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Published: October 29th 2011
A moon and a mosque
One of the most beautiful views in the whole city, I think...Namaste!
My "Week with Dengue" was terribly unexciting. It knocked me out a lot more than I was expecting it to even though I took oil of oregano every day! I had to spend a week just in bed resting and watching girly movies and generally just trying to get healthy again so there is not a whole lot to report on or blog about, unless you want to hear about all the movies I watched (think along the lines of She's All That and the Wedding Singer hahaha). One plus that came out of that time is learning about the incredibly kind nature of Aaron, my Australian friend, who every single day either brought me something to feel better or met me somewhere in Pahar Ganj, walking at the slow pace I was forced to take due to the pain of the fever, keeping me company the whole time. I mentioned before in the other blog I know, but I want to extend some more gratitude his way! He left about a week ago with promises to return soon (Aaron I am seriously holding you to that 😊 )
Another really funny thing that happened is
Electrical Safety!
Adam Lees, think you could do something to fix this?? that apparently dengue causes this intense rash all over your body, which I didn't know about, so imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning and looked down to find my entire body was all red and angry-looking. I got on Google and figured out it was a part of dengue pretty fast but there was a moment where I was like, "OK, NOW what do I have?!" hahahaha! It cleared up after a day or two and by last weekend I was on my way to recovery!
I spent most of last weekend with the Germans (Wolle and Joern, who are volunteers, and Bastien, their friend), cooking at their flat and trying to find a tea shop with Wolle that involved a long foray into old Delhi and me doing the everlasting barter battle with autorickshaw drivers, only to find that the tea shop was closed (of course, probably the ONLY tea shop in India that ever closes!). We then went into a dilapidated park to people watch for an hour, and with that weekend behind me, I felt ready to face this past work week, my first back since being sick.
It wasn't
Roadside puja!
It's everywhere... much of a work week, though, because Wednesday was DIWALI, the Hindu festival of lights and one of the biggest holidays of the year. Diwali is what would happen if someone took Christmas, amped it up by a factor of ten, mixed in fireworks worthy of Canada Day on Parliament Hill, amped THOSE up by a factor of about 10,000, and then allowed toddlers with no sense of safety to light them all off. In other words, complete, utter and beautiful (although slightly dangerous) mayhem. I worked on Monday and on Tuesday SBT had a Diwali lunch for all the volunteers at the big boys' home (picture 190 kids who used to live on the streets on a Halloween-like sugar high and you will get a sense of what the afternoon was like!). It was tons of fun, great food and SUCH a nice opportunity to have all the volunteers get together for once. We helped paint the kids' faces and light all the little oil lamps and put them around the rooftop of the boys' home and just generally loved every minute of this special celebration.
Wednesday we had our own really long and fun Diwali day!
Sunset
Another terrific rooftop view, this time from the Germans' flat Wolle and Bastien met me in the morning at my hotel, where everyone was in great moods, wishing each other "Diwali Muubaarak!" or "Happy Diwali!". We went to a vegetable market to buy spices and ingredients for our dinner that night and the spice man drew festive Diwali pictures all over the garam masala that I bought which I thought was adorable (and therefore he will be my go-to spice guy from now on - I am so easily impressed!). We went back to the Germans' flat for a bit and then to the flat of the other SBT volunteers and had a picnic, potluck lunch on their rooftop which was just lovely, all these people from all over the world come together to hang out on this new holiday that we are lucky enough to be a part of! The Germans and I then went to their place and cooked up some dal, which we never ended up eating, because by that point the shopkeeper from downstairs had invited us down to drink whiskey. This being a festive occasion, I donned my sari and away we went!
From this point on, I had probably the best experience
Diwali Mela!
Getting my face painted with the Indian flag I have had in India on this trip so far. We sat in the shop and sipped whiskey and soda for a while, before I got us invited to Kumal's house for his family puja, or prayer/offering ceremony. A word on pujas: they are one of the best parts of Indian culture because they happen everywhere, all the time, and illustrate so clearly and honestly the devotion to the divine that all Indian people possess. Where else in the world do you see a bunch of women get together in the evening, not for happy hour cocktails and gossip, but to chant and pray and ring bells in order to connect with the divine? Where else will 16-year-old boys construct a shrine in the middle of a market area and then proceed to wave lamps and feathers in front of this statue of a goddess for the next 3 weeks? It is something that, every time I see it, reminds me of why I love India so much and is one of the things here that resonates really strongly with me.
