scale from sparklers to atom bombs. I'm sure the kids will love it now but we grown-ups will stand around complaining about noise and air pollution and about how unsafe it all us. All true, mind you, but still.....
Despite my ambivalence towards religion, I can't deny that the festival season in India is a lot of fun, a cultural celebration of the many colorful stories in Hindu mythology. But just to provide a dose of secular leavening after all this, Halloween arrives at the end of the month.
