Diwali Mubarak Ho!

Varanasi, India

October 31 Happy Halloween!

I was woken up again this morning by monkeys quarreling on the steel roof above my bed. It was good that they chose this morning, since I had promised some American girls I met the other day that I would walk down the ghats with them early this morning. I haven't been getting up early lately, since I still have a lot of sleep to catch up on from Divali, which was Tuesday.
Divali is the biggest festival celebrated in India, and the main components are prayer to the God Hanumanji and the Goddess Lakshmiji for wealth and prosperity in the coming year, and lots and lots of fireworks. For me it was only a three day affair, but for many people the celebration starts two weeks earlier when Nowratri ends. There are so many fireworks. Did I say that? A lot of fireworks.
On Monday evening, we had a very nice Divali Puja at our program house. All of the staff set up the altar with all the statues and such, and I did Rangoli with some of the other students in the program. Tradition says that on the night of Divali, Lakshmiji flies around to all of the houses in the world (much like Santa) and when she sees ones that are nicely decorated and cleaned, she will visit. If Lakshmi visits your house, you will be very very prosperous in the coming year. For this reason, people clean and whitewash their houses before Divali, and then paint little footprints coming into their houses, representing the footprints of Lakshmiji entering. This is called rangoli. At our program house, we painted the feet with spices and rice flour made into paste with water. We also painted a flower on the floor in front of the altar. After all of the rangoli was done, Shashankji led Allison in performing the puja, everyone else watching and touching things and offering things whenever they were told to. It is extremely entertaining how clueless we all are, especially watching how natural all of these things seem to everyone here. I often feel like an alien. Luckily, aliens are quite well recieved here.
After our program house puja, we had a concert in what is usually our dining room, sarangi, tabla, flute, and another instrument I don't know the name of. Then we set off fireworks for an hour in front of our house. The best were the gelabi, which spin shooting sparks in circles at anyone who is too close. None of us really like the bombs, which are not pretty at all, and exist purely for the deafening noise they make. Finally, we all went out to dinner on Assi ghat at the pizzeria. All around us there were loud explosions and millions of grasshoppers. Even though I had never celebrated Divali before, the world seemed to be changed for me that night, like the anticipation on Christmas eve.
On Divali morning, I did more rangoli with my host sister, this time just using powdered colors so that it was easier to clean up. I went to see puja at my host fathers sari shop (very important for businessmen to pray for prosperity in the coming year!) and was fascinated by the whole process. I have participated in many different puja ceremonies, but this one was very different, and long. The priest who had come painted hindu swastikas (symbols of peace and prosperity, not fascism) in the front cover of all the new account books that will be used in the coming year. Then a bag full of coins was counted into a bowl, and one new shiny coin added to the pile. In the bowl of coins, the priest poured milk, yogurt, rice, saffron, flowers, and a bunch of other stuff, then my grandfather (owner of the shop) mixed them all together as the priest chanted. Eventually they cleaned and dried each coin, and put them all into a new bag which they will open to do the same thing to next year. This was in addition to all of the usual puja things, offerings to statues of gods and goddesses, etc.
After the store puja, I went with my friend Sara to get henna done on our hands, a traditional way of preparing for festivals. It took a little longer than we expected, and we ended up being the only customers left in the big store where the henna artist sits, and all of the employees spent almost an hour waiting for us and making fun of us over the loudspeakers in the store... until they realized that we understood some of what they had said. It was delightful, really. Then I went to spend the night celebrating with my friend's family and friends. We did puja, again, this time having a bottle rocket fall into the courtyard as we were doing our offerings and such, exploding about four feet from us. We set fireworks off on the roof, having explosion contests with the neighbors on adjacent roofs, until 3 in the morning. I slept late the next day, ate breakfast at about 2:30 in the afternoon, and returned to my host family's house to go visit my teacher and bring sweets with my host father, as is tradition around Divali. The city was completely shut down the day after Divali, since that day is supposed to forcast what the rest of the year will be like for you. If you spend money, it means you will spend or lose lots of money in the coming year, and therefore there isn't a lot of business...so when you open your shop, you don't make much money, which forcasts very bad business for the next year. It's just better to have vacation, in that case. The streets were empty as I walked home, stores shut, no traffic, no honking. I felt like I had stepped out of India, into some wierd, creepy, surreal silent film. It was sort of relaxing, actually.

So now, it should be back to normal, though I know I keep saying that and then something else turns up to distract me from my paper writing. I really need to get to work...

I hope that you are all well and enjoying yourselves wherever you are. Keep in touch!