On Bihar's authenticity

After almost three months spent in Bangalore, landing in Patna (Bihar) is a bit like going to India for the first time again. I remember claiming that I had no problem to get used to Bangalore, that this city was not so different from our occidental ones. I will still pretend it, even now, but I learnt today that one city, or one state, is not representative of the country I am living in.

In less than an hour I have been exposed to so much activity, so much craziness, so much noise, so much movement ; so much poverty and misery too. It is painful to see that the whole standard of living of everybody out there, as far as I saw, is divided by three or four. Fancy stores, european cars, french restaurants, or even fashion don’t have their place here. Here, at least from the airport to the railway station, streets are literally full of people from the lower social classes. When walking, one have to avoid beggars, sellers of all kinds, lepers, sleepers, running kids, poor guys curved below a huge package, or even just people in a hurry. And it is even worse as a driver since streets belong to pedestrians much more than they belong to vehicles. All this means that it is much harder to find its way in such a mess. Trust me, Bangalore is a quiet and peaceful place, where you can walk without worrying about your wallet or where you set foot. As a white guy holding a hiking backpack and accompanied by an indian taking pictures of everything, it is simply impossible to vanish in the crowd, too bad for me.

The contrast between urban and natural areas is even stronger. There is much more identity out there, in the way that Bihar is way less occidentalized. There is still this kind of authenticity that is getting lost everywhere else. People are stuck in the penultimate century, and when it is not about misery it makes it beautiful. I have experienced travelling in a desperately old train, slow enough to allow you to enjoy the sight of hidden life moments,  and this is priceless. Women coming back from the rice fields, carrying the fruits of their labor. Small autonomous communities, perched on a slight land elevation against the monsoon. People having lunch in their backyard, right next to the railway. Marshy lands, temples under trees, and many more. That’s the India I’ve been dreaming of.

Thoughts on diwali

Being an Indian, it might be the hardest thing to study India with a beedy eye.

Today, I am going to tell you about something as mundane (or as exotic) as my diwali.

Every year, on Diwali, my parents, who are not particularly or at all religious, say a lot of prayers in the morning. Later, we drive all the way to my father's office (which is a good 20 kilometres south from where we live) to do the prayers over there. We have lunch outside, maybe somewhere expensive, come back home, and in the evening, we go to my grandparents place, which is in the north of Mumbai (another 20 kilometres north of where we stay) and have dinner with them, and sometimes even say more prayers with them.

In total, we travel about 80 kilometres within the same city to:

1. Fulfill a bunch of rituals that make little sense.
2. Eat a tonne of sweets.
3. Have an expensive lunch in-between at maybe a 5 star restaurant.
4. Meet my grandparents. (And get diwali money! - most elders just hand out notes of hundreds all day)
5. Perform rituals/ prayers to a certain "Laxmi mata" who is basically the goddess of money
6. Eat a rich, traditional dinner.

I don't know if that's how all other Indians celebrate their diwali. Clearly they don't. But for me, that is how it goes.

General things to note about diwali:

1."Saying prayers" is a loose term. It would be more accurate to say that we stand in front of a couple of miniature idols with flower petals thrown all around them and then we make a fire on a plate and chant a monotonous chant with a repetitive tune that gets stuck in one'es head, and makes absolutely no sense to anyone's living memory about the greatness of Lakshmi.

2. Wearing appropriate clothes can mean anything from wearing "new" clothes on diwali to wearing a salwar kameez or even a saree. This diwali, the fact that I wore a saree in order to follow a more tradition path, made me stand out quite a lot and subsequently a lot of my relatives thought I was either (a) married, (b) going to be married soon, or (c) fantastically into Indian culture and hence not so "Westernised".

3. On diwali, we do lakshmi pooja. Lakshmi is the goddess of money and abundance. So basically we are praying to money and praying for our own prosperity, which is quite far from selfless. Interestingly, my family bought a new car this diwali, and like all Indians, thought to pray to the car after we bought it on the day of Dhanteras. I still do not understand why Indians do this. In addition to cars, we pray to new houses and sometimes even family desktops when they're newly bought.

4. Overall, I noticed that this year is that advertising has finally bought over diwali, and, like Christmas, it reigns over all sorts of hoardings, radio shows and TV ads more than ever before. In Ahmedabad, one sees a particular ad ubitquitously that says "LOSE YOUR BELLY BEFORE DIWALI". It's been there since the end of September, when I arrived in Ahmedabad.

5. It must be said that sometimes the express purpose of celebrating diwali, or any Indian festival, gets a bit lost in the number of rituals and other demands it makes of us. The bursting of firecrackers, although a comparatively recent addition than diyas to the rituals of diwali, do more harm than good. Besides, I now know of electric diyas. Overall, diwali gets a bit more uneco-friendly every year and that concerns me.

6. In spite of all this, I stills see diwali as a way to take a break from all our lives and spend some time getting to know family. If only there were ways to make the experience more authentic, the connection with people deeper and the spirit of help or togetherness more conscious, there would be a lot more validity to what we do.

As my ending note I'd like to say that I'm interested in "designing" a culture or a thought-process/ attitude around diwali (such as is often enough propagated by the ads and hoardings) that convey a spirit of awareness, helping and consciousness. When you team this with family and the annual vacation, it could to wonders to Indian people and the Indian tussle between Western and Internal identity as a whole. Thoughts?

Parikrama show

Saturday, November 3,  8.30pm.

As 6 days by week , I was drinking my cup of tee, reading the Times of India before fifteen minutes of rickshaw ti reach my office. But this morning, I had the surprise to see a picture of me on the fourth page of this newspaper.

The Evening before, I went to Vastrapur amphitheatre to see Parikrama, a famous rock and roll band of 70 s during the Times Ahmedabad Festival.

The show took place in semi circular outdoor space. Just in front of the stage some matelas and coussins was put on the floor to sit.From sixteen till sixty years old, Ahmedabad's inhabitants were here , waiting for the show.

Seven men came on the stage. I couldn't stop watching the keyboard player who looked like an hippie from a movie of seventies. Long hair, long bear, sunglasses and colorfull T-shirt, everything was here. Violon, drumbs, guitar, flute... a beautifull mixing of traditionnal and rock instruments. Everybody knew the lyrics of each song and the place was plenty of enthusiasm.

The scenography of the stage was quite simple: a stylized tree on the background. Concerning the lights, it seemed more complicated in the bad way of the world . They were never less than four or five differents colors in the same time on the stage and it was difficult to see the face of one member of the band.

During 2 hours , the show was fine, some really good songs, wonderfull atmosphere. Unfortunately the show ended by two songs of ACDC which was just eumm... sorry I can't write the appropriate word, it should be censured!