Instrument Modifications

The other day we went to a really fun instrument store called Sadhna where the owner Ram Asre Morya is experimenting with lots of musical instruments. He has worked with woodworkers and tabla makers to come up with viable designs, including:

Two-headed tablas, where there are heads on both the top and bottom of the drum. This is so a performer can have two different tunings on each head -- its like having two daya in one!

Tabla-Naal hybrids, for the super multitasker ... just kidding. But Ram suggested that there is growing demand for this instrument as more people are hearing about it ... It is still in the works as he plans to make a new model with ball bearings so that the tabla can spin inside the naal independently making it easier to tune.

And variations on the electric Indian banjo, which were adapted from a Japanese banjo.

Now, when I heard electric Indian banjo, I must admit I got pretty excited as an American banjo enthusiast. However, it is more like a cross between an autoharp and a harmonium - and doesn't really resemble a banjo in any way. To play it you press keys with your left hand and strum with your right - sort of like a pedal steel without the pedals or the finger picks. Here's a little clip of me messing around on it.

Good times!!!

The Banarasi* Initiation Rite

First - many apologies for being on radio silence for so long. A LOT has been going on ... but between being so busy and then an internet black out over the last week I haven't been able to post.

So what, you may ask is the Banarasi Initiation Rite? I don't remember who told us this, whether they were local or from out of town, but the story goes that you haven't really lived in Banaras until you've slipped on cow dung and fallen on your butt. There really is so much cow dung everywhere that you'd expect this to happen literally all the time ... but really it just makes for interesting pedestrian traffic as everyone is doing there best to avoid the stuff.

Well, a couple of days ago I was at our local urban dairy** watching the milk man as he was literally milking the cow into my little steel milk bucket --- that's right, I carry my raw milk home in a milk bucket. Anyway, I'm there admiring his work, watching the mother cow who was, while being milked, grooming her overly excited calf. I guess the calf was pumped because she had just been fed before my milk bucket entered the fray. So there we all are - a happy picture of an agricultural scene in very urban Banaras - when the calf in her giddiness slips on a puddle of urine in the uneven road, takes a spill in some - you guessed it, cow dung - and splashes me with the whole mix.

Now, the fact that I didn't fall I think is inconsequential - I'm still claiming this as my official Banarasi Initiation.

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* I'm going to try to start referring to Varanasi as Banaras going forward in our blog posts just because ... well, that's what everyone around here calls it.

** I swear (I think) that I'll be able to get a post about this soon.

Two Indias: It is not (just) about religion but economics power...

Last year when we were in Lucknow, I started a tag called "Two Lucknows" to point out some of the wealth disparities that were treated as so common place... inequalities that made me feel uncomfortable, but I wanted to understand the reasons for why they seemed so endemic.

Allen happened to have a conversation with a Banarasi weaver. His story (which I've asked Allen to write below) reminds me that so much of these inequalities we see are the result of someone with more political and economic power being able to exploit someone less well off... This type of extortion doesn't recognize religion so much as opportunity. "Oh, you really need this loan now -- well, I'll only be able to process the paper work if ...."

Here's Allen's account below:

Today I met an 80 year old weaver and asked him if he felt tensions were increased between Hindu shop-owners and Muslim weavers because of religion - particularly after partition. He said that it was nothing like that. It was just rich people cheating poor people and it had nothing to do with religion - and then he gave several examples of the ways in which the Government tries to help poor people (both Hindu and Muslim) and how somehow the money they set aside for the poor never actually reaches them....

He also talked about corruption in the banks and the police and everywhere else. He says that all total he has lost about 1,500,000 rupees over the last ten years because store owners simply did not pay him for the materials they took from him. There was a sharp decline in the market overall, so store owners were struggling to pay their bills. I am extrapolating from this, but my guess is that the easiest bill for them to NOT pay would be their I.O.U's to the weavers who supplied their materials. They'd pay off the banks and electric companies first....

