Procession in Pushkar

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I had expected to see lots of street processions in Pushkar during the festival, but it was a while before I saw the first one. I was alone in the hotel room because Tracey had gone off early in the morning to photograph camels, old men in big turbans, scowling beggars, and suchlike. My laziness was rewarded by the appearance of this procession right outside the hotel, which overlooks the main bazaar street. First, before anything was visible, came the noise. A frightful ear-splitting but vaguely musical din, even louder than the normal bazaar din, which steadily and unbelievably increased in intensity until finally the procession came into view.

The vanguard of the procession was a sort of cart, bearing a sign with the legend "Sunder Brass Band", and weighed down by a collection of loudspeakers that would not have been out of place at a Rolling Stones concert. That explained the noise level. This cart was being pushed by three men, all dressed identically in blue western-style suits several sizes too big, white shirts with a too-large collar size, and blue neckties hanging loosely at various eccentric angles. Following the cart were about ten musicians, all with the same blue uniform, and playing enthusiastically but without much discipline, in an indeterminant musical genre, on a wide variety of instruments including tubas, horns, trumpets, bugles, clarinets, cymbals, and drums. They were clearly enjoying themselves hugely and walked with a proud swagger rather like a New Orleans Street Band.

Immediately behind the musicians came a tight-packed group of maybe fifty guru figures, mainly old men with long straggly beards and clothed in what one imagines to be traditional guru clothing, mainly white robes and turbans. They marched slowly with a funereal tread and solemn expressions. However there was one figure out of step with the rest. He was slightly in front of the main group, was dressed in bright orange robes, and was dancing manically to the music, with wildly flailing arms, and hip movements that would have done credit to an exotic dancer in a Casablanca nightclub. I was reminded of the long-lost uncle who always turns up drunk at a wedding reception and embarrasses himself on the dance-floor. There is no alcohol in Pushkar so this must have been down to religious fervour.

Immediately behind the gurus came a tight-packed group of maybe 150 women, mainly young or middle-aged, all wearing colourful saris. Each woman had an earthenware pot balanced on her head, and each pot contained a coconut, the coconut sitting in the pot like an egg in an eggcup. The women were smiling and chatting amongst themselves.

The procession moved on, eventually the noise subsided. I was left with a powerful and complex mixture of sensations, impossible to describe adequately, but which contained elements of joy of life, deep spirituality, and Pythonesque hilarity. I have seen much bigger processions since then, with many elaborately decorated camel-drawn carriages containing people convincingly dressed up as Hindu dieties, and so on, but none has made the same impact as that first one. I think it was the coconuts that did it.

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Comments

[pete]

coconut
what happend to the coconut?