Bang!!

Happy Diwali!

Last night, I spent this combo Christmas/New Year's-type holiday with Sneha Bang, a fellow HCU student, and her family--including puja, flowers, food, and FIREWORKS!

Across the board, Diwali is a festival of light with which Indians usher in the Hindu new year, keeping lights burning all night to make up for the lack of moon. What we call Christmas lights are everywhere, as well as tiny terra cotta lamps lining all the walkways and, of course, fireworks.

In Sneha's family, they give offerings to the Goddess Lakshmi for Diwali--lotus flowers, incense... and food. Truly delicious food, which we got to eat after Lakshmi got her fill.

I then proceeded to stumble all over the beautiful sand mandalas in the house:

[See, what was formerly square, before Sneha doctored it to remove my footprint.]

...as well as turn over all the oil lamps on the sidewalks by walking backwards into them.

The we all trooped outside to set off the fireworks. I have never set off firecrackers, not even sparklers, so this was a new pyromaniac chapter in my life. So exciting that I forgot to take pictures, while busy helping everyone set off upwards of a hundred firecrackers, hundreds of sparklers, and fireworks. Not only was Sneha's front yard alight with explosions, but ALL of Hyderabad was in a gunpowder extravaganza. Ordinarily crowded streets now had explosions on the "sidewalks" every few yards, and ALL the streets were littered with firework shells and paper. Everything was so close that sparks flew into our rickshaw on the way to Sneha's house and burnt a hole in Ben's pants. Ben, Melissa and I were just waiting for our entire rickshaw to go up in a burst of sparks, but I think the adrenaline from it all worked its magic. Especially once we got the fireworks in our own hands and were running around to set them off using the sparklers as fuel for the bigger crackers, and jumping because someone set off a cracker we weren't expecting.

The idea of an entire city lit up with explosions for the sole purpose of creating light to oust the darkness hit a chord. So different from the explosions that rocked the towns of Assam so soon after.

So here's to the Bang family (yes, that is really their name, and no, I did not realize the pun until just now) for their hospitality, and to dangerously beautiful explosions.

اس کا پنجابى نهى هے

I finally got to smack someone, albeit on the arm, and I was mistaken for a Panjabi. Go me.

At first the man at the window of the Ladies Car only wanted to shake my friend's hand, which she politely declined considering that it is a much more significant move in India to touch a woman, even to shake her hand. He kept asking, she kept shaking her head, and finally he just reached through the train window to grab her hand which was currently in her lap. At which point I smacked his arm away and gestured for him to go away. At which point she chimed in with "Jao, jao"--the talking-down-to-you way of telling someone to go away. Thankfully, he left. Not getting harassed was the reason we chose to sit in the Ladies car in the first place, and I subsequently offered to play bodyguard and smack anyone else who came near us.

To be quite honest, however, I've been harboring a strong desire to smack someone, something, for quite some time now. The underlying awareness that many Indian men don't view us as full members of society due to our sex without encountering any actual verbal or physical confrontation has created a pent up frustration ever since I was told that if man tried to touch me I should take off my shoe and smack him. I have yet to get physically harassed myself, but every time my girl friends have gotten felt up, sometimes to a dramatic extent, I want to go smack the guy for taking away their dignity. As this week is yet another holiday, I'm reminded how much I am torn between wanting to go downtown to celebrate, and not wanting to relive my friends' terrible experiences in massive crowds of men.

Even the students on my educated (and therefore more liberal than the average demographic) campus aren't immune, as I realized in one fateful Philosophy of Human Rights class when my fellow male students openly confessed that they thought there might be something to this sexism thing. Travis and Christopher saw me chomping at the bit to open my mouth to say something, but really, what could I say? What well phrased comment from a foreigner would erase 25 years of cultural conditioning? Thus I just fumed, let my wonderful (male!) professor defend my dignity, and felt helpless.

In any case, I've since resigned myself to the fact that I can't go around smacking people to relieve my frustration, and ventured out into town to get some groceries. Walking down the street, I overheard some young guy lean over to his friends and say something like, "Uska panjabi hei..." while staring at me. They all then proceeded to laugh, stop halfway through their sentences when I got closer, and then shoot louder flirtations at me. I, of course, ignored them. But also realized that I know enough Hindi/Urdu to know when I might have been mistaken for a Panjabi. Kids, I may be 4 shades darker than I usually am this time of year, but that doesn't make me Indian.

*edit*
Apologies to Arabic speakers for the ﻻ that made its way into the title. . . that was supposed to be کا , and only a weird idiosyncrasy of the Urdu script made me put the lam-alif in before I realized that it was a lam-alif. Why the Urdu کا feels the need to look so much like ﻻ I have no idea.

Take me to the Juicing room, please, Mr. Wonka.

Today, my skin is purple, because last night I wore a sari.

Tomorrow, I will make the water in my bucket blue from my laundry, read 100 pages of The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, and run 5.5 miles.

Kudos to Middlebury for becoming white, and to all you who blog the occasion.

"Things Indians LIke"

I had yet another one of those "Moments."

The Moments when you look around you and think, "Holy ___, I'm in India!" and all of a sudden the weight of the distance and the difference hits with full force. A bit like waking from a dream for a minute and then falling right back asleep into it. "Moments" normally include noticing things again; that is, the wide-eyed staring awe that first hit when you got of the plane comes back. Here's to a few wide-eyed Moments.


"Things Indians Like"

1. Exact change. When I get back to the states, I am going to kiss my pennies. I fail to understand how a tiny nuisance in your pocket suddenly becomes a hot commodity, but it's true--I value a Rs 5 coin almost as much as a Rs 500 bill. Why? Rs. 500 is almost useless on the streets. They will laugh at you. They will rip you off. Or just stare at you until you helplessly plead to passersby to make change. Remains a mystery as to why even the bus conductor who obviously has a hoard of change in his bag still wants exact change, but simply put, they just like exact change.

2. Chai. Most of people are aware of this, and spiced Irani chai remains hands down one of my favourite inheritances from Mughal India, besides the architecture.

3. Hacking up loogies. Memories of appalled middle schoolers squealing over some kid who managed to cough up a juicy one abound. Old men, young men, and the girls in my hostel all seem to have a mysterious control over their nasal passages with which to clear them out, and all within completely acceptable social practice. I still jump, however, when someone spits a big one right behind me on the street. The highlight, of course, was for my friend Tess while she slept on the train. On a bottom bunk with her head directly beneath the window, the elderly man across from her decided that the best way to rid his nasal passages was to hack one up, lean over Tess and spit it out her window. Needless to say, she wasn't terribly pleased. . .

4. Acid washed jeans and other 70s and 80s inspired mens wear. While the women remain strictly divided into saris, salwar kameez, or salwar kameez with a full black burqa from head to toe, mens wear comes in all shades of decals, flare-leg, tie dye, Reebok, acid-washed glory.

5. Cardamom.

6. Answering the phone with the question, "Where are you?" Never mind that it actually matters, although my brain normally interprets this question as, "Why on earth are you not here at ____ right now?" The question "Where are you?" is often followed by the question, "Have you taken [breakfast, lunch, dinner] yet?"