Wednesday, October 12, 2005

दशहरा मुबारक

Happy Dussera! The day that Ram kills Ravan, good triumphs over evil! That means that Diwali is round the corner, sort of (November 1 this year). An important festival for our Hindu friends, and, like any other festival in India, a good excuse to have some fun. :)

Dussera isn't that big in Mumbai and Gujarat, well not as big as Diwali of course, and not as big as up north -- fireworks of course, but also the huge Ram Leelas, the traditional retelling of the Ramayana, and large public rallies where the effigy of the demon-king Ravan is burnt. I have this vague memory of going to a Ram Leela when I was around ten years old, in Delhi. It was cold (October is quite cool in the capital), and I wore a bright orange sweater. Other than that, it was terribly crowded, the music blared through the speakers rather indistinctly, and I almost fell asleep before we got to the cool part -- the burning of the effigy. It was so much fun -- that giant statue going up in flames, disappearing so fast, only blackened scaffolding left minutes later. Obviously, that's what a ten year old would remember ... :)

5 comments:

Dev Thakur said...

Fun! Use more Hindi!

assiniboine said...

Curiously, the ABC (ie Australian Broadcasting Corporation) carried the BBC's Harvest Festival "Songs of Praise" program last Sunday on the statutory Canadian Thanksiving. Brought tears to my eyes, it did! Do Americans sing "Come ye thankful people, come," "Sing to the Lord of Harvest" and "We plough the fields and scatter" in church at Thanksgiving as the English and Canadians do or just stuff themselves a little more than usual?

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

assiniboine: in my experiences, americans don't sing nuttin at T'giving -- just gobble up mo' turkey ... :) I didn't know the English celebrated Turkey Day ... :) If there are other Thanksgiving customs I'm unaware of the rest of y'all are welcome to comment! :)

assiniboine said...

Oh yes. "Harvest Festival" in England. It's the biblical Succoth of course. The altar is covered with wheat sheaves and pumpkins and squashes and apples; the nave pillars are festooned with harvest bounty; and we sing German and Dutch harvest festival hymns (so obviously they do it too). I know, I know...our American friends think they invented it. We fondly indulge them.

Fr. Gaurav Shroff said...

Succoth -- oy, of course. The harvest aspect of Thanksgiving has disappeared completely, in my experience, from the Catholic liturgy in the US. I've never heard of sheaves of wheat on the altar here!