So the fact that we got to go to Kumal's house and be a part of his
Peaceful lights
This was post-face-painting, pre-firecrackers family's puja was particularly special. We all went to his place where his wife and sons welcomed us with huge smiles. His eldest son put dots of red powder on our foreheads and handed us flower petals which we held onto while his wife began chanting from her prayer book and Kumal circled a small tray of offerings (oil lamps, flowers, sweets) clockwise around the small, brightly-lit shrine in their living room. Each family member took a turn and then it was the foreigners' turn, which had its share of giggles as Wolle was circling his tray around in the wrong direction and I knelt down without first covering my head. We were lucky they have such good senses of humour! We all threw our flower petals as an offering on the shrine at the end and prayed for another prosperous and love-filled year. Then Mini (Kumal's wife, and from what I gather, the one who really runs the show!) invited me to come to the temple with her and their maid, whose name is actually also Pooja, and so of course I accepted and we went to a Krishna temple around the corner from where they live, where I
Garam Masala!
Happy Diwali! With my spice artist in the spice market. tried to keep up as we chanted "Hare Krishna" and walked around the central shrine, alternately spinning around and touching the feet of different deities painted along the walls. I understood not even a little bit of what was going on but nevertheless, as always, I was so touched and felt so privileged to be let into this obviously very important act of devotion for this family I had met approximately 45 minutes before,
After collecting prasad, or food that has been blessed by the temple, we went back to the house where it was fed to each of us in turn by Mini, before we were allowed to start drinking again, which this time was scotch and soda, and which was the reason why my day post-Diwali was so miserable. We were sat in Kumal's living room, under a giant Om symbol painted on his wall, drinking whiskey and eating delicious home cooked food, when they decided that it was time to light off the family's share of firecrackers. So we climbed up to their rooftop and played with sparklers, snaps, bottle rockets, and these other things called "Classic Green" which are essentially just loud exploding things
Cheers!
So glad! and aren't really fun, they're just scary, especially when people on the other rooftops throw them towards us (which happened the day before to Joern) (although to be fair Wolle had shot a bottle rocket at some kid's head by mistake so it was probably just karma!). We had a solid hour of this before we packed it in and went back to the Germans' flat....
... Where we had our own bag of fireworks waiting for us! So again, we joined in with all the other rooftops around us in lighting off bottle rockets and other assorted explosive paraphernelia for another hour or so before Bastien and I went to an all-night Kali puja at a temple nearby. Kali is the best goddess in my opinion - fierce, unstoppable, strong and with a take-no-prisoners attitude. Hindu History lesson: The story goes that Earth was being overrun by demons and evil beings, and so all the gods and goddesses were like "Shiva (God of destruction), for the love of God(s), please do something about this mess!". Shiva thought for a while and then sent down his current girlfriend, Kali, who he knew was fierce and strong and could take
on any evils that lay in her path. Kali went down to Earth on a rampage, doing away with every last demon and stringing their skulls around her neck. The only problem was, she got so drunk on the blood of her victims that she went a little overboard and started killing everyone in her path, even the good guys. So all the gods and goddesses said to Shiva "Man, your girl is going nuts down there! You've got to stop her!". So Shiva went to Earth and lay down in front of Kali during her bloodthirsty frenzy, and just as she was about to step on him and send him into oblivion, she saw that it was Shiva and stopped with her foot in midair, so shocked that her tongue fell out of her mouth and she has remained that way ever since.
The Kali puja itself just entailed a lot of chanting, singing, and making offerings so that this mega-goddess would be on our side and slay the evils that lie in our paths. At 2 a.m. though, and after a very long couple days of Diwali, I only lasted about half an hour at the
Shannon lights a firecreacker!
Ha ha! Someone with no idea about my track record with coordination thought this was a good idea! temple before I headed home to the Hotel Relax and crawled into bed, dreaming sweet dreams and plugging my ears against the booming fireworks that, for crazy reasons only they know for sure, the entire city of Delhi was still setting off....
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Thomas Nietmann
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Glad you are writing again Shannon! I look forward to the next......