Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

Last night there was yet another party in the streets. Walking home, along Juhu Beach, it was like going against the tide of human waves. Tiring. When you live in India, there are days you get to realize that there are really really a lot of people in this country... Those are the days you wonder if they never get tired of their religious histrionics... It never stops!

People should feel free to express themselves I know, but I am less convinced when the noise under my windows prevents me from sleeping... At the same time I must say the dog that "watches" the open garbage pit at the foot of my building and barks at the donkeys every night at 3 also prevents me from sleeping!

Anyway, no one asks for my opinion regarding festivals, their frequency and their level of nuisance! Adapt or die (or leave!)…

So yesterday it was Chhath Puja. A festival in honor of the God Sun (Surya). In short (apparently the rules are not the same everywhere, and it is mainly a North Indian festival), the devotees must fast for two days and on the morning of the second day, they make their offerings to the rising Sun.

Last night when I left office, people had started settling in to camp on the beach like that:

And this morning the scene was something like this (while I was sleeping): 

“Under a canopy of sugar cane sticks, clay elephants containing earthen lamps, and containers full of the offerings are placed. There the fire god is worshipped. The offerings characteristically consist of deep-fried and sweet rolls of stone ground wheat flour, grapefruit, whole coconuts, bananas, and grains of lentils. During the puja, these items are contained in small, semicircular pans woven out of bamboo strips called soop.”

More info here: http://www.tourism-of-india.com/chhath-puja.html

I am always surprised by the propensity of Indians to spend their little money in extravagant parties (I speak here of the Indians who live in the slums at the foot of my building). And since they are poor, they do their party in the street (at the foot of my building) or in the courtyard of the temple (adjacent to my building). This happens at least three times a week, a circus in those lines:

You never know what they are celebrating! A wedding, elections, a God – watching the Sai Baba procession (a giant picture being carried on a truck) with a huge crowd of Indian women shaking their asses to the sound of a vaguely lewd Bollywood song is priceless. Everything is an excuse to make noise! You’ll tell me, if they are happy and you are not, you can always move out! Yes but welllll... 

At times I get to see funny stuff, like the chicken festival! One evening, you go home and find a chicken head at the grid. You wonder how the thing has possibly landed there and why none of the three watchmen who have nothing to do have left it there. But you don’t overthink it; it is, after all, a chicken head. It happens!  

And then you look down from your window and you see a truck stuffed to bursting with chickens parking (at the foot of your building), and hundreds of people jostling to buy a chicken. Even your maid is late that day because she had to go to the chicken festival... 

In the meantime, if there is one chicken I would have gladly slaughtered, it is definitely the one screaming in the video!

Chicken day, Mumbai - April 2014

Yesterday it was Makar Sankranti in India.

It is a festival celebrated almost throughout India. It is a harvest festival.

“Makar Sankranti is the day when the glorious Sun-God begins its ascendancy and entry into the Northern Hemisphere and thus it signifies an event wherein the Sun-God seems to remind their children that 'Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya', may you go higher & higher, to more & more Light and never to Darkness.” (source: here)

It is also known as the kite flying festival.

Hence yesterday, all over Mumbai, kids and adults were flying kites everywhere.

Including on the roofs of slum houses!!