Festival!

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Today we woke up and walked nearby to a place to catch a bus to a village festival. There are already 17 of us, but we were not the only ones going to this festival. There were two whole buses of foreigners going, all from various organized tours.

When we arrived, it was hot and sunny and so so bright. As we approached the village, welcomers gave us yellow flower leis, but instead of being round like our leis in Hawaii, they had an extra appendage of flowers hanging. These are the kind of leis reserved for the Gods. They are offered in shrines, and I learned that you are not even allowed to smell them, because the first whiff is meant to be for the Gods. Why were we given these leis? Either 1) to mark us as tourists, or 2) because God is in all of us, and you must worship the God in everyone.

There were dancers with the most elaborate makeup and costumes, men on stilts with horse costumes as if they were riding horseback, and drumming and music everywhere. We walked through the village towards to throbbing hub of action in the center, but along the way there were so many festively dressed people, I wanted to take pictures. And since this was a place where tourists are welcomed, we were assured it was ok to take pictures. Narrow winding roads. Women and children poking out from every doorway. A man who I think worked for this whole production adopted me at some point because I kept lagging behind. He'd point out more things for me to take pictures of.

In the center of the village was a space for performance in the round, surrounded by various forms of seating, from a thatch covered shady area with plastic chairs, to the sun-beated concrete. There were entirely too many people. This village had exceeded its maximum carrying capacity by 300%. Everyone was hot and anxious for the performances, and everyone with a camera was clammering for a good spot.

First were the men on stilts with fake horses, and following were women dancing with the same headdresses like the girls at the NGO, a clown/magician who did some magic tricks that were much too small scale for most of the crowd to see, though one thing he did was pull about a mile of colorful paper from his mouth. I enjoyed it, but I was tremendously overwhelmed by the crowd and the heat. And also by the fact that several times local people were kicked out of their seats so that I could sit down. NO! That is not ok. This is their celebration, and I am the visitor, so I should get to squeeze in wherever I can, but I should not be given special treatment. In some ways, the whole thing made me feel like I was a celebrity, but I was not sure what I had done to deserve such fame.

Speaking of fame, they made us but those headdresses on and dance with them. Then they realized we were not coordinated enough to do that, so they made us stand and get our picture taken.

I eventually went back to the part of the crowd where there was shade and zero visibility of the "stage", because I knew I was getting crazy sunburned. Some kids started talking to us, and one got interested in my purell hand sanitizer that I have hanging as a keychain. They thought it was food. I showed them how to put it in their hands and rub the hands together and then, to demonstrate that they are clean, to smell the hands. This brought on an onslaught of child purell obsession, which I could never have anticipated. Suddenly I was surrounded with children, holding their hands out, and I am sure they don't understand the purpose of it, other than to smell different. How do you explain, "It kills 99% of germs" to a village child in India? Especially when they don't speak English.

There was some kind of theatrical dance in which two people had massive head-masks painted pink with blond hair. I imagined they must be some representation of british, and I kept waiting for the beheading of one of them, followed by cheers from the audience, or something like this, but nothing happened.

At the end, we ate in a large room, on the floor, off of a banana leaf. We thought it would be a light lunch, but I was stuffed at the end. Before we left, they asked us to fill out a questionnaire about how they could improve the festival next year. WHAT? This festival is yours, not mine! Do what you want to do! That was crazy to me.

In the evening, we went to the huge temple, around which Madurai was built. It is so big, that once you enter the first gate, there is basically an entire city inside. Shops, restaurants, people's homes, everything. We went to a rooftop to see some of the towers with the beautiful late afternoon light. A bunch of people were suckered into buying things at exhorbitant prices.

Once we got inside, it was already dark. We had been devoured by mosquitos, and I got to see first hand some of the results of a culture that is sexually repressive. No sex til marriage is the official stance, and a group of men wearing black from another temple, which the Dr had warned us not to go near, were practically foaming at the mouth. As they lined up next to us, they each grasped the shoulders of the man in front of him, as if they had to hold on to something to refrain from pouncing. Even inside, as the Dr showed us statues of different goddesses with one hand, she waved away the men with the other hand. She just told them in Tamil, "Go! Why are you standing there? You have seen enough!" The men in our group took the responsibility of creating a barrier around us. This is doing little to foster my sense of feminist freedom. This is not a country where I feel I have much freedom. The only freedom I get is from the fact that I'm a foreigner, and thus don't play by the same rules. But never going somewhere alone at night, and accepting that I shouldn't, and rarely going anywhere alone during the day, is hard for me to swallow. I am accustomed to being able to go ANYWHERE alone.

Discomfort aside, what a beautiful temple! It was built 2000 years ago, and has never had a fresh coat of paint, and yet the entire interior and exterior are so magnificently painted in brilliant colors. As before, we were not permitted to go into the inner sanctum, being non-Hindus, but Vinit, the Dr, and Umila could go in, so we, exhausted by then, waited near the entrance to the sanctum. I feel like we did too much in one day, so I wasn't able to properly enjoy all of it, and I didn't enjoy all of it, but it's all part of the experience.

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