Unappreciated Holidays...

March 2, 2010
I think the thing that’s amazed me the most about Hindu culture are the festivals. I mean, as Christians, we’ve got Christmas (one day) and Easter (one day). Now, if you want to be more specific, there is a whole Christmas season (which I’m sure some believe starts way too early; after not having a Christmas season in the community around me this year though, my belief is that Christmas season should start in May!), but we still only have one Christmas.

When I first arrived, we reached the Hindu holiday of Dashain. It’s a 3 week holiday, for, well, I don’t really know what! It’s a big long break, though, and most of the country shuts down for most of that (not that the country’s open consistently when there’s not a holiday, but still!). Soon after that was Tihar, a 3 day festival of lights. There are “Christmas” lights up everywhere (obviously, they don’t call them “Christmas” lights, but, that’s what they would be in America!) and lamps in windows and fires on the streets (ok, not that unusual, but these are religion specific, not just burning trash!). On the actual day of Tihar, there are fireworks and lights everywhere, and people light these little bowls of oil outside their houses to bring good fortune or something. It kinda reminded me of a mixture of Christmas and July 4th. It was a really pretty holiday.

Then there were a few other holidays here and there over the past 3 months which have shut down the country, but they were relatively quiet and unassuming. Mostly, they consisted of people wandering aimlessly in the streets, looking for anything to occupy themselves! In the last few weeks, though, we’ve had 2 holidays which I am convinced were the creation of someone who had way too much time on their hands and decided to entertain themselves at the cost of others.

The first was Mahashivaratri (try saying that 10 times fast!). So, it goes like this. All the little children gather ropes from their roofs leaving partially dried clothes strewn here and there. They head out to the street with these ropes, and stand on opposite sides of the street while the rope stretches out across the street, sleeping calmly until a vehicle approaches. The children keep their eyes peeled for cars, bikes, anything moving basically, and when they spot their prey, they lift the rope up, effectively closing the road. Then, as the vehicle stops, they charge the poor person in the car 5-10 rupees for the use of the PUBLIC road. Of course, I was not about to pay these Hindu kiddos to use a public road (I know, that’s pocket change, but it’s the principle of the matter! That and the fact that I had 15 kids who would have loved 10 rupees at home, so I wasn’t about to take from them!), so, as I was on the bicycle, I either snuck around the side of a paying car or stopped, dismounted my bike, lifted it over the upraised rope and then stepped over myself. This made some laugh, and some mad. You can’t please them all I suppose ;). I do have to give props to whoever made up this holiday, though. Barricading a public road and charging a toll to pass is a great way to make a lot of money, even if you just charge 10 cents per car! I’ll have to keep that in mind for paying of my student loans when I get back to the US...

The next was slightly harder to avoid. It was called Holi, and it’s known as a festival of color closing the doors on winter and welcoming the fragrance of spring! Sounds innocent enough, right? Well, to make sure everyone’s playing along, for about a week before the actual day of Holi kids swarm the streets armed with water guns, water balloons and eggs. Now, traditionally, if you have paint on your face, you’re safe from these weapons of destruction. Again, I wasn’t going to paint my face in order to walk to the shop, so I chose to take my chances. I was hit with a few water balloons, but I didn’t mind those so much. I mean, they’re really inconvenient when you’re hit on your way to a 3 hour church service (which I was), meaning your clothes are wet for the majority of that time, but I can live with that.

However, some of the kids decide to add “special” surprises to the day and throw balloons filled with colored water (in the spirit of the colors) or with urine and sewer water (someone needs to beat those kids with bamboo rods!). That or eggs. Thankfully, I wasn’t hit with any special balloons, but some boys down the road from us thought it was really funny to wait until someone had passed and then run up at full speed and throw a boiled egg at their unsuspecting back. Unfortunately, I was hit with one of those eggs, square on my spine. I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even turn and yell at the kid. Actually, that was probably a blessing from God, because had I opened my mouth at that moment, I would have most certainly said many things that I would have later regretted! Actually, had I turned around, I might have killed them. But, at that time, I didn’t even want to think about moving my back, so, Rami, who was walking with me, turned and yelled a string of scolding words at them before we hurried home. We got home and a large knot had formed right on the center of my backbone. Fortunately the pain died down to a dull ache (I thought boiled eggs were SQUISHY!), and the next day the knot was mostly gone with a nice bruise in its place. Needless to say, I won’t mind coming home to the holidays I grew up loving!