Holi!

Gulal

Holi is a delightful Indian festival that quickly became my favorite as of today. It celebrates colors, and, as all Indian holidays I know about, commemorates a deity vanquishing a demon, and, ipso facto, good triumphing over evil. It also celebrates the spring, the beginning of the harvest and is now mostly a cultural, rather than religious, celebration. The holiday is observed by throwing colored powder, called gulal, on everyone around you, as well has having water fights and generally running around. Yesterday (the day before Holi), Hannah and I went to a clothes market and then came home before meeting up with friends for dinner. Every time we were on the street, kids on balconies above us would pelt us with water balloons. They usually missed, but one time they got us good, and we spent an auto ride drying ourselves and licking our wounds. People tend to get CRAZY for Holi, and foreigners are especially targeted, which is why we decided to just stay in our neighborhood rather than try and find the biggest festival site or something. 

Waiting with water balloons on the balconies...

Dhol player at the party

Several days before the actual festival, our landlord, Manish, who has been wonderful to us throughout the year, invited us to a Holi party at a neighbor's house. He said that a news show had contacted him about filming people playing Holi (throwing the gulal) before the actual day, so they could air footage on Holi. We showed up in clothing we knew would get ruined, and arrived to fine about twenty people, not one of whom we had ever seen before, standing around listening to a drummer playing a dhol (like a two-sided Indian bongo drum). It was awkward, especially when they kept goading us to dance (by ourselves, in front of everyone) like hired entertainers. But the people were very nice and it was a good introduction for the real thing. To see the whole clip of the news segment, click here.

This morning, the day of Holi, we arose to the sounds of chairs being set up in the park and water balloons bursting. At around 10:30, we geared up in white clothes, moisturized our faces and oiled our hair (to prevent the color from staining too badly) and headed upstairs to play Holi on the roof with Manish, his wife and their two young girls, who are the CUTEST, most fun kids, and we've become attached to the whole family. Reena, the mom, was standing with a hose continuously filling buckets with pink dye to color the water, while the girls threw gulal and sprayed us constantly with waterguns that looked like giant injections. It was SO fun, so light hearted, just warm enough for the water to be refreshing. After a while, Sean and his girlfriend joined us, bringing way more gulal and giant water guns that they had spent way too much money on, considering that they leaked like crazy and had zero water pressure.

The girls play in a colorful puddle

Sean gets attacked!

With the whole family

It was an awesome experience, and after two full hours of madness, Reena gave us a snack and we collapsed into plastic chairs, thirsty, sunburned and exhausted, covered in color and content as could be. If any of you ever have a chance to play Holi, DO IT!

The three ETAs left in Delhi! We did it!

If only the Jews could have a holiday that involved lightheartedly attacking your relatives...

...just kidding. That would be the end of the Jews.

To see all of my photos from today, click here.

I am headed to Thailand on Friday the 29th for two weeks of bliss with Hannah, Sean and half the India ETAs. I'll try to post at least once while I'm there, but if not, see ya on the flipside! Love from Mother India.

First Impressions, Last Impressions

Well, the crazy adventure of teaching ended yesterday. I had a wonderful last day, full of beautiful cards made by my kids, plenty of hugs and even a few tears (but surprisingly not from me! I already had my cry at school on Monday). In cleaning out my locker, I found the notepad I used for my initial Hindi classes and in the beginning of the school year. Inside were some of the first impressions that I jotted down after my first few weeks:

• Teachers expertly pouring water in their mouths without touching the bottle
• Newspaper laid under shiny tiffins filled with yellow, orange and green curries with okra ("lady fingers"), potato and eggplant. In a second tiffin, rotis, torn gracefully apart, fingertips touched with yellow from the turmeric
• Brightly colored clothes, all in matching suits, flowing saris and dupattas, bangles on wrists, bells on ankles, rings on toes, and jewels in ears and noses. Hands with mehndi and foreheads with sindoor and bindis
• Empty bulletin boards, white walls and partner desks meant for two but crammed with four
• Children smiling, desperate for my attention, shoving papers and hands in my face, calling my name when I'm mid-sentence
• Children wanting to sing and perform, knowing which children are good singers and dancers
• Flooded halls during rain, chaotic arrival and departure via any and every means of transport short of camels and elephants
• Hot chai in the morning, burning my fingers and tasting of spice
• Laughter at my foolish attempts to say their names, blushing when I call on them, always standing and sitting and standing again, so EAGER to please, to tell me about themselves, to be in my favor
• Signing the attendance book, everyone cutting in line with no regard or awareness of my presence
• Children always waiting for permission to enter, serving and fetching for teachers
• Wet footprints when it rains, dusty footprints when it doesn't

As a thank you and farewell to my students, I edited a video from the several hundred photographs and dozens of videos I've taken over the past year. Below is a slightly edited version of the video I showed to my students during the last week of classes. It's a little long, but I recommend watching the whole thing...Enjoy!

