On the evening of the 11th, Rashmi's extended family gathered at her aunt's home in Patna for sweets and visiting. A lot of family members had travelled from other parts of India (Delhi, Pune, etc.) to observe Chhath with the rest of the family, so the apartment was packed with people. Plus, Rashmi had generously extended the invitation to the whole JPAL Patna team (and our associated friends), who had never experienced Chhath before. So we hung out for a while, and a friend of Nikhil's visiting from Lucknow entertained us all with his truly remarkable and hysterically funny impressions of celebrities, characters, and generally important people - Nikhil translated for me, but I was able to understand most of it, even if the context eluded me a bit. We had kheer made with a different kind of sugar than I'm used to - almost like unrefined brown sugar? It was really good regardless - Jeff and I both love kheer, and will never turn down an offer of it - so we're really lucky that it's a common treat during holidays.
Then, midday on the 12th, I went back to Rashmi's aunt's place to join them for the afternoon puja, which is done at a ghat, a small temple on the banks of the Ganga. There's one puja that's done in the afternoon, in honor of the sun before it sets, and then the family returns home, stays up singing traditional songs and celebrating, and then departs for the same ghat around 1am or 2am, to arrive before dawn to worship again. I didn't have the time or the stamina to join them for both, but I'm definitely glad I tagged along for the first puja, because it was a wild experience.
As usual, I had all kinds of inaccurate expectations that seem pretty silly in hindsight. For starters, I asked Rashmi if the ghat they visited was one that only their family went to, or if other people went too. I imagined the banks filled with small temples, and each family going into a separate one to do their puja. She laughed and told me that a lot of families go to the same place we would go. I understood later why she laughed at this question (see the photos). I also asked her, quite logically I thought, why she didn't just stay at the ghat overnight, since that would be much more convenient than having to travel back and forth in such a short period of time. Again, the answer was quite obvious once I actually reached the ghat.
But before we could get there, we needed some means of transportation. And by we, I mean me, Rashmi and over 40 of her family members, neighbors, and close friends. Since our contingent was quite large, her family rented a "lorry" (that's "truck" to us Americans), which arrived two hours late. We left our shoes at their apartment, spread out blankets in the truck bed and piled in like sardines, barefoot, alongside a half dozen huge baskets of prasad (प्रसाद), the fruit that was being brought to the river to be blessed and then eaten later. A few of the young guys climbed on top of the truck, but the rest of us sat below.
There really is no way to accurately describe the experience of that truck ride, besides to say that it was a blast. The women sang beautiful traditional songs for a while, and then the younger women played some games (which basically involved two teams competing with songs - I didn't understand the rules at all). Meanwhile, the toddlers in the group crawled all over everyone, we all napped periodically, and I chatted with Rashmi's sisters* (who spoke very good English).
Eventually, however, the traffic slowed to a crawl, and then stopped completely. Traffic jams in India are as unlike traffic jams in the US as you can imagine. Because no one stays in lanes, every available inch of space is filled with something - "four wheelers" (cars), "two wheelers/bikes" (motorcycles), "cycles" (bicycles), pedestrians, animals, carts, trucks - you name it. And there's no sense of waiting your turn in line, so when the traffic slows, everyone gets that much more aggressive.
Since we couldn't see much outside from the bed of the truck, after we'd been stopped and the engine was cut for over 20 minutes, Rashmi and I climbed up on top of the truck with the guys and surveyed the scene. It was deadlocked chaos, and it was pretty clear that there was nowhere for our truck to go. But we noticed that there was a growing stream of people simply leaving their vehicles and walking to the river. Pretty soon, our group had decided to follow suit, so I started to climb down from the top of the truck to join them. As I was coming down, I slipped and landed squarely on one of the baskets of prasad, stepping on it with my foot, while everyone gasped and screeched at me. I was completely mortified (stepping on blessed food is an obvious no-no), but Rashmi assured me that I hadn't caused any serious damage to their ritual, thank goodness!
Then we started walking (it was maybe 2km to the Ganga), on the edge of the highway, barefoot. I tried not to look down too much, since the roads are coated with all kinds of unmentionable and unrecognizable, squishy and poky things (I did think to myself on several occasions how grateful I was that I'd recently gotten my tetanus booster). It's awfully fun to be young and do not-quite-sensible things like this, right mom?
It didn't take too long to walk to the river, and even though it was quite late in the afternoon, there were still literally thousands of people on the banks. Everything was in motion - people carrying baskets down to the river, ritually bathing in the river, chanting over the prasad, lighting little cups of oil, burning incense. I tried to take some pictures, but the dim light and the steepness of the bank made it impossible for me to fully represent the scene. Thinking back on my earlier questions to Rashmi, I realized that there was physically no way for everyone (or even a fraction of the people here) to sleep here, even if they wanted to sleep on the muddy banks. I also found out later that I'd actually been recorded on the news (sorry, I didn't see the footage - my vet told me about it the next day) - "that crazy American, at it again."
It was funny, that even though I had in some nominal way studied Hinduism (I took a course on Religious Literatures of India), there was so much of the ritual that went right over my head. I wanted to ask all these questions about what Rashmi and her family thought about the ritual (Do you think the food is transformed in the ritual, or is it symbolic - a la Catholic v. Protestant Communion? What kind of relationship do you have with the sun deity? Is this an event that is primarily theological or cultural to you, if that distinction is even meaningful to you?) - and countless others, but I still haven't figured out a way to ask these questions without sounding like a theological tourist inside their brains, or sounding just plain rude.
After they'd blessed the baskets they brought, we loaded back up in the truck and headed home (after waiting for it for a while). There was nearly as bad traffic on the return journey, but I napped a lot of the way and made it home safe and sound.
Hurray for festivals!
*Rashmi of course introduced me to everyone in the group, and I tried my best to keep everyone straight, but it was complicated by the fact that there are broader definitions of family ties here; to address people you're close to, all older women are called "mother," all younger women are called "sister," all younger men are called "brother," etc. So it took me a while to figure out who Rashmi's actual mother and actual sisters are. Now that I'm starting to get used to this different system, I actually really like it - I hope I'm not stereotyping too much, but it seems to me that extended families play a more prominent role than I'm used to, which is reflected in the terminology that is used.
What music do they sing down there? Is Taylor Swift popular???
ReplyDeleteIn my world religions class, they said that the Indian government is always trying to help improve the environment because tons of people dump stuff into the Ganges after their rituals... did you actually go in the river?