What Just Happened?

To commemorate my first month in Indian I had planned a blog post that summed up my whole experience thus far, but that will have to wait for my story of last night. Yesterday was an exciting day from the start, but I never would have expected how it ended. It was Krishna Janmashtami, a festival which basically celebrates the birth of Krishna, a god and a good king. Although there are celebrations the night of the 28th when he was born (at midnight) most of the celebrating takes place the evening of the 29^th. All around India clay pots, or Dahi-Handi, are hung high off the ground and people build human pyramids to break them. Yes, HUMAN PYRAMIDS. There are professional teams and people train well in advance for it. In fact, when I arrived in India (exactly a month ago!) I saw people practicing on the side of the streets. It’s all for good reason because the team that breaks the pot gets a huge prize. Most are around 1 Lakh (or 100,000 rupees or 1,500 dollars) but some are even more, and supposedly there’s one in Mumbai that is 25 Lakh! The week before a lot of preparation goes into the stages being set up and the streets decorated. Then the entire day of they play music (mostly Indian dance music) from the stages really, really loudly.

For me it started with a mini celebration at my society (or apartment building). After spending the day with some of my fellow inbounds I came home to practice for a dance I was performing. Some girls in my society in 8^th - 10^th standard had invited me to dance with them to the Bollywood song “Gun Gun Guna Re” from the movie Agneepath. That evening we performed it for most of our society in the area under the building. After that a pot filled with candy was hung above a Rangoli design (made out of colored sand) and we made a pyramid to reach it and break it. As one of the older and taller (yes you read that right, I am comparatively tall to 10 year olds) kids I helped form the base. Because of this I really don’t know what happened besides someone standing on my back. Eventually the pot was broken and everyone fought to recover some candy. The pot was basically a clay piñata, so unfortunately when it broke and the candy rained down so did shards of pottery. This made me nervous to crawl around blindly on the ground like everyone else, but some sweet little kids took pity on me and gave me some of their extra candy. After breaking the first pot there was a second one filled with layha, a kind of grain. Then everyone there ate a small dinner of a pattis, a cake, kala (a kind of grain salad) and strangely enough potato chips. While we were waiting I danced to music with the girls I’d performed with. 

Afterwards one of my host mother' neighbors invited me to her in-law's house to see a depiction of Krishna's village that their family had made. It was a combination of different statues, including some homemade ones, and lots of flowers. They welcomed me into their home and explained to me all about the different parts and even put a red dot on forehead and gave me a treat called ladu. This was just a reminder of how generous Indian people are. So far everyone has been very excited to share their culture with me and because of it I've gotten to meet new people and had lots of new opportunities. As I was leaving they invited me over again in early September for the Ganpati festival honoring Lord Ganesh. To have total strangers who are so kind and welcoming to a foreigner made me smile uncontrollably and even tear up a little bit.

After returning home we almost immediately left to go to the stage nearby my house. There was a stage set up with a crane off to the side and a huge, colorful Dahi-Handi hanging from it. Underneath it was a giagantic crowd of people dancing and getting excited for when the human pyramids would begin. At first we (my host mom's friends in the society and their kids and us) were on the outskirts, but we decided to climb up onto the stage to get a better view. There were a lot of tall men at the front so we couldn't see much, but when they saw that I was a foreigner they offered me a seat in the first row with the best view. This was incredibly exciting and (briefly) the highlight for me. Suddenly my host mom told me to stand up because the organizers of this specific Dahi-Handi wanted to "facilitate", or honor, me. Suddenly the man with the microphone was saying (in Marathi) that "Elisabeth Lee has come all the way from the United States to see the Dahi-Handi of Bhusari Colony (where I live)". Then he gave me flowers and a coconut and had me lead the crowd in a cheer. Although at the time I couldn't stop shaking and I'm sure my face was beet red I've realized that it was actually super cool. Apparently he phrased it as kind of a marketing scheme, but the entire crowd was looking at me and it was still really amazing. After me and the girls who I had performed with earlier went down into the crowd to dance. Although the middle was a mosh pit of guys there were a lot of girls my age or younger on the outside dancing in groups. Also the moms could all see us from the platform so it felt pretty safe. While in the crowd on the ground a few girls shook my hand and suddenly every person in sight wanted their hand shaken. A few even had their friends take pictures of them with me. Some girls invited me and my friends into their groups to dance and they were really excited and obviously felt honored that I was dancing with them. 

After a while they announced that the teams would be building the pyramids so we went back to the platform to watch. The first team was wearing matching shirts and they had obviously practiced a lot. Instead of people frantically climbing each other they had a predetermined order and calmly lifted each other up. At first they couldn't reach the Dahi-Handi, but after lowering it a few times they easily broke it. The money wasn't actually inside it, instead it was filled with butter and they collected it afterwards.  While watching all of this I stood on a chair in order to see above everyone's heads. Some boys a little younger than me started asking me about where I was from. However they soon lost interest when they found out I wasn't from Los Angeles and as I was about to leave they eagerly asked me how we spell "socks" in the United States. That definitely helped diminish my ego after being honored in front of the whole crowd.

Now that I've had time to calm down and reflect on all that I happened I've realized that this would never have happened if I hadn't done this exchange with the Rotary. Instead of being announced to all of an Indian street at a festival I would be spending time enjoying the last few days of summer before my Senior year of high school. It actually really put things into perspective and I know that although there are things that I will miss this coming year, I am having experiences that are a once in a lifetime chance.