And it's on to bigger and brighter things! Namaste, Navyug School.

Have Yourself A Hindustani Christmas

I spent my last few weeks of school before the break educating my students about the US holiday season. This of course began with a lesson about Hanukkah, and became, in effect, an introduction to Judaism. I began by explaining that I am not a Christian, that for the same reason Muslim students celebrate Diwali as a cultural, rather than religious holiday, I don’t celebrate Christmas in the way they’ve seen in movies and on TV. For many of the kids, this fact was a tough pill to swallow, so, being a visual learner myself, I drew a timeline that looked something like this:

I attempted, with limited success, to help them see that Judaism was a religion way before Jesus was born, and therefore Jesus has nothing to do with the Jewish religion. Then I asked why Christians celebrate Christmas, what the holiday commemorates. Answers to this question ranged from “Jesus birthday” to “Santa Claus” to “Ma’am, Christmas!” I did my best to clarify that the fact that Jesus is not part of the Jewish religion means that Jews are not going to celebrate his birthday as a religious occasion. I then told an abridged version of the Hanukkah story in which I had the kids do different hand motions when they heard certain words such as “Maccabees” and “oil,” and explained the miracle that is believed to have occurred. The good thing about teaching Hanukkah in India is that the holiday has many similarities with Diwali, from the lighting of oil lamps in the entrance and windows of the home, to the general celebration of light triumphing over darkness. I brought in my menorah, which the kids of all ages were fascinated by, explained the purpose of the shamash, and led them in a few rounds of the Dreidel Song and I’m A Little Latke. To hear Indian schoolchildren singing about dreidels and latkes was enough to endear me even more to them, despite the frustrating experience of explaining something so outside their frame of reference.

The next two weeks were all about Christmas in the classroom. Last year’s ETA had taught the kids some songs, and they were eager to practice their Christmas repertoires. What I found was that they knew some different words to songs like Jingle Bells, making the classroom sound like a confused cacophony when some sang the words they knew and others read from the lyrics I had written on posters. Teaching songs to my students is generally a fairly hilarious experience, as they generally have an intense amount of enthusiasm and no ability to regulate the volume of their voices. The melody is seldom distinguishable over the majority of students who just scream the lyrics at the top of their lungs, with or without a rhythm. This was especially true when I tried to teach some of the more advanced classes the Jingle Bell Rock. For kids who are such great dancers and singers, it’s hard to understand why they have such a difficult time following the tunes and rhythms I teach, no matter how much repeating or rhythm clapping I do.

For the second week of Christmas celebration, I cut out large Christmas trees out of poster paper, put a star on top and had the kids write Christmas wishes on smaller stars and circles I cut out of paper. Most students wished for “happiness in all world” or “family happy healthy,” while others opted for BMWs and bicycles. My favorite wishes were the ones claiming a desire to “become a cricket,” missing the crucial “er” that would make this statement less Kafka-esque. 

The icing on the Christmas cake, however, came when Sean, my fellow ETA who works down the street from me, showed up during 8^th period one day dressed as Santa Claus, complete with a giant sack brimming with candy. Though he had told me he would come at some point dressed as Santa, a suit which he had requested his parents in Seattle to send him for exactly this purpose. Sean planned his entrance for weeks, buying speakers and creating a special Christmas playlist to blast music from his stuffed stomach as he walked around spreading Christmas cheer (read: candy). I was sitting on the playground with my 7B class when a whole group of kids came running up, shouting, “Ma’am! Sean Sir! Santa Claus is here! Sean Sir has lots of toffees!” I walked around to the front of the building to see Sean in full Santa getup, swarmed by my students, his beard in shambles around his face and his sack weighing him down like an anchor. He walked around the playground with me, children hanging from his every limb, chanting, “Santa Claus! Santa Claus! Santa Claus!” and a few of them even having the presence of mind to sing the song we had practiced, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” After circling the building, we went inside moments before the final bell rang, teachers and students alike poking their heads around corners to see what the commotion was about, Sean going out of his way to make sure each teacher got some candy. We walked up to the staff room so I could get my stuff, thinking that the kids would still respect the sacred rule of not entering the staff room, but alas, the allure of Santa was irresistible and the kids flooded in. I was nervous that the other teachers would be annoyed, but the way that Sean made sure to get them candy made them smile and laugh at the absurdity of the scene. We made our way out of the school as the bell rang and kids streamed out of their classrooms to join the swarm of Santa sycophants. 

