An Elephant-Sized Festival: Day Two

After a quick breakfast (well, lets be honest, “quick” does not describe Indian sit-down meals well, but after breakfast nonetheless), I hopped on the back of Anand’s moped and cruised down Tilak Road. We bounced the potholes over to Laxmi, the true heart of Ganpati.

We popped off the bike a block away from the main drag and immediately encountered the throngs, throbbing. Even before noon the street swam with people and music erupted from the asphalt. Pushing through the five-person deep crowd, we spilled into the main action, only to be restrained by a string of men holding hands and creating a human fence. On the other side of the human chain a 30-man drum line crashed down the lane, thumping, clanging and cracking in time. Shimmying down the crowd, we shot into any open space and slowly made our way down the street to our destination.

As if the Lord Ganesh had come down himself to deliver a blessing to us on his special day, Anand just happened to have a “sister” (reads as 2nd cousin in Pune-speak) with a flat one floor up from the street. Not only a nice flat, but a perched balcony a perfect 15 feet above the parade.

Her family welcomed us as their own, relishing the opportunity to teach us their holiday rituals. They sang the aarti at their household shrine. We watched them put the coconut-fried dumplings at the elephant feet. We shared them afterwards and walked out to the balcony to survey the goings on.

I’ve never been to a big parade before so all kinds of ideas came up as I watched this one unfold. For instance, the success of a parade depends on the street size and surrounding buildings and their relative scale to the parade. Just like the NYC skyline fits the Macy’s Day balloons perfectly, so did Laxmi Road complement Ganpati. A street wide enough, but not too wide – able to accommodate, two cars, two rickshaws and two sidewalks. Buildings shot up five stories on each side, staging the street as a true theatre. Balconies full of onlookers watched as the endless stream of people and floats flowed down the avenue. An epic arena for an epic event.

Over the course of the previous night, the neighborhood men had moved their Ganesh idols from their localized stages onto individual floats. In the wee hours of the morning, the floats gathered in a queue to parade down Laxmi. From there they begin their parade down the many mile parade path. At some point en route, the float amasses an entourage: the neighborhood youth, a drum and dance troupe, a tractor, a generator truck and another float that holds a concert-worthy stack of speakers with a DJ. So we aren’t talking about single float anymore, we are really talking about a five or six part processional that easily stretched up to 600 feet.

First, the drum and dance troupe. Drilling out percussion on 30 bass drums and six or seven snares. Usually in call and response. In lock step came a posse of dancers, tapping out traditional rhythms with their feet and shaking their hips to the voluminous drumline. Following them came a couple hundred partygoing youth, jamming at full-throttle as the tractor behind them towed a mass of speakers that peeled paint off the buildings. Finally, at the end (and sometimes almost as an afterthought to the fanfare preceding it), Ganesh would appear.

After a few mandals passed by, my friends and I really began to embrace the possibilities of being the few random foreigners enjoying this very Punewalla festival. We also held the premier spot above the madness to do so. Already, the pulsating music stirred our bones into action, keeping us up and dancing on our perch. We must have been some sight because we attracted heaps of attention. The minute anyone in the parade processional peeked up from their Bollywood dance moves or drum thwomping and caught a glimpse of our crew, they would start smiling and laughing. When they realized that we were dancing with matching energy, they would lose it and begin to absolutely rip out. Waving and dancing, this went on and I began to feel like the celebrated and honored guest of Pune’s Ganpati. How else to explain this lavishness? We spent hours leading the dance party like parade royalty. I laughed and danced with that intoxicating concoction of feeling when loud music, masses of people and once-in-a-lifetime experiences mix.

Thankfully, we settled into the kind of rhythm over the hours. In fact, the day itself slowly began to feel like a family holiday or a vacation at the beach.

Essentially, there are four important steps to truly enjoy Ganpati.

1) Watch/Participate in the parade
2) Eat/Drink Chai
3) Say Prayers
4) Sleep

Repeat as needed. No particular order. If one prefers to watch the parade, say prayers and then eat – fine. If one prefers to sleep, wake for a sip of chai and return to sleep – as you like it.

It took me some time to truly grasp the freedom within this structure. At first, I wanted to enjoy the parade only; then I felt the need to attend to my hosts and their requests. But as my danced-out legs, over tired smile and music-blasted brain fatigued, an inevitable rest brought me inside. Within minutes, I went horizontal and completely embraced Ganpati.

When I awoke, I found the Indians looking at me in a new light. As if I had finally understood some important truth or attained some low-level enlightenment, I emerged from the slumber like a new paduan, gently returning to overlook the ongoing street-level madness.

Night had fallen and I still hadn’t made it to dance with the people at street-level. I’d given three newspaper interviews and been broadcast on television, but I hadn’t yet seen the action from within the parade itself. It was time.

To think that some parades are not fully participatory is now a bit shocking to me. Given my Ganpati experience, I stand firmly in the belief that parades should be so open that one can literally walk down from his flat and enter the parade immediately to open arms and dancing feet. So we did. I flew out the door and into the parade. At first, I hit a wall. Men and women do most of their public dancing here separately and I had landed in bird central. Disappointed, I stepped back again to avoid any over protective uncles and I sought out the next mandal and my opportunity to dance with the stars.

