Happy Diwali!

Last night was Diwali, one of the major Hindu festivals, also known as the Festival of Lights. Like most holidays people had been preparing for Diwali for a couple weeks now. Traffic at the markets increased, and Christmas-style lights began to adorn the houses. But the true scale for measuring the nearness of Diwali was the number of fire crackers that could be heard each night. In India they call fireworks, fire crackers, which shows the emphasis on sound over light. Every night for about a week and a half we’ve heard an increasing number of thunderous bangs. It drove the dog crazy and sounded like a war zone.

Diwali finally arrived and also happened to be the day that Anna was leaving. One of the Diwali traditions is to buy sweets as a gift for the people you visit and so many shops had covered their storefronts with colorful buntings and were displaying trays of sweets. In the evening Anna and I packed up our luggage and went to the Mohajer house which I’ve moved back to.

As the sun descended the amount of fire crackers increased. Finally when it was dark we went up onto the flat roof of the house, three stories up. From there we could see a wonderful view of Lucknow stretching out before us, and colorfully lit up.



Most firework displays in Canada happen in one direction, and usually follow certain protocols of safety and design. But Diwali was 360 degrees of fireworks. Everyone was launching them from the streets and the rooftops. I would be watching one burst in the distance and see a flash of light from my peripheral. When I turned around the dying embers of some golden flower were exploding over our heads. And some of them were quite literally exploding over our heads, something you don’t generally get to see in Canada due to regulations. There were so many explosions that it sounded like a revolution.

One particular rocket whizzed over our heads and landed on the rooftop, so we decided to go inside. We visited with the family that lives above us, and then went to our house and chatted while the sounds of explosions rang all around us.

Our neighbors above us said they were lighting firecrackers so we went back to roof. At this point, a couple hours later, the show was in full swing, with a constant burst of fireworks in all directions. Red clouds blooming far in the distance, green rockets firing in the fore, one house would suddenly start their show, launching explosion after explosion, and suddenly a huge one would burst directly over us. The sky was thick and smoky.

At ten thirty it was time to drop Anna off at the train station so Arastu, Arman, Sohayl, Anna and I all got in the car. The night was wonderfully cool and alive with explosions. When we got to the train station it was as empty as I’ve ever seen it. We said good bye to Anna and rode back to our beds.

Suffice it to say, it was the best firework show I’ve ever seen, if only because the whole city was the show. I’ll be missing Halloween this year, and I also missed Canada Day, but I feel more than compensated.

Seige of Kathak

Last night I attended the kathak performance. At six Anna and I hopped in an auto rickshaw which took us across town to a small theatre. While in India I’ve learnt to read the Hindi alphabet, even though I don’t understand what the words mean. However this comes in handy from time to time, like tonight where I was able to read the word ‘kathak’ on a banner, and so we knew we had arrived at the right place.

The performance was supposed to begin at 6:30, and we arrived at about 6:38, but of course any artistic performance must be late, and in India they must be rather late. We sat down in the theatre to wait. It was a fairly average theatre, with a raised stage, balcony etc. but like most buildings in India it had a layer of wear about it. Paint was chipped, the floor was bare cement, and my chair was missing the wooden top of the armrest. The heavy, dark red curtain had a subtle hint of age to it, and made me think of a fat matronly woman past the prime of her life, squeezed into the heavy and ridiculously obsolete fashion of her youth. I had time to figure out exactly what the curtains looked like because after sitting around for half an hour, we had to listen to people speaking in Hindi for another half an hour. Finally at about 7:30 the performance kicked off.

The lights turned off, Indian music floated through the theatre, a woman’s voice did more talking in Hindi. Then the lights came up and the dancing finally began. It was about half an hour long, which was kind of disappointing since we had to listen to half an hour of talking to get to it. We believe the dance was telling the story of Krishna, but what that story was we don’t know because the singing and talking was of course in Hindi. The majority of the dancing was done by eight ladies in bright Indian costume. When the music was fast it was enjoyable to watch, as they performed neat turns and graceful, flowing steps. However at times there were sequences where the ladies would be sitting down on the floor, and would be moving very, very slowly, perfectly synchronized, but perfectly boring. They would raise one arm – very slowly – and then the second. Then they would slowly, slowly bring them back to their heart. Then slowly, they turned their heads to look in a different direction.



So I would not call it a great performance, simply because the dancing did not really impress me, although it was entertaining enough, and a good experience. Besides you get what you pay for and the performance was free.

And now Such Strings as These steps fully into the world of modern blogging, with a video.

Kathak Attack

There’s a certain kind fun that comes from sitting on the fringe and watching. It’s fun to be the one who simply smiles and drinks tea. Care free. I get to do a lot of that in India.

Yesterday Anna arranged through some contacts to attend a dance class. I accompanied her to fulfill my duty as consummate observer, and walker-home-after-dark. We arrived at the house and spoke broken English with the dance teacher until the students arrived. Then we moved into the small dance hall with marble floors and a large mirror. I took to my post on a couch to one side while Anna joined the ten or so young girls on the dance floor.