By the time we exited through the main entrance, the entire school, students and teachers alike were abuzz with excitement, gathering round and reveling in the madness. I couldn’t believe how even the sternest of teachers, the men who smack students left and right and have perma-frowns, the shrill women with their sharp noses and annoyed sighs seemed delighted by the presence of this candy-bearing character. We set them up for a photo before Sean was swept away by the principal’s assistant, a man of medium height with a thick black moustache and hair dyed bright red with henna. He had Sean stand in between himself and the principal so I could take a photo, and then proceeded to hound me every day afterwards for a copy of the picture. I don’t think he could have been more excited if the Prime Minister was visiting. As Sean and I tried to make our escape, the kids continued to swarm around us, to the point that some of the teachers had to physically hold them back. Crossing the street to get an auto, the kids surrounded the vehicle, reminiscent of those images of the Beatles or Elvis leaving concert venues, unable to move forward in their cars because of all the screaming fans. We finally moved forward, the auto wallah laughing as the music continued to chime from Sean’s stomach and the happy cries faded into the background.

But the adventure wasn’t over. Up the elevator we went to the metro station, the people sharing the elevator cracking up. When we emerged, the few children in the station came up to Santa with stars in their eyes, amazed and awed by what they were seeing, even more so when toffees were handed to them by Santa himself. We boarded the metro, and Sean gave out candy to all our fellow passengers, kids and adults alike, who were so thrilled to receive it…I couldn’t believe how happy it made these grown adults to receive pieces of candy from a man in a red fat suit. Sean kept the music playing, and we danced when a particularly upbeat song played, to the extreme amusement of the other metro riders. Everywhere we went, people stopped and stared and pointed, but in such a happy and excited way, I felt like I was in the movie Elf.

I love Christmas lights, but other than that, the holiday has never really appealed to me. The music is nice for a while but I always get so sick of it and there’s something about Christmas that always felt exclusive to me. But Indians love themselves a celebration, no matter the religion or tradition. It felt nice to be able to embrace the holiday through the novelty and joy experienced by those around me.

Diwali at School

I've been doing so much traveling that I haven't had a chance to update you on what's going on in my Delhi life! Last Monday, before we left for Mumbai and the day before Diwali, we celebrated the holiday at school. Of course, half the students and teachers didn't show up that Monday because they were preparing for the holiday, but that's neither here nor there. Diwali is a festival of lights--the Hindi word for it is Deepavali, deep meaning light and avali meaning a row. The holiday is a big deal, especially in Delhi, where people light so many firecrackers in the weeks leading up to the holiday that if you closed your eyes, you'd swear you were in a war zone. It was more than a little terrifying....but so is India, I guess. There are several stories about why the festival is celebrated, most having to do with various gods slaying various demons. If it weren't for all the terrifying firecrackers wielded by children ages 0-30, it would be a really lovely holiday. 

Jyoti prepares the Diwali altar for the stage

Diwali altar

The kids were all abuzz with excitement, those in the chorus wearing white with red scarves.

Some of my girls were wearing fancy, sparkly saris in bright colors, while an eighth grade boy was walking around shirtless, dressed as Hanuman, the monkey god.

The assembly consisted of songs and dances, and was, from start to almost finish, adorable.

Sakshi and Prachi twirl it

The tinies did a dance too!

A group of my students from eight, ninth and tenth grades did an AMAZING dance that they choreographed themselves, portraying many major gods and representing their stories. Jasmeet, in the yellow pants was Ganesha, the shirtless Jaswinder is Hanuman, and others include Kali, Ram and Sita.

Final pose, displaying all the gods.
From left, Kali, Durga, Sita, Ram, Hanuman

The last 30 minutes of the assembly was a steady procession of teachers going to the podium to call other teachers on stage to thank them. The self-congratulatory display seemed like it would never end. 

