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Partying with the Village People: A Few Pointers

A few days ago Chinta and I went to her friend Poku’s wedding up in the villages near Durgapur. Poku is a guy who originally rescued a small orphan kitten I ended up raising and naming Redux. (That’s a story for another time.) What’s more, Lena treated Poku’s sick father, as part of her work for the Emergency Medical Fund. The original plan called for us to attend a bit of puja, and then have lunch, before returning to Rewalsar. True to form, I thought I’d be back by 2 pm, and wander down to Baisakhi Mehla for a couple hours. But this is India, so you know how the punchline to this goes. Anyway, learned some important stuff I thought I’d share with you guys:

1) No matter what the pandit says, the first full day of Baisakhi Mehla is not a good time to travel anywhere near Rewalsar. The traffic in and out of town is horrendous. The jams started happening around 9 in the morning, and continued throughout the day. At one point three cops showed up outside the house and attempted to direct traffic. That lasted about 15 minutes or so. After that the traffic snarls became this ongoing audience participation group therapy style of thing. Anyone who had an idea how to make traffic flow smoother basically got out of their vehicle (yes, leaving it smack in the middle of the road) and started directing traffic. Meanwhile people in other stopped vehicles would look down the hill, realize it would be faster to walk, and begin to do so. We’re talking busloads and truckloads of pedestrians in the middle of the traffic snarls making for the nearest path down the hill to town. And then, any people left in stopped vehicles would recognize old friends/family/inlaws/outlaws and start to visit with each other in the middle of the traffic.

The plan called for a friend of Chinta’s to show up in a car at about 10 AM that was going to the wedding with some other people. The car managed to inch its way in front of the house about 11 o’clock. Chinta and her friend and I piled into this teetiny compact taxi that already held three people and the driver. And then…the car didn’t go anywhere. There was no place for it to go, the traffic was that bad. After a while I realized it would actually be faster for the seven of us (including a lady in her sixties) to get out of car, pick it up, and carry it to the mandir (shrine) we were headed to. I told Chinta that in America we had traffic problems too, and everybody in the car laughed.

An hour or so later we made it the 5 kilometers down the road to the mandir where the ceremony was happening. Although we’d missed earlier portions of the puja, we were in time to catch the bride and groom as they made seven trips around the mandir.

Once the bride and groom are officially married in the eyes of Shiva, Parvati, and everybody, you get to actually see the faces of the bride and groom. This would be something like the umpteenth wedding I’ve been to where I had no idea what the spouse-to-be even looked like until after the excitement’s over. The dulahana, in this case, turned out to be a young freckled version of Selma Blair.

I then spent some time discovering the next important lesson:

2) Village events do not involve precision scheduling. Instead there’s this group consensus thing where enough people finally decide for the next event to happen before proceeding. The ceremony was almost over by the time we arrived, but we were in time to meet with folks and present gifts and such. Looking around, I realize I was seeing no lunch preparations. The shrine is just a small one next to the road and a ramshackle general store/tea shop.

We got served plenty of prasad (cooked, sweetened wheat cereal), meetha (fudgy sweets), water, and chai, but no actual food. Turns out lunch was scheduled in the groom’s village down the road. The car went off with a load of people and was supposed to come back for us.

Yeah, so….no, the car didn’t come back.

We ended up hitching in this truck whose driver may or may not have been part of the wedding party. It was never clear. At any rate, a bunch of us piled into this truck (as the visiting Westerner/VIP I got a seat up front). And then…the truck didn’t go anywhere. The driver stood outside the truck, either looking for somebody or waiting for something. After a while, he got in, started up the truck and drove a total of 10 meters down the road, stopping in front of another shrine on the other side of the road. And then…the truck still didn’t go anywhere. The people tending that shrine gave us more prasad and some pakora while the driver got back out, and proceeded to wait some more. More folks piled into the truck, and finally the driver headed for the village.

