Diwali

Today is Diwali. It's the biggest holiday in North India. Everyone decorates their houses with lights and flowers and has pujas (prayer ceremonies) and eats lots of good food and sets off fireworks. This morning IES brought a "pundit" to the residence to do a puja with us. It's a pretty elaborate ceremony that involves a lot of chanting and symbolically feeding various gods and building a small fire in a dish of sand. Lata got me all dressed up in one of her saris and all the other girls wore saris, too. I had done a puja once before with my homestay family but it was right when I first got here and there were a lot of things I didn't understand. This time I could ask Cate and Reeta questions as it was going on and take pictures. Tonight my host family is going to do a similar ceremony and then have way better food and set off fireworks. Lata asked me to invite a few of my IES friends to come over for that, so that should be fun. They were allexcited to get to celebrate with a real family.

Varanasi

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted last. Sorry about that. I've been so busy! I just got back from a weekend in Varanasi. Hindus consider Varanasi the holiest place to die because they cremate bodies right on the banks of the Ganges and then pour the ashes into the river. It's a pretty intense place. Every so often as you're walking through the narrow, windy streets, a procession of 6 or 8 men will walk by chanting and carry a body covered in fabric on a stretcher-type-thing toward the "burning gatt". You can go out in a boat and see the whole scene from the water, too, which was pretty cool. We went out at sunrise on Friday morning and again in the evening to watch this ceremonial offering the priests give to the river every night. 

The other big thing they do in Varanasi is manufacture silk. There is a big Muslim population living in the areas set back from the river a bit and they are famous for their silk factories. A lot of them give tours of their "factories" which are basically all of of houses in the few blocks around their shops where they have divided all the production tasks among the people living there. It is mostly a gimmick to get you to buy silk from them, but a few things about it were really interesting. For example, they weave the patterns into the silk by first sketching a design on graph paper and then making cards with holes punched in certain patterns to feed into the loom to get it to weave in those patterns. It's basically just like old fashioned computer programming and they have been weaving fabrics like that for centuries. In one of the houses on display there were three little boys sewing sequins onto fabrics. It obviously had not even occurred to our guide that he might not want to show off where he employs little kids. The truth of the matter is that most kids here need to make some money by that age and as working conditions go, sewing at home is not so bad.

Saturday we went to Sarnath, a nearby town where Buddha apparently gave his first sermon. There was a park and a monument commemorating that and a few Buddhist temples in the area. 

Navratri and Chawri Bazaar food walk

Yesterday was the end of Navratri, a week of fasting for Hindus. For the end  of the fast, my homestay mom prepared the typical special occasion meal of  channa (chickpeas), puri (fried bread),  halva (this dessert thing that isn't anything like Israeli halva), and  kir (amazing rice pudding stuff).  Before you end your fast you're supposed to feed some of this meal to 8 little girls, so people invite poorer kids in to have some  of the food. All morning, little girls, mostly the daughters of the women who work as maids in the neighborhood, were going from house to house being fed. The first group of four was so cute! When Lata (my homestay mom) put the food in front of them, they looked at it like they might burst if they ate another puri. She offered to pack it up for them so they could take it with them, which works out also because they are roaming around with boys, too,  and only the girls get invited in for the purpose of the holiday. When  they had eaten all they could, the leader of the group, who could not have been more than about 8 years old, took charge of packing everything up. Lata had given them each a bag but the girl collected all of their bags and plates and then devoted one bag to each food item. It was adorable. I was so impressed by her efficiency. I missed the second group of girls because I had to leave for class.