I asked him if he could get a lawyer and he said that the lawyers cost money and these are all rich people they can bribe anyone for anything - he won't get anywhere that way. Then he went to the example of the Bank. He took out a loan from a bank once. 15% interest. But in order to get the loan for 100,000 rupees he had to bribe the official 3,000. So he had to first save up money to take out a loan.

Then he and Nandan went on to share so many stories about corrupt officials and police that the conversation steered away from where it had started, but I thought it was very interesting to hear first hand about the sort of thing I had previously only understood to exist in the abstract.

Diwali Year 2! Still sort of dangerous!

Don't get me wrong - there are a ton of things to LOVE about this holiday! All the houses decorated in lights; all the amazing food and sweets; all the excuses to give gifts of appreciation to loved ones ... I mean, it is like Fourth of July, Christmas, and New Year's all bundled up into one holiday, like I suggested last year (and just like last year we had some really noteworthy experiences with fireworks!).

This year was pretty neat because instead of just sort of making up what we were suppose to do, this time we had a pukka khas program (a proper special plan) because we were able to tag along with the family we were staying with.

As with most stories of this nature - things started out WONDERFULLY!

We got to help prepare the house for the arrival of Ram back to Ayodya by placing butter lamps in every single room.

We were welcome to join the family as they did special pujas at, best guess was at least 9 different temples ... and of course at the sacred Ganga. I have a totally new and profound understanding of the sacred geography of Banaras: within a 50 meter walk from our house we must have passed close to 30 different temples to various Gods and saints. On an evening like Diwali they were much easier to spot because each was marked with the special butter lamps that marked this occasion.

After dinner we were invited to go to a bara admi ka ghar (big man's house) to watch him blow up 110,000 rupees worth of fireworks (almost $2,500).

[Editors note: I can't even begin to express to you how frustrating it was to be at the house of a politician - for Mayawati's party even! - and know that he was putting on this show, which he apparently does every year, just to show off how big and important he is. We had a pretty depressing conversation with our host after the fact about how all politician's are goons, but its better to have one in office that you know personally. (sigh)]

Unsuspecting Spectators

The array of patanke (fireworks) he had was pretty impressive. But what struck me was how his men (servants? lackies?) were doing everything possible to make sure they all went off properly.

Like this man (in the background of this photo), who is holding lit fireworks in his hand shaking them around to make them go off faster. Best not to ask too many questions about this one.

So what, I wondered did $2,500 worth of fireworks really look like? Well, you know those fancy fireworks you see at the Macy's Fireworks displays in NY? Apparently they come in boxes you lite ....

Who knew?

But do you know what happens when those boxes are defective and the fireworks don't explode in the air but in the box? People run for it.... like this:

Diwali Fireworks Gone Wrong from Nikki on Vimeo.

You can see in the video everyone running away from the fireworks and huddling in a corner of the roof. At the end Allen is showing off his (brand new gift) shirt which had just had two holes singed into it by fiery embers. We left shortly after this video was taken.

But really, there is something surreal about the use of fireworks at Diwali. Maybe I'm just being organizational-ist but these sort of home-spun fireworks shows make the streets feel more like a warzone than a space of celebration. Kids plant bombs in the street and everyone runs for cover holding their ears... like in this video:

These bombs (literally, this is what they are called) were so powerful that you could feel the aftershock of the explosion on your chest. Crowds of onlookers would gasp in collective terror when a bicycle, motorcycle, rickshaw, or car ever got to close to a lit one of these... can you imagine what would happen if it exploded under a car...?

Just to be clear, I have never been, nor do I ever want to be in a warzone, but the whole experience just struck me as odd. Everyone is out there to have fun and enjoy themselves, but really ends up spending most of the time running and ducking for cover. Banaras, with its narrow streets and short buildings (where your neighbor's roof is a short hop away) also lends itself to strange spectacles like this one, where the fireworks don't even clear the building they have been set off next to:

But, I should also note, this isn't really the end of the fireworks ... this is just the beginning! Diwali marks the unofficial start of the Hindu wedding season, with its indispensable fireworks and insanely loud wedding bands. Oh yes, there will be more...

So after getting singed by fireworks and thankfully making it home without being hit by anymore fireworks, what did we do to celebrate? We obviously lit more fireworks off our roof!