It didn’t take long, another Ganesh came into sight two blocks down, so we hustled up to the Maharashtran beat and quickly found ourselves at the center of the attention we had only till now felt from the balcony. With music blasting behind us, we started to dance-walk up the street. The best part about dancing with Indians is that they are keenly interested in you enjoying what they are enjoying. They also have a style where pretty much two people just mimic each other as more others watch on. Otherwise you can flail around as you like. Since I found myself in the middle of it all, I had plenty of dance partners and found myself playing the mirror to their hectic moves. In full swing, it now looked like I actually knew a step or two (or at least tried) and this brought on heaps more encouragement from the sweltering and crushing crowd. Even after two blocks I found myself completely out of moves and energy, I felt only too happy to see the apartment starting to pass by. Darting out of party city, I breathed deep as I hustled up the stairs.

We returned to the flat only to get find ourselves on the receiving end of a massive powder storm. The next mandal, a particularly exuberant group, doused in the pink stuff, found in us a due target for their blessings. The usual smiles and jubilation quickly turned colorful as clumps of the stuff sped up from the street to meet us, like snowballs firing on higher ground. In the dark, I couldn’t pick up the stuff fast enough to dodge it and caught the first of the grape shot splattering on my check and shirt. A second round found my mouth and I dove inside to take cover and spit out the harsh material. One of my other friends didn’t fair so well, catching the brunt of the mortar. The apartment also sustained major damage, the balcony coated and a new interior design thanks to a couple of open windows and doors. The hostess assured me this onslaught should be considered good luck, as a blessing. The host looked less certain, grumbling quietly as he looked over his spray-powdered family room walls.

It seemed like a fitting end to our stay. After 10 hours of parade (and the promise that this would carry on well into the next day) we decided to scoot home for some rice and dal, dodging through two more paraded streets before we reached the door.

At midnight we gave the carnival another shot, staying this time on Tilak Road, home of my host. Itching for another street-level dance, we found a young crowd, playing Ganpati to the hilt. But when a number of overly aggressive dancers tried too hard to keep us in their dance party, we felt the strange discomfort of being at the mercy of a mob and muscled our way out of the parade (believe it or not, at 5’10” I actually tower over most Indians, a particularly helpful trait in this situation) before dashing back into Anand’s apartment entrance.

Opting instead for the rooftop view, we rocked up the stairs and watched the madness unfold from five stories up. All across the city, fireworks blasted off, illuminating Pune in a celebratory radiance. At about 1:30, a float came down Tilak Road shooting off its own fireworks. For the second time, we came under fire, this time with actual exploding projectiles. The smallish fireworks would only go up about 70 feet before erupting and so we were only a mere 20 feet away as they popped and displayed their stellar variety. The first time I literally dove for cover. Each subsequent time I welcomed the blast, easily the closest I may ever come to fireworks in my life.

After another hour we tucked in, sipping hot water to ease the fatigue and chill from the steady night mist of the monsoon. The last I remember of the day rang the clang of bells, like an alarm clock as I slipped uncontrollably into unconsciousness.

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Oh Ganpati, if only you finished there. Instead, I woke up to your siren blasts, still walloping the walls of Tilak Road at 7:30am.

Exhausted and somewhat delirious, I walked outside to see the street. Unlike the previous night, the floats were now against time and stuck in a complete and utter traffic jam. The 10-minute rests between entourages had disappeared completely. Now one float literally came on the direct heels of its predecessor, music intertwining as if some drugged up DJ had just gained control of the levels, mixing a laced cocktail of Banghra and Bollywood.

Choosing breakfast over the beats, I ate up and prepared my bag for the walk to the train station. What I really needed was a pep talk and some strategy (knowing full well from the past day that white skin meant joyful target for a powder toss or a rowdy dance routine). I thought to move quickly and camouflage under a low profile and a disinterested face. We hit the road on the march, moving at speed past the ragged-looking paraders. They all looked too exhausted to cause much trouble, so I cruised along. A gentle mist started to fall again on Pune. I thought we would be in the clear in no time. Still, the rhythm started to drag me back. My head began to waggle. My hips began to shake. My hands started to twist and move in time. My face, so touched by my constant vision of the epic happiness before me, started to shine again. Soon I found that I was no longer covert, in fact, I was again standing out.

At first this attracted the dancers, who reached for my arms and tried to drag me in. I have learned a few good moves of escape (first from wrestling with my brother as kids, second from a year of wrestling in middle school and most notably from the previous night) so I handled those efforts well. The ones I couldn’t handle were taken care of by Anand, who swept in and calmly blasted the young ones with a stern word and decisive action. It all looked good to escape unscathed when at last I saw a float so wonderful and faces so joyful that I just looked up and beamed a glorious smile to them. They smiled back and then promptly rained down two bolts of orange, catching my left side in full. In an instant, I realized the foolishness of my resistance and the futility of escape.

You see, India is a place where you join in, where you participate, where you embrace the relationship between people. Embrace their humanness and your own humanness. Feel the dirt, the air, the rain. Eat with hands. Sit on the ground. Take long chai breaks. Get blasted with orange and mist and take a 3 hour bus ride standing up on the way home. It’s the philosophy of participation that makes India a special place.

Ganpati, the most wonderful parade in the world, not the most beautiful or the most decadent, but the place where all are welcome to participate and celebrate being alive.