One of my IES professors keeps a blog about street food in Delhi. He and his friends go out once a week or so to sample street foods in different areas and then he reports on where the best places are for different types of food. Last night, they were all heading to Chawri Bazaar in Old  Delhi and he invited our class to come. I realize it was the only night of the year when it may have been inappropriate for me to go on a food walk, but I decided it was an opprtunity I didn't want to pass up. In retrospect, it was a great decision. So far I have not spent very much time in Old Delhi but it's amazing! I'm really excited to go back during the day and get some good pictures because  it's so cool looking. The shops are divided up by type, so the area where we were was all hardware stores. One entire street was filled with  stores selling only knobs and hooks. All of the roads are covered in a web of wires, which I think are power lines, mounted about a story and a half in the air. I have no idea why there are layers of power lines there. Tucked between the stores are all of these little tiny restaurants and then lining the roads are more carts and tables where people are selling all kinds of food. 

A few of us rode with Hemanshu (my professor) and got there a bit early so we headed into one of the more Muslim areas to taste what  is apparently the  world's best kir. I have not tasted that many kirs but it was excellent. Since its mostly Muslims in that  area, they also sell beef there. I did not expect to miss eating meat but I really do. After kir and some kabobs we went back to the metro stop to meet up with everyone else. It was a really cool group of people. We spent the next 3 hours or so walking from stand to stand, trying all different dishes, snacks and desserts, beginning and ending with dessert. At the outset we each put 200 rupees (about $5) into a common pot and then just shared everything. 200 rupees buys you a lot of street food! Our first stop was for this ice cream that they make by pouring milk flavored  with fruit on a spinning drum filled with dry ice.  Now that I think about it, I have no idea where they would get dry ice  and  I think they must just use regular ice but i guess it's possible. Either way I thought the process was brilliant and it tasted so good! 

Today is Dussehra, a holiday that involves burning giant paper mache demon heads. That should be pretty interesting. 

Update on my life

Ok so here's a quick summary of everything that's gone on since I posted last. Life has gotten pretty busy all of a sudden. Last night I went to another foreign students association party at JNU. It was hilarious but not particularly fun. They had set up this weird backwards tent with walls made of fabric and no roof on the lawn in front of one of the academic buildings. When I got there, several deans of various things were lined up in chairs on the dance floor, making speeches. Apparently there was some confusion among the members of the fsa board as to what is  supposed to go on at a party. After the speeches, they served chinese food and soda and then turned off all the lights and started playing "dance music". During this whole time, of course, guys are making awkward advances in halting English along the lines of, "I think I met you yesterday." "Nope." "Yea at that party." "No that wasn't me." "Yes it was." and so forth. 

This week was the beginning of the festival season for Hindus and the end of Ramadan so there are all of these fasts and festivals and such going on. Thursday was a holiday in honor of Gandhi's birthday. I went with Lata and Manu to visit one of their cousins who has a boutique and designs clothes in a suburb of Delhi. She's going to make me Indian clothes. I'm so excited! I also got to try on a sari  for the first time. They're so hard to wear! I need to practice so I don't make a fool of myself on Diwali when I'm supposed to actually wear one. Getting all wrapped up in it isn't that hard, although making it look neat is a challenge, but  getting it to stay in place is impossible! Even when I was just standing still the piece over my shoulder kept sliding off. Apparently it's ok to cheat and use safety pins to keep it all in place.

I went to erev Rosh Hashanah services at the synagogue here. It was hilarious and chaotic with three men leading the whole thing, each with his own pace and tunes, and no one else having any idea what was going on. They managed to wrap the whole thing up in under 45 minutes, though, which was impressive. Tuesday night I went to a dinner hosted by a lady from the synagogue who is here working for the UN Development Programme. It was cool to meet Jewish people from all over the world  who are in India  for all different really interesting reasons. They also had challah there, which was glorious!

I also bought a bike this week. I have to remember to say "cycle" not  "bike", though, because here they call motorcycles "bikes" and people get very concerned when they think I plan to drive around the city on a motorcycle. I've been having a great time riding back and forth to JNU and around the neighborhood. I'm so sick of being driven around and it's nice to get to explore a little bit without deciding on a destination ahead of time. It turns out there are all these gender and class issues tied to riding cycles and people definitely look at me funny when I'm out riding but I'm not willing to let that restrict  me to  being driven around.