Happy Diwali!

Heretofor Diwali is officially named "Most Fun Holiday." If we find a way to add dancing to this year's seder, however, perhaps Pesach can catch up in this category (not that it's really appropriate to talk of such things.) The night before Diwali is Kali Puja, to honor Kali, the goddess of black magic. Kali statues are put in pandals of different sorts throughout the city. She usually has a blue or black face and is always sticking her bright red tongue out because she has stepped onLord Shiva. The statues always feature Shiva, literally under toe, and Kali holding severed heads. On Kali puja people hold ceremonies at home, talk, and eat. For Bengalis the puja runs from 10pm to 3am. Dinner is served post puja. Women wear their finest silk saris and gold jewelry. One young kid- Gora's nephew- recognized me from an event I attended recently at his school (an impressive exhibition of facts about countries around the world). The kid told Gora, "I know your wife already from my school. She was the featured guest." I was an attendee not a featured guest, and I am not married; neither is Gora.

The following evening, on Diwali, the real revelry began. This year I went to a home puja at my friend Gora's uncle's home. The family holds wild pujas every year. Starting at around 6:30pm the evening began with live baul music. My favorite! Baul music comes from nomadic communities. It is traditional Bengali folk music. I was so excited to see a live band from Shantinigetan (college started by Rabindanath Tagore for the study of various traditional arts), and they played for many hours with traditional instruments. A friend's wife translated some of the songs for me, one of which was a hateful rage against cellphones (a modern take on a traditional art form).

During the baul music kids, their parents, and the servants lit off crackers on the sidewalk and in the middle of the street (while cars sped by or swerved around the fire display). By the end of the night when the parents and kids were too tired to light off crackers, the servants were instructed to take over this job, with specific instructions as to where and how many to light. The street kids collected the used up (and unexploded!) crackers, and were sometimes given sparklers or butterflies to light off. The funniest type of cracker was one called "The Generator." When lit, the only function it serves is to make the sound of a power generator. Perplexed, I asked what the novelty of such a thing is. I was told that power outages (or load shedding as it is called) was once much more common in Kolkata than it is today, so the sound of a generator was a welcome thing. In addition to crackers, there are horrendous toys which one lights, whose only function is to make a ear shattering bang. Apparently these were outlawed, as were any noise makers which are louder than 95 decibels. However, lots of these hateful noise makers were lit off this year, with the effect that all present will probably head to the hearing aid store a few years earlier than planned.

Following the baul concert and cracker lighting, the aarti was performed. The aarti is a puja (religious ceremony) where people dance around infront of Kali with insense and coconuts in clay pots. Married women feed the Kali statue and decorate her. Then the married women smear everyone else's face with red paint. They smeared mine in a circle, and then told me that as a result I will soon marry. Yea, we'll see how Kali feels about that. Ha. After the smearing I was pulled into the dancing fury. Drums pounded out the beat and the incense scented the air, heated up the room to around 100, and nearly smoked me out of the room. Yet still, I kept dancing. One didi (aunt) put the clay pot in her mouth and danced and spun around with her eyes closed. She ended up spreading the burning coconut cinders all over the place, and banging into people as she is so. She's known as the nutty didi, and her aarti performance is sought after every year.

After the aarti, at perhaps midnight or 1am, the kali statue was hauled onto a truck. Then the real fun began. Everyone stared dancing in the middle of the street, infront of the truck carrying Kali. There were lot of drummers and lots of crackers. We danced in the street for perhaps one mile or so, and then more people than could fit piled onto the back of the truck with the drummers and with Kali. The dancing and drumming continued as the truck drove through the city, to one of the Hoogly (tributary of the Ganges) River ghats, where Kali was spun around (7 times?) and then pushed into the River. The dunkers then threw the holy water of the Hoogly onto us gawkers, and Kali floated away. The other 8,000,000 Kali's from Kolkata also float away, and are recycled by river scavengers along the way each year. At about 2am or later we arrived back at the house, where we sat on mats laid out on the floor, and ate prashad (blessed food- this time rice, chutney, mutton, and sweets) with our hands and from banana leaf plates. After eating the prashad Diwali is officially over. Til next year.