I spent my time smiling, taking photos, drinking tea, and reading snippets of Kafka when the dancing got repetitive. They were concentrating mostly on foot work, performing intense stepping drills, accompanied by hand movements. One, two, three. One, two, three. While their thighs were undoubtedly burning, I was smiling, sipping my tea, eating a biscuit. The style they were doing was called kathak, a traditional Indian dance. I beleive that this weekend I may have an oppurtunity to see some professional kathak, so we'll see.

The Escalator

The other day I took Anna to the mall for some coffee and social commentary. One thing that’s great about the malls of India is the escalators, which are just like the escalators everywhere else in the world. It’s the people that are different.

A middle aged man and an older woman – his mother - walk up to an escalator. I nudge Anna. I know what’s coming. The little old lady with her wrinkly face, her grey streaked hair and her yellow and green sari is stiff and nervous. Her son holds her arm and patiently beckons her towards the escalator. They hesitate there above the first black step. He times it right, gently pulls her forward and she emits a scream, while her arms jerk. She’s done it. She’s stepped onto the escalator!

The Tiffin Man Can

I debated calling this post Anna and the King after the movie, but while there is now an Anna in my life, there is unfortunately no King.

Anna is the new volunteer, a thirty-year-old Chilean/American. She’s a freelance dance teacher who specializes in freestyle and modern dance. She’s working with FAS on the physical education part of the curriculum, and will be doing some teaching in City Montessori School.

We’ve moved back into the office and this time around things have been set up with a more independent eating arrangement. Where as before we were going to Sohayl’s house for lunch and dinner we now get our meals from the Tiffin man. Tiffin is one of those words that you don’t hear in Canada, at least I never have, but it’s actually an English word. Being in India, a country that took its English from the real English, and which still has the literality and precision of an English-As-A-Second-Language speaker, one learns a lot of new things about the English language.

But I digress. The Tiffin man brings us our lunch and dinners now. It’s sort of like delivery – Indian style. Instead of pizza or Chinese food we get rice, a vegetable topping, a sauce, bread, and some sliced onions and cucumbers.

Blog Action Day! - Poverty in India and Canada

Today, October the 15th is Blog Action Day! Blog Action Day is a day where people with various online venues are encouraged to all write about the same issue on the same day. The point is to raise awareness and begin conversations. Last year the topic was Environmentalism and this year its poverty. If you're interested in this idea or want to read some examples, go to this link here:

http://blogactionday.org/

Well, I'm in India, and I can definably write about poverty!

In India poverty is always there, in your face, under your sandals, pawing at your pants begging for money. The next door neighbour of Sohayl's house lives in a home made of tarp, mud and little bits of fence. When you go to malls beggars, children and women, grab at you with little bowls asking for money in Hindi. Many of the rickshaw drivers live in their rickshaws.

In Canada poverty exists of course, but I've only seen it in from the beggars in Victoria. It's far less in your face. Of course there is one place that poverty exists and that we've probably all seen right in our living rooms - you know, those long commercials in sepia where a child looks sadly at the camera with flies on his face while Amazing Grace plays in the background and a guy in a moustache tells you that for just one dollar a day you can support a child.

I've seen an adorable child with flies on his face in real life now. I felt no surging pity in my commercial-exasperated heart. Maybe its just me but I've found that commercials like that only jaded me to the truth. And of course while having flies on your face is sad, I found the ladies with severed legs and missing teeth on the steps of the Hindu temple in Nepal to be a lot more disturbing. Seeing a bare severed leg for the first time is a shocking thing. It arrests you. Something is wrong here, something wrong at the most primordial level of the survival instinct. So where are the funds for the crippled-beggars? Where are the informercials with their broken, twisted limbs blown up on a sixty inch plasma screen? I know that my mind goes into sleep mode everytime I see a picture of a small, cute crying child.

And I've also witnessed (see my blog post about soap operas) the way organizations spend that money you donate. I've talked to many people here who been in and out of NGO's and they've all told me that the system doesn't really work in the long run.

Not really a big surprise. There are very few, if any problems in the world that can be solved by dumping money into it, especially with so many corrupt people in administration.

So what's the solution? Well of course the problem is a spiritual one, created because of corruption, greed, ignorance and a host of other spiritual problems. So the solution should probably be a spiritual one. And if that doesn't work for you, it should at least be a hands on solution. It should be less 'give a village a fish' and more 'teach a village to fish'. Instead of 'saving' a village, let's empower a village to save themselves.

Of course money is a part of that, but its not the most important part. The most important part is education, especially at a grass roots in-the-village level. If you do feel the inclination to give money, rather than go out and work with poverty with your bare hands, I'd advise that you do extremely thorough research. Just because an organization is well known does not garuntee it give you the most for that dollar.


For anyone else who has a blog, if its still Blog Action Day when you read this, why don't you write up your thoughts about poverty? Or at least talk about Blog Action Day. The way things truly change in this world is when enough people come to the same conclusions and have a change of heart.

