National Conference - Days One and Two

Sorry if I haven’t posted in a few days, I’ve been attending a National Conference for the Bahai Institute. Tuesday was the day before the conference, where people were setting up and guests were arriving. I tagged along with Sohayl, both to help out and to do an on-the-fly business meeting. Poor Dr. Paymon Mohajer has been so busy that the only time we were able to have a meeting on the Pathfinder book was in the car while driving to the conference. I was taking notes while our car dodged cows and motorcycles and bounced over potholes.

At the conference I met up with the youth and we spent the next nine hours making spiral binders. We needed seven hundred binders for the conference and only a hundred were made up to that point. It was actually fairly fun. The work was easy if tedious and so we spent the time chatting and laughing, or when they spoke Hindi, I let my mind wander.

The next day was the first day of the conference. We were in a large hall that could hold well over a thousand people, had a sound system and five large screen projecting the image of the speaker or PowerPoint slides. There were representatives from all over India, and from many other countries around the world. Some of these included Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Australia, Kazakhstan, the United Emirates of Arabia, Israel, and one young lady from Canada. Because there were so many people who spoke different languages, they had headsets on which one could hear translations.

The first half of the first day consisted of three talks, each over an hour long, by Dr. Mohajer, the Secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of India, and a Counsellor of India. After these there was a lunch break. At this point the conference was broken up by region and they were to have consultation, but I don't belong to any of the regions and was nodding off so I decided to walk around the grounds for a while. After this I found the room where several youth were similarly resting and we chatted and watched bits of a Hindi movie.

After a tea break around six there was a question and answer panel and another talk. Finally at around nine we had our supper and went home.

The next day opened with two talks, one on Junior Youth and one on Children’s Classes. This was followed by another discussion period, which I once more skipped. At some point Sohayl told me that the Chief Guest was coming tonight, and he asked me to get some people from different countries to present a bouquet to him when he arrived. I asked him who the Chief Guest was and he didn’t know. So I went to the different groups and elicited volunteers to help me welcome this mysterious Chief Guest. There was another panel, at which Sohayl spoke and afterwards I had my little welcoming committee summoned to the stage.

I could tell they were a little anxious, since they didn’t really know what they were supposed to do, and I certainly didn’t know what we were supposed to do. Sohayl came up and ushered us out of the hall towards the gate. There was a six-piece band standing in a line to welcome the Chief Guest. We stood in another line, ready to hand off the still-absent bouquet and shake the hand of the still-mysterious Chief Guest. We waited. The band played. Our line was moved up further. We continued to wait. The band stopped playing.

Finally activity occurred, the band played, a white car drove up, cameras flashed and the Chief Guest showed up. The flowers still hadn’t arrived so we simply exchanged ‘namaste’s’ with him as he walked past. After he had gone by I was grinning at the absurd haphazardness of it all, having just represented Canada to formally welcome a man whose identity I didn’t know. I finally asked Sohayl who said that he was the former Chief Secretary of the government of Uttar Predesh (the state I’m in) and according to Sohayl a ‘bigwig’. As I was walking back to the hall, the guy with the bouquets finally arrived and Sohayl handed me a bouquet and suggested that I present it to the former Chief Secretary. I just walked up to where he was seated, and stepped into the line of important people giving him flowers. Five screens projected me giving him my bouquet and after I had walked away I laughed my head off, at how silly and random the whole affair had been.

This evening of the conference was a public meeting, which was open to anyone. There were two other talks followed by a series of performances. First about twenty little girls from CMS performed a dance in what I assume was a traditional India style. Then the five dance instructors of CMS performed a dance, which was actually less impressive than the first. Next the Bahai youth of Lucknow performed a play. It was in Hindi, but it was sufficiently clear from the actions, and the little Hindi I know what was going on. In the middle of the play two of my friends Neha (who came to Nepal with me) and Cheeki performed a traditional Indian dance, which was of much higher calibre than the others. I don’t know about Cheeki, but Neha has studied dance for several years. All in all it was a fun performance, and no, I didn’t take any photos.

After this we were waiting for supper, which was rather delayed. I hung out with various people and spent some time enjoying the night breezes. At one point I went with Rohit to the kitchens, which were the most fantastic kitchens I have ever seen. It was sort of a court in between two buildings, with a floor of rough stone tiles, and walls of chipped yellow. The ground was littered with gas canisters and a pile of charred wood chips. Men were cooking bread in steel barrels, and sitting about several fires making rice. A sterile white light lit the whole scene, and all was covered with a wonderful layer of grit, charcoal and rust. Tableaus like that carry a sense of reality, and a kind of earthy contentment you just don’t get from a microwave.

After supper we finally climbed into the car in a state of exhaustion. Poor Nicole had another meeting to attend, so we left her behind. And we realized when we were nearly home that we had also left the house keys behind. And the office keys were locked in the house. We thought that perhaps Nicole was at Sohayl’s mothers house so we drove there. No one home. We continued to drive around until we found a public phone. Sohayl phoned Nicole up and she said she would meet us at the house. We drove back home, now very, very tired and laid down to sleep on the marble porch of their house. Luckily I had my dupatta (the scarf-like part of my outfit) to use as a pillow. For anyone out there who thinks that one requires one of those mattresses where you can electronically adjust the level of firmness and two feather pillows to get a good night sleep – well I can tell you that a perfectly comfortable and restful sleep can be achieved on a slab of marble and a thin piece of cloth. At long last Nicole arrived and we flung ourselves into our beds.

I’ll update you on the last day of the conference once it has finished occurring.