One night out

Tonight Sara, Bub and I (Mike) were able to have a most humorous adventure. For the past three days ending with today there has been a big celebration in the Hindu religion commemorating the goddess Purga. I’m not quite sure why there are celebrations, but in almost any neighborhood here you can find a temple with this goddess in it. One of the fun things they have been doing the past couple of days is making these beautiful designs with colorful sand on the ground. We’ve seen mostly circular designs with different shapes, and also one temple had made a peacock. Also on almost every corner someone is selling these strands of beautiful orange flowers which people use to decorate cars, bikes, rickshaws, and houses. It’s just a great festival to be able to observe as there’s not really anything like it in the US.

Anyways, the adventure we had tonight started with what sounded like loud dance music we could hear outside of our apartment. We went out to investigate and walked across the train tracks by our apartment and came across a small stage with a statue of the goddess Purga and next to that some lights and speakers putting out some loud dance music. We walked through the crowd and just stood at a distance of about 20ft, being the only white people in the crowd of about 100 people. There were people anywhere from kids to grown men dancing, just having fun with the music. Then suddenly someone came up and asked us to join in the dancing, and we went from being observers to being the center of the crowd. We thought that everyone would come in and dance with us, but instead this big circle of people formed about 3 persons deep around us to watch us dance. The three other people dancing with us were imitating our dance moves; maybe mocking us and maybe thinking they were really cool, we weren’t sure. There was also one man there preventing other people from dancing in the small circle, we think because he wanted us to be the center but we weren’t entirely sure. We danced with them for awhile and after each song we would try to go and they would just hold up a finger, “just one more” and we would. After about four songs we finally quit and retired our dancing for the night.

What impresses me about the different religions here is that they are more publicly celebrated. Their celebrations aren’t confined to a building, but it’s more publicly displayed. All are welcome to observe and process in their own way. And everyone from the elders to young kids are participating. There is another religious celebration that, I believe, starts today commemorating the defeat of the evil one Raman (sp?). It is celebrated with a burning of an effigy of Raman and lots of fireworks. This common theme of a victory over evil is something that can be appreciated across many religions and is very interesting to see celebrated in this way. We were told we would be impressed by the diversity and extravagance of the different religions here and we truly have been.