Indian Samurai इंडियन सामुराई

A conversation between my Hindi teacher (yes I am trying again!) and I:

• Her: Make a sentence with “I am…”
• Me: main thoda thakee hoon (I am a little tired).
• Her: Oh no! What happened?
• Me: Navratri… 
• Her: Oh you’re fasting?? (1)
• Me: No man I’m not fasting, they are playing drums all night!! (2)

(1) Navratri is the festival where the different avatars of Goddess Durga is worshipped for NINE nights (one night for each incarnation). A lot of people observe fast, as a way to pay gratitude to the Goddess. “Navratri fasting may have religious origins but there is scientific reason backing the same. The festival occurs twice a year, each time when the season is at the brink of change: from winter to summer and again when the air starts to get a bit chilly. Coincidentally, this is also the time when our immunity is low and it is advisable to eat light and nutritious food. The fasting rules, thus, suggest that one should abstain from meat, alcohol, grains, common salt and anything that is processed. Onion and garlic are avoided while fasting as these are known to generate a lot of heat in the body while grains are hard to digest. From an Ayurvedic perspective, these foods attract and absorb negative energies and should be avoided during a seasonal change.” (source)

Oh wait! Then I AM fasting! Because I have been quite sick (maybe due to the weather change?) for the past 4 days. And to give some rest to my digestive system and let my energy focus on healing (see how I talk! what India does to you!), I have been on a liquid diet (juices and soups).

(2) This festival is also known for its dances. And now for its noise. As they play drums every day, from 9 to 11 PM in the temple near my building. I think I will go have a look tonight instead of just banging my head on the wall! 

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

When I moved in here, I was full og good intentions … I really wanted to avoid the mistakes I did in Mumbai by not meeting the neighbours which I thought hated me but turned out to be nice when my cat forced me to talk to them. And eventually I did not go and say hi.

Well I did speak with the old woman of the ground floor (I had forgotten my key) but she was least interested, she only wanted to know how she could get in touch with my favorite Indian (they have common connections in the Supreme Court).

I also met my direct neighbour after two months of cohabitation. It was when a carnage had just happened: the stray cat which roams around in the building had smashed my trash bag and it was spread everywhere. I was cleaning (and not waiting for the caretaker of the building to clean as anyone else would have probably done in the building, after what I can see on my neighbours’ landings) when he came to “make me a suggestion”: “To avoid dirtying your landing, and mine, it would be better if you left the trash bag in the staircase. This way, the trash would not be lying in front of our flats when we have guests coming.”

Obviously I could help asking whether it would look better if guests had to jump over the trash in the staircase to reach our floor?? And to tell him that his “suggestion” was not solving the problem.

The following day I bought a very nice sorrel basket with a cover that I leave outside and if any trash of his ever lands on my landing, he will hear about me!!

But let us go back to the main topic … The day I received my stuff from Mumbai, I was quietly unpacking when I heard a conversation. I heard so well, it sounded like they were in my apartment! And they would not stop talking! I started thinking that they had nerve discussing like that right outside my door! And then, horror, I realized that they were in my neighbour’s flat!! The poor wooden door that separates us is of no use. Hell and damnation …

On top of that I was thinking of buying a sound system and I was not so comfortable inviting him to the movies, with the sound but not the images! However the home theatre proved useful to cover the chuckles of his chicks and his bollywood music (one or twice I stroke back with jubilation – my sound level is unbeatable!)…

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