It was 9pm after a long day of 6 hours in the foreign registration
office (our famous FRRO) and some desperate furniture searching in
Commercial Street to find the basic stuff for our newly acquired
appartment. We were in our way back home in an auto full of stuff and
it was taking longer than expected since the driver had to stop to fill
the tank and not to be smashed by a train. We were slowly advancing in the everyday traffic jam when suddenly all the vehicles stopped. We tried to see what was going on but we couldn´t see much through the cars, but we could listen to some drum music coming from the front. Around 50 metres in front of us the street was closed for the traffic and there was a crowd walking with some kind of big structure decorated with colourful flowers and textiles bove their heads.
Unwittingly a smile came to my face, because, in front of so many people, cheerful music and colours, we obviously were being witnesses of an indian festivity or party. Our auto driver decided to ignore the fact that the street was closed and continued to drive to the crowd and music. We didn´t stop him because our curiosity won our common sense of following the rules, and anyway, any driver in India follows any traffic rules.
We finally arrived next to the flowered structure. We started seeking for any religious figure inside of it to know what was all this going about when we suddenly realized that that was not a joyfull festivity but a funeral!!
The structure was a very ornamental bed inside which the corpse of a man was lying down. A cloth was covering all his body except his pale face which everyone around him was touching I guess for blessing him. I looked puzzled down to the crowd and noticed the distribution of the crowd of this hindu funeral. Men were walking in the very front while they fired firecrackers and flares. They were followed by a kind of "batucada" that played the lively drum music mentioned before. Just after some men were raising the funeral bed with the deceased man. And last, behind everything, the women.
When we passed the crowd the auto driver accelerated the rikshaw so we couldn´t see much more but the mixed fillings were inside me. I had been smiling expecting a happy festivity because from my "occidental" point of view a funeral has to be a sober, sad and grey happening and not such a pyrotechnic-colourful-musical spectacle. But that only makes me realize how little I still know about the cultural diversity of India and how much I still have to learn to get to forget the stereotypes I brought with me from Europe. And only makes me even more excited about the non-stop learning 2-year period we have in front.
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