Carts

I wrote a post about carts but at just that time I got an e-mail asking where all the photos went and now I've been holding off posting until I can get my camera and a cart together in one place. However I forget it every single day so you're just going to have to read until I can get my act together.

In Lucknow, and probably in other parts of India, its quite common to see hand or bicycle powered carts in the neighbourhood streets. Hardly a morning goes by with out the cry of “Aloooo!” ricocheting down the streets. Aloo means potato. Often these carts peddle vegetables, so that if you wanted you could do your daily vegetable shopping when the cart comes down the street. One day Nicole and I were walking back from the office and she wanted some vegetable so we stood very still, listening for the vegetable seller and trying to guess from where he was shouting. Melody had a theory that they have a very special way of shouting, and it certainly seems so, because their shouts seem to carry very well.

There are also carts, usually pulled by bicycle, which buy garbage, such as plastic bottles and bags. They then sell this garbage to factories for recycling. Our garbage man also has a bicycle cart, with four massive burlap sacs in the back into which he empties our trashcan. Even though I’ve never said anything to the garbage man except, “thank you” and “one minute” (both in Hindi), he’s probably my favourite person that I’ve never talked to in the whole world. He’s probably in his thirties, has only one arm, and he has two children that help him sometimes. He always wears the same blue shirt everyday. There are also popcorn carts, and men with little toy horns or cotton candy sometimes walk down the street.

Many ‘shops’ operate from carts. There is an intersection not far from our house, which always has several fruit stalls, and at least one teashop, which are simply on wooden carts with metal wheels.


In other news a new volunteer from America is coming! Apparently she's involved in dance and will be staying for around a month. So she and I will be moving back to the office.

Weather is Cloudy with a Slight Chance of Catastrophic Floods

I realized the other day that I never did a post on weather, which is an odd thing considering that weather can be such a big deal in India, especially when you’re from the Great White North. If I have done one already and just forgot, someone please tell me.

When I first arrived in India, I was surprised to find it very cold. Unlike Canada you can’t get away from the cold in India because they don’t have central heating or insulation in the houses. The houses here are made of bricks. Between late February and mid March the weather was gorgeous, sunny but nice and cool. Then as the season progressed it began to get hot. It was a dry heat, and I think the hottest it reached was about forty-three degrees. A killer when you’re under the sun, but survivable under a fan. Luckily the hottest season was during that teacher-training course which we held in the Bahai Centre, and the Bahai Centre is a very cool building.

In Canada we don’t truly sweat. I never understood what sweating was like, or what it was for. You sweat when you work out, or on those rare ‘hot’ days. In India sweat is your friend. At night you lie on your bed, your blanket discarded on the floor, wearing as little as decency allows and sweating copiously. The fan circulates the air, or a breeze comes through the screen and when it hits your sweat you are, for a brief moment, beautifully cool. Before I came to India I didn’t realize that sweat was salty but there were times when I could have seasoned a meal from my skin.

But Forty-three degrees isn’t really that hot in India. Every one was warning me about forty-eight degrees, telling me horror stories about fifty in the shade. But it didn’t happen. The great cataclysm never came and therefore my novels that take place in the desert will always lack a little something. The monsoon came early this year, and it never really went away. The heat dropped to the thirties, but the humidity sometimes made it feel a lot worse.

My comfort had grave effects of course. Mango season was cut short, and many of the mango blossoms were torn off the trees by incredible down pour. This meant a smaller mango yield and apparently some farmers who were in debt even committed suicide because they didn’t grow enough crops to pay the bills. When things go bad in India its very grim.

In the past month or so the long rains had another, more obvious effect. There was flooding in many parts of India with thousands of people displaced from their homes. In Lucknow the Gomti River flooded over a neighbourhood not far from our own. We went there to visit a family not long after the flood receded and the whole thing smelled of fungus.

However when the rain did disappear the weather quickly became hot and humid. But now autumn is on the way and the weather is cooling down.

It's the Little Things

I’m finding a little difficult to think of interesting posts because after nine months in India I’ve gotten pretty used to it. Little things that would be strange, incredible or even illegal in Canada are perfectly normal here.

For example the other day we were driving along and saw that someone had built a tent in the middle of a roundabout at a busy intersection. If someone tried to move onto a round about in Canada they’d get kicked out pretty quickly.

Just today I was standing outside a store waiting for Sohayl. In front of the store was an area paved by flagstones, a sort of parking lot for motorcycles and scooters. A busy road ran alongside the parking lot and on the other side of the road was a school. It was early in the morning so there was a large crowd of students moving into the school, and parents watching them safely cross the road.

In the cracked and worn parking lot there was a little tap, and there in this incredibly public place, was a little boy, perhaps ten, going through his morning routine. He bathed in the tap wearing nothing but blue shorts, then put on a shirt. He wrapped a towel around his legs (men in India often wear long pieces of cloth around their legs, a bit like a sarong) and then with it on changed his shorts from a blue to a yellow pair, put on some pants and was ready for another day. All of this beside of a busy intersection with tons of people wandering around, and driving by.


And just so you're all up to date, Chase left about a week ago.