Who doesn't love patting themselves on the back?

 In the few periods left after the assembly, my students busied themselves painting the plain clay diyas, oil lamps used to celebrate Diwali. Sometimes those kids just rock my world.

Love these littles.

These cuties made a Diwali display and then brought in teachers one by one
to surprise them by shouting "Happy Diwali!" when they entered. 

Mansi appreciates Madpreet's artistry

Finished diyas

In all, it was one of the best days at school I've had so far, and made me appreciate those kids all over again. To see the rest of my photos from Diwali at school, click here.

Durga Puja

Our plane from Varanasi landed in Kolkata late Sunday afternoon. After the hour and a half cab ride we took to our friends' house, we met up with Hunter, an ETA in Kolkata, who let us into the apartment he shares with three of the four other ETAs in that city. We were thrilled to finally be there, having heard so much about the festival for so long. Tangi was flying to meet us there on Tuesday and all five of the ETAs in Madurai were already there. In short, we were very excited to see all the other ETAs, whom we had gotten to know both at the pre-departure orientation in Austin and at the Delhi orientation we had when we first arrived. Though the groups in other cities seem to be having more social drama than we are here, I am very fond of all of the other people in the group. It's a great group of people to be a part of--everyone else is so smart and well-informed, adventurous and fun. Even though we were bracing ourselves to spend three nights in a four bedroom apartment with thirteen people, it was a great feeling of anticipation as we waited to see everyone else. When the rest of the group arrived at the apartment after their day of wandering the streets, the fun began immediately. Drinks were passed around and an impromptu dance party ensued. The best!

From left: Vaishnavi, Sandy, Sarah, Nicole, and Erin live it up!

After a while, we headed out to see the city in all its Durga Puja glory. Durga Puja is a celebration of the goddess Durga, wife of Shiva, the destroyer god, one of the most important of the hundreds of Hindu gods. The six-day holiday celebrates the yearly visit Durga makes to the human world, leaving her home in the heavens and seeing the people in the mortal world. They celebrate her by creating temporary shrines called pandals, decorated elaborately according to various themes and aesthetics. 

Inside the pandal

Same scene, but different

The pandals generally have a wooden frame and are covered with intricately molded styrofoam or fabric. Inside, every pandal depicts the same scene: Durga, holding a weapons given to her by other gods in each of her ten hands, riding a lion and slaying the devil and a demon in the form of a buffalo. She is flanked by her four children, Ganesh, the elephant-headed god of plenty and luck, Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, Karthik, referred to by my teacher as "prince charming," and Saraswati, goddess of knowledge and wisdom. Each of these demigods has its own animal companion, including the owl, the swan, the rabbit and one other animal (goat, maybe?) that I don't remember and can't find information about anywhere! Each pandal is sponsored, either by businesses or by neighborhoods and communities. Each neighborhood in the whole greater Kolkata area has its own pandal, causing hundreds of these structures to be spread throughout the city. Some are simple and clearly made by individuals who are devout but not necessarily artists, while others are the equivalent of the Christmas windows at Bergdorf Goodman. 

These neon displays looked like giant Lite Brites!

As we walked through the city, we visited different pandals and admired the creativity and worksmanship of the structures, built several weeks before the Puja and taken down a week or two after. In visiting the pandals, the point is not just to see the goddess in idol form, but also to be seen by her. As a result, people wear beautiful new clothes when as they go from pandal to pandal, so everyone is walking around the lit up city in starched, colorful garments in silk and golden thread. Whole families are out and about, no matter how late, admiring the lights and artistry, communing with their god and each other. We stayed out several hours that night, enjoying the night and each other, cramming sixteen people in a minivan to get to the largest pandal in the city and taking it all in. The atmosphere was so festive and joyful, though it did get extremely crowded and it became less pleasant to walk through the throng. In any case, I was exhausted from traveling and ended up going home with more than an eyeful of pandals and decorated Kolkata, eager to enjoy a good night's sleep. 

The next morning I woke up before most, and headed out with Sean and Sarah, an ETA in Madurai, to get coffee downtown. We had our drinks and then had kathi rolls, Kolkata's famous street food--a fried aloo parantha (like a thick potato-based pancake), filled with curried vegetables and a fried egg, and wrapped up into a delicious, greasy burrito-like delicacy. We walked to the park and watched a man herd goats there while we ate what must have been twice our recommended calorie intake (and enjoyed every bite). Afterwards we met up with the rest of the group for a bus tour of some of Kolkata's oldest and most traditional pandals. 

