Praying for rain

I have always wondered how, ahem, “professional” bloggers stay at it on a continual basis. Blogging is a pretty thankless task- you never know if people are reading them, and it takes discipline to sit down at the keyboard at the end of a tiring day and write something you hope will read as interesting when you look back on it 5 years from now.

I know, for example, that the blogs I have been writing have been suffering from being overly descriptive and not emotive enough (at least compared to some of the first emails I wrote when I was in Guatemala). But that’s probably simply because they are being written while trying to squeeze in interesting experiences around a very hectic work schedule, rather than being consciously developed while having a few hours in an air-conditioned internet café.

Today a couple of firsts for me: I turned up to work in my new kurta (a traditional Indian men’s outfit- the closest comparison I could make would be of a pyjama-like-top and a ‘one size fits all’ drawstring pants), which drew comments ranging from giggles from our female labour, to high/low praise (“you look very smart- like an Indian politician”) to derision (“you look like a young Indian college student”). In the very least I feel a little bit more appropriate now- even if I might attract even more stares now than when I was wearing shorts to and from the site. I’m still trying to judge whether the clothes will serve the purpose they were bought for though- which was to try and make working in the heat of the day a little more bearable while providing some sort of modesty and sun protection. I’m yet to fully appreciate the supposed breathing/cooling effects of cotton. Photos soon?

Second on today’s schedule was a visit to the local temple celebration that’s currently on in Samode. For a month now there’s been a poster up of some extremely holy looking dude announcing that something was going to happen, and a few weeks ago a temporary temple (same stem word, dictionary nerds?) sprang up in the line of sight from our second compost site, announcing that whatever was going to happen was about to. It just so happens that our production manager also announced to us a few days before that he was intending to take 10 days of leave to celebrate a holy festival. All this culminates then at this temple to […], patronised by the maharaja (the holy-looking dude on the posters), where the “rain, weather, environmental and general luck” festival/celebration will be going on for the next 9 days. Today was the first day, and seeing as I had turned up to work in my regal/college boy outfit, I guess it was inevitable that everyone would think I wanted to head to the celebrations.

It wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be- especially for an Indian temple celebration there were relatively few people there. Most were under the bamboo temple that I mentioned earlier, all seated around fire-places which had numbers on them. These it turned out were family allocated plots that the families had purchased at a minimum of Rs 20,000 (close to 4 months wages for the average labourer). Our production manager had apparently paid Rs 50,000 for his (which is about 2.5 month’s salary for him)- basically it seemed like this was a bit of a “who’s who” of Samode- the more important people got a fire a bit closer to the main one, and I suppose got to be seen. I probably shouldn’t be so cynical- the whole thing requires a bit of a commitment- you need to be there throughout the day, mainly listening but occasionally joining in with the chanting to Rahm, his wife (Sitar?) and Hanuman Ji (and probably lots of others as well). In addition, you have to make a daily walk around this circle of chanting- a number of times. And the number of circles increases as the celebration goes on- 11 on the first day (that’s what we did), 21 the second, up to 91 on the last day. One circle would be in the realm of 200 metres, so you’re talking maybe 15km on the last day, not the lightest of walks… Now that we actually did the first day, my colleagues are urging me to come back every day, telling me it would be too much of a lost opportunity not to do so. Not only that, but they have also assessed that if we do it after we finish our work days we will be getting the maximum benefit from a day’s chanting and offering by the guys who are sitting inside the circle working hard to ensure good monsoon rains and a healthy environment for us all. That’s the point of the circling, to absorb the good vibes and aura radiating out from the holy offerings and fires in the middle. So they do the work, and we get the benefits. Not a bad system.

Benefits are also available from the free foods on offer (known as “prasads”- literally offerings), which anyone can sit down and indulge in. Once again, the idea is to make the absolute most of these holy gifts to the gods. I simply thought that my colleagues were being polite when they got me to try and eat my 10^th special-ghee soaked bread or puri, but now I realise that eating more of these prasads means that I could get more of their godly benefits, and that you need to take advantage of them when they’re offered to you- even if you think it would be impossible for a human to actually eat and benefit from that much food. It’s not hard to continually eat either- one of the boons of Indian efficiency is the constant stream of helpers who arrive with a bucket of one of the four types of food every 2 seconds to encourage you to have more. It’s a strange sensation having people eager to give you as much free food as you can eat- the idea seems to be that everyone receives a little of the blessings if more is eaten.

Anyway, suffice to say I am sufficiently “lucked-up” for the day (dirty minds beware) and that I have done my bit for the future of the environment in India or at least in the vicinity of Samode.