worship season

Over the past month or so there have been three big festivals of idol worship. Essentially, it’s been a month of holidays, excitement, shopping, feasting, drinking, family get togethers, fire crackers, loud music, dancing, lights, and of course… some idol worship.

It’s a lot like Christmas in the west.

It has religious roots, but it’s turned into an excuse for doing fun things. Decorating streets with lights. Blasting loud music. Retail goes crazy as each kid receives new clothes if the parents can afford it. Everyone dresses up in their flashy new clothes and roams around the city, hopping from one worship tent to the next as if on a religious walking tour. Each tent is unique, but generally they’re temporary bamboo scaffoldings adorned with beautiful cloth and lights making it into an elaborate show of the money that each community gathers together. Inside each tent are more lights, artistic interiors, chandeliers, and of course, the idol for whom all this was made.

The idols are made by low caste artisans who make bamboo skeletons and then mold clay flesh around it, bringing it to life. After they’ve gauded them up with chiseled features and bright paint and clothes, they sell them to the masses to be worshipped. These low caste artisans use their God-given creativity and talent to bring to life the very statues that Brahmins worship.

This month has been intense. The crowded frantic chaos mixed with the spiritual climate has taken it’s toll on our whole team. But it’s been a great time of learning and getting to know the neighbors and who they are.

Since everyone has had back-to-back holidays, we’ve been able to meet people more easily and have been invited to the festivities. Many neighbors have seemed extra open and hospitable because it’s been the “holiday season”. It’s definitely been an opportunity for us to enter into people’s homes, taste the foods of the festivals and experience the culture more deeply.

Beside the little thatched tent for the idol in our community, there were rented loud speakers that facilitated round the clock music. These blared a variety of music all day. When Acon filled my ears, it took me back to the summer I worked in the projects in Watts. Some western “hits” that somehow escaped the from the crap list and traveled around the world reminded me of walking past Hang Ten clothing stores in Taiwan with my hands over my ears. The Hindi and Bengali pop songs have become more familiar now, and I must say, I like a lot of it. This music has somehow become a soundtrack to my first weeks in the slum, which sure beats the mundane sounds of life.

During the last two nights of Diwali, we danced. We, meaning guys only. Young boys and young men. I’d guess over half the guys over sixteen were drunk, along with a couple of old men who abandoned the sidelines after part of a whiskey bottle.

Some guys had some moves. Not this guy. But I invented some and, after the first hour, probably had imitated every move I’d ever seen to the best of my ability. No, not the moonwalk with sandals in the dirt, but I will say, the cue tip may have been included for humor and variety’s sake.

The last night was “Only for enjoy. Heavy enjoy!” I heavy enjoyed, indeed.
I enjoyed dancing “with” every young male in our vicinity. It was a good way to build community and show value to each person I chose to dance with. But let’s just say there were some close moments. Close moments when my partner’s face and hair were covered in red paint, his sweaty chest closer than I preferred, when I wondered if I was dreaming, or if I had somehow been slipped something in my rice earlier. Firecrackers would explode two inches from my feet and kick dirt up onto me. Then I would look over at my roommate, J, and I would think to myself – I’ll ask him in the morning if he had the same dream.

And now it’s all over. We’re tired, but we’ve learned a lot, bonded with our community in important ways and have entered into relationship with people we may otherwise not have. It’s been good. Hopefully now that our first five weeks in the slum have past, our life will move into the direction of partial normalcy. I think each week that passes, WE will at least become more normal to our community.