This one smelled incredible. Look at all those flowers!

It was fun--a lot of time schlepping between sites, but it was nice to be together and not have to think of the logistics at all. These pandals were essentially shrines created in older buildings, rather than temporary structures, but were beautiful nonetheless. At one of the places we went to, we saw a young girl dressed in an elaborate white costume, while her relatives oohed and aahed around her, taking pictures and adjusting her trappings. We were told that sometimes young girls are selected to dress like the goddess and have people revel as if she were the real thing. 

Goddess for a day...literally

Pandal hopping in their finest

Tangi arrived the next day, and it was great to see her. We ate brunch at a fancy breakfast place that has been around forever, and then spent the rest of the day walking around, seeing pandals and admiring the decorations throughout the city. We tried to go to some big markets, but everything was closed for the puja. In the evening, we went to dinner with the whole group, found that the restaurants were packed but ended up at a restaurant where we could all sit together. Bengal is known for its seafood, mostly prawns and a fish called bekti, and I ate it every chance I could get. I never knew I would miss seafood so much! All the Bengali food I tried was delicious, from the fish to the luchis, fried bread similar to pouri but smaller and made with refined flour. 

Dunkin' Durgas 

Discarded Durgas

On the boat

 The morning of our last day was spent lazily, waiting for everyone to get it together and eventually heading downtown to Park Street for breakfast. We lingered for a while there, and I got impatient, as it was the last, most eventful day of the Puja. At the end of the six days, all of the Durgas from all of the far reaches of the city are brought to the ghat on the Ganges and immersed, releasing her from this world back to heaven. They used to throw the idols in the river and leave them there, but environmental concerns over the past few years have led them to remove the idols after dunking them, placing them afterwards in an unceremonious trash heap on the river bank. I made my way down to the river with Hannah, Tangi, and four of the girls from Madurai: Kelly, Sarah, Vaishnavi and Nicole. We were walking to the water's edge to watch the ceremony, when we saw on the boat moored parallel to the bank none other than Hunter and Erin, dancing on the boat with their faces painted red and microphones in their faces, asking where they were from! Like a sign from Durga herself, the MC on the boat invited any interested foreigners aboard the boat right then. We took of our shoes and hiked up our pants to wade through the ankle-deep mud, walking up a plank of wood to reach the ship's deck. Hunter and Erin only then saw us and were thrilled at the amazing coincidence of time and place. The people on the boat were from a neighborhood community that was immersing their Durga, one member of which happened to be the vice principal of Hunter's school. When Hunter had shown up at the ghat, they were invited on the boat not even knowing this fact! Sometimes even India is the smallest of worlds. The hosts wanted us to be front and center, placing drumsticks in our hands, commanding us to dance and smearing our faces with the celebratory vermilion, something usually reserved for married women but I think they just thought it was fun to put it on our foreign faces. At one point it felt like three pairs of hands were on my face, rubbing in the rich red powder. 

Dance circle! Followed by the paparazzi...

We watched Durga's dive into the river, and danced on the boat for almost an hour. The boat stayed anchored most of the time, then departed to sail ten minutes down the river, at which point everyone got off and we walked back to where we had started. The whole experience was incredible, something we never could have planned but that made the whole trip. It was exactly what I had hoped for when I came to India, the kind of spontaneous, adventurous celebration that only a place like this can offer. I always say that the Indians are not playing around when it comes to celebrating. Music and dance and festive joy is so integral to peoples' lives here, regardless of caste, race, religion, education and wealth. I felt so privileged to have been invited into this world, into this joy and celebration. The feeling of dancing on the river, my face painted red and laughing with friends and strangers is something that will stay with me forever.

The hilarious epilogue to this story is that the river bank and boat were full of television and newspaper reporters, getting footage for the evening news and stories about the last night of the Puja. As we sat around in our pajamas that night, coming down from the high of our day, the Kolkata residents relieved at the end of this intensive month full of Durga, none other than our own faces came up as "Breaking News." Sarah, Hunter and Hannah had interviews on the segment, and the rest of us were shown front and center, banging on our drums out of rhythm but so happily that it didn't matter. I don't want to brag but I'm kind of a big deal in Kolkata nowadays. If you haven't already seen my photos from Kolkata, or just want a refresher to go with the explanation, click here and enjoy.

Happy ETA family!