A few kilometers the truck stopped in front of a house. One with no wedding preparations in evidence. Chinta’s friend explained to me that we would now be taking a “shortcut” to the grooms house. Yep–another “just down here” hike down the hill to a picturesque family home filled with villagers. We parked in a shady room out of the sun, and were plied with more water, prasad, meetha, and chai, leading to the next lesson:

3) Everybody in this region should have turned diabetic years ago. No joke. I’d had a bit of chai and biscuits before going off to the wedding, then nothing but water, chai and prasad at the wedding, then over to the house…basically I’d eaten nothing but combinations of water, milk, carbohydrates and sugar since about 6 that morning. Yipe. We sat around for a while, and finally Chinta inquired about “lunch”. By now it was about 3:30 in the afternoon, and we were out in the villages with no way of getting back home, except for a 4:30 bus. A couple people held a puzzled conversation in Hindi, the gist of which was: “Lunch? I dunno…maybe we’re having something at 4:00…” “Are you sure? I thought we weren’t eating until 6:00…” Finally things got sorted out, and we were seated on the ground with plates in front of us by a little after 4:00.

Your typical wedding feast takes place sitting on long mats laid out on the ground. “Plates” are either fresh leaves stapled together with small sticks, or paper plates that are safe for a cow to eat. Yes, you eat with your right hand. As usual, I was offered a spoon, which I declined. (It’s the equivalent of a concerned waitperson in a Chinese restaurant offering a fork in case you can’t handle chopsticks.) The eating takes place in shifts–the next shift can’t come in until the previous one finishes, so being a slow eater is something of a social no-no. By now I’ve become something of an old hand (so to speak) at these feasts, having learned the proper hand signals for “more,” “less,” and “none”. Without these, the catering wallahs will load up the plate at every opportunity to make sure you have enough to eat. Afterwards, you get up, wash your hands with the last of the water in your cup, and move off so the next round of hungry diners can have a place.

As it was, Chinta and I had only a few minutes to eat, because we needed to get back “just up there” to catch the bus by 4:30. Leading me to the next little lesson:

4) When it comes to planning out your day around a visit to the village, just give up. Seriously, it’s not worth the effort attempting to be precisely on time with anything. Since most people around here travel by foot or bus or truck, visit planning is “you get there when you get there, and you leave whenever.” Chinta and I looked at our options for getting home. Not an inspiring sight.

We tried calling Raju, an friend who drove an autorickshaw, but that was hopeless. He was stuck in Rewalsar, somewhere near the bus stand. If he actually made it out to the village and brought us back, fighting the traffic both ways, we might possibly make it home by oh…7 PM. We settled for the hike “just up here” to catch the bus, waiting with a group of other folks headed more or less towards Rewalsar. No bus. Instead, we all hitched on a truck that was headed more or less towards Galu, a small village 3 kilometers outside town and up the hill from the jungle surrounding the lake.

Galu gave the two of us a wonderful view of Rewalsar. As we looked across the valley two things were immediately obvious:

• The jungle just above the lake was on fire, and full of smoke.
• It didn’t matter who we called to come get us. Traffic was backed up from a kilometer along Mandi Road leading into town all the way up to the house.

So along with everyone else, Chinta and I started walking down the road toward town. A kilometer later we managed to hitch another ride with another truck headed more or less toward Rewalsar, arriving at the house by about 5:30.

Final total: 2 hikes and two truck rides to get 5 kilometers back home, taking about an hour. With no traffic, because it was all in Rewalsar…leading us to the final lesson:

5) There really is no such thing as being alone in India. There just isn’t. Once Chinta and I got back to the house she immediately wanted us to leave again, this time for Baisakhi Mehla, down in town. Looking down at town, I could see the kora path packed with people, shopping, selling, and celebrating. I ran some calculations…and realized I had not so much as been out of sight of another person since, oh, 9:00 that morning. Despite the spaciousness of Himachal’s great outdoors, I’d actually spent a good deal of the day pressed cheek-by-jowl with other folks in various modes of transportation. Meals and snacks happened the same way. I got a special bonus for stepping outside the groom’s house to make a phone call. Mid-conversation I turned around, and discovered I had an audience of about 10 goggle-eyed kids who had never seen anything like me before. Politely, I begged off the trip to town, and stayed home, certain there would be more chaos in the future.

April 16th, 2010 Posted by admin | India | 2 comments