HAPPY DIWALI EVERYONE!

Dhanteras!

Yesterday was dhanteras. It is an auspicious day to buy metals. All the pot and pan makers were swamped with business. The bank was packed and had the rates for gold printed out and posted on every table. There are so many holidays here it is somewhat hard to keep track of all of them.....

Valima in Lucknow

The valima, or wedding reception, happened a few days after the Nikah in Lucknow's Baradari (a palatial complex of sorts). It was gorgeously decorated.

When we arrived we had Chaat - which we usually don't eat unless we are at weddings or very fancy places...

YUM!

Then we met the happy couple and took some obligatory photos. It turns out that the reception mostly consisted of people coming taking pictures with the couple, eating and then leaving. There wasn't really an "event" per se. NOTE: I totally know that the bride is capable of smiling and caught her in several unguarded moments doing just that! It seems, however, that her sensibilities to keep a straight during photos held.

Nikki and her sahelis (girlfriends). These girls were kind of ridiculous. They spent the better part of the evening chasing Nikki around and trying to shove food in her mouth. Which reminds me that there is a special verb in Hindi (thoosna) which means to shove something in someone else's mouth. So Grammatically, "Khana thoosti hui Larkiya" means "the food shoving in the mouth girls" which I think is an accurate and amusing description of Nikki's Sahelis.

Another funny tid-bit was there were two buffets for dinner. One vegetarian and one non-vegetarian. Interestingly, there were no vegetables on the non-veg side at all. And from what we can tell, we were the only guests who ate from both sides. It's either meat or no meat. All or nothing. No omnivorous dilemmas here.

After dinner, we had sweet paan. Here's the wedding paan wala with his well decorated stall

Happy Paan Eaters!!

Nikah in Ridauli Town

I was wonderfully blessed with the opportunity to witness a Nikah or Muslim Wedding. My tabla teacher's younger brother was getting married, and I got to go with all the family to the bride's home town of Ridauli - about 2 1/2 hours by car from Lucknow.

In traditional Hindustani fashion, I was told to be ready by 2pm and we left around 4:30. We got there around 7pm and had some pre-wedding snacks while preparations were made. While going out to get some bottled water (just in case) a friend and I learned that in Ridauli they only have electricity from 10 to 6. Some days it's 10 to 6 during the day, and other days it is 10 to 6 during the night. We were, fortunately, on the "night" schedule which meant that some time around 10 pm or so they would be able to turn on some fans. It was very hot in the rural school house that had been remade into a Wedding house.

Alas, Nikki was unable to attend - she wasn't feeling well - and it was probably for the best, given the heat.

The event consisted of a few parts. First, the Groom was covered with a veil of flowers.

Then, he was brought to the front to sit on the stage where the Maulvi (or priest) sat beside him and read some passages from the Qur'an, and then asked him whether or not he agreed to marry his bride.

He said yes, papers were signed by him and several witnesses, and there was much rejoicing. Men waited while women ate - and then it was our turn. Apparently the bride had been asked the same thing by another Maulvi in a different room. They were now married - even though they had never once seen each other face to face. Hooray!

After several hours and everyone had eaten, the bride was brought forward to meet her new husband for the first time. The groom's mother first said some prayers and then covered both their heads with a cloth. Underneath this communal veil, the each lifted their respective veils - hers of silk and his of flowers - and looked at each other's reflection in a hand mirror that was resting on the Holy Qur'an. This was the first time they saw each other - and even then it was through a reflection in a mirror (and they were already married!)

It just kind of blew my mind. It was such a powerful moment to be a part of. I felt honored that I had been invited to witness it.

Afterwards, the bride went back to the woman's space where some more rites happened for several more hours; it was the official leaving of her family. At around 4am she slowly began to get into a well decorated car with female members of the groom's family. There was much weeping. In some ways it felt like the bride had died. It felt almost like a funeral the weeping was so intense.

Shortly after they left, the rest of us packed up the bus and took off. I got back home around 7:30 in the morning - exhausted.