So Mysore’s claim to fame in the tourist calendar is the ten-day long celebration of Dasara – I’m guessing that originally, it was a kind of harvest festival. Now though, for those who live here, it’s meant that over the last week and a half, at the festival approached its climax over this last weekend, the streets were ever more thronged with crowds of people and tour buses full of, and more often than not, over-flowing with people, were careening around corners. Every excursion into “the city” took twice as long as you budgeted for it and you invariably returned sweaty, damp and cross. And as an aside, can anyone tell me why Indians feel the need to get dressed up in their finest when they travel? Wandering around, I felt positively dweeby – nothing brightly coloured, silken, or shining, or glittery about my see-the-sights-and-get-dirty wear.
But, reader, it was all worth it. Really! Darlings, the last three days would have fulfilled every exotic dream of India you’ve (n)ever had! First, there was all the getting ready of the household for the “Ayuda Pooja” – an honouring of all the tools and implements and cars and suchlike about the house. Being the uncouth “phoren-returnee” with no sense of tradition, I got to go and help pick out yards of fresh flowers – purple asters, if you really want to know, because my family owns an ancient white Fiat and it’s all about aesthetics, after all! – and bring home limes and a pumpkin. Yes, you read that right: a pumpkin. Cars and motorbikes and everything else in between get washed and shined and garlanded with flowers and then decorated with kumkum and prayed over by the Ancient and Wise One who looks at them all with dislike and distrust. You set limes in front of each wheel and then drive over them! The pumpkin is brought crashing down in front of the vehicles and everyone stands around and earnestly asks that they be pleased with these offerings – “balli” – for the following year and ask for no more, especially not for any human blood! Great fun. And for that one day, pretty much every vehicle on the roads will be trailing strings of wilting flowers….
Apparently, it’s a holdover from the days when kings would pray over their weapons before going off to make war; a la Billy Bragg, I know it’s wrong to celebrate weapony things but it was a *fun* day. After the Ancient Car heaved itself over the limes, off we went to a family farm and went through a similar process with spades and picks and hoes. Whee! I spent the hour-long drive taking pictures of bedecked vehicles: a bus I saw (coming here soon!) is probably my fave, though I don’t know that I’d have dared to climb on board it, given how much all this must have affected the driver’s vision!
And stay tuned for tales of the rest of the weekend – the elephants are coming! THE ELEPHANTS ARE COMING!
