Pooja on a full stomach

I don't know if right now can be called 'festival season'. Frankly speaking, I don't think a week has gone by when there hasn't been some sort of celebration of some god, or more often goddess, which required some sort of pooja [Hindu prayer] and, of course, the cancellation of classes. But the past few weeks have just seemed to be more spectacle and spiritually filled than normal.

Last week marked the end of Rammadan, culminating with the feast of Eid, which ends the month long fast. Because of Hyderabad's history [being under the moghul rule and having close ties with Persian kings and traders] and because I live in a more Muslim part of town, the past month was especially loud and meat-filled. What does that mean? Well, loud comes from the call to prayer which is blasted from the loud speakers of a mosque nearby at around 4:30 every morning. There was also a man with a piercing voice and Stomp-quality stick who walked around my apartment to wake those especially deep-sleeping devotees. But mostly, I learned, that Rammadan in Hyderabad is the festival of Haleem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabadi_haleem

The Wikipedia entry above has the details, but as a casual eater, Haleem is basically lamb that has been boiled and combined with beans, onions, garlic and chilli powder and mashed into a paste, which is eaten with roti. It has the consistency of babyfood but is incredibly fatty and a wonderful somnolent. And it is everywhere and eaten by every one. Containers and take-away orders are filled outside every grocery store, not to mention almost every Muslim restaurant has a giant sign out front 'HALEEM!! Best in town!". They have even developed a vegetarian version so as not to leave the higher-caste Hindus out of the magic.


This past week, the Hindus retaliated with a 9/10 day festival of Dasara (or Navaratri) which celebrates the 9 day battle of Ram version the 9-head demon Ravana, depicted in the epic Ramayana. I traveled south to Bangalore to visit with friends. I stayed with a Rotarian and his family and celebrated the middle-to-final days of the 9 day saga. The festival is divided into threes. The first third concerns prayers to Durga - the female goddess/power that cleanses believers or their impurities. Day 4...5...6 are spent in prayers to Lakshmi, goddess of wealth. And the final days are taken up in prayers to Saraswathi, goddess of success and wisdom. On the final three days children bring all their books and pads and pencils to be blessed and offices and computers are blessed with a auspicious yellow dot and turned off to rest for a day. Narayan and Chitra (the Rotarians I stayed with) hosted celebrations in the form of a dinner or lunch almost every day. Each day a new segment of their friends or family would come over to pray and receive prasada. Technically, prasada is a sweet - anything from a banana to a coconut to the much cherished laddoo - that is given after an important pooja or after the end of a pilgrimage. It is meant to show the exchange between god and pilgrim, the sugary manifestation of generosity.

But something that I have noticed - and this will need its own entry all together - is the Indian penchant for singing. While hiking in the Himalayas, whenever there was a dull moment, a down moment or even a slightly long-lasting silence, someone would start singing. And the sometimes off-key explosion was not merely relegated to girls or kids, but was even more likely among men, and serious, normally silent men at that. So, once eating and praying were through and the party guest sat around in plastic chairs with their small bags of take-home prasada, what should happen but for someone to suggest a song. It started with some Carnatic music sung by a classically trained girl. After a few serious songs, it became obvious that all the guest wanted to take part... and so a game of Antakshari began. The game literally means ant - 'end' and akshar - letter of the alphabet. So the room was cut in two and whatever the left side sang, the right side had to counter with another song that began with the first letter of the last word of the former song. It started out slowly and divided down the middle. And it seemed easy enough for each team to counter. Flipping back and forth from Malayalam to Kannada to Telugu to Hindi to Tamil it seemed like they would never run out of songs... and it continued for 2 hours. For the first hour and half the seriousness escalated. One team calling out the other for re-singing different parts of a previously sung song. But the last half hour was simply a chorus, right and left singing each other's songs and every one laughing at nearly forgotten or strangely archaic rhymes.

I don't think anyone knew who won.

In attempts at sharing, here is a snippet of some Himalayan campfire singing.



Up next on the festival circuit: Diwali.

- A