Happy HOLI!!!!

yesterday was Holi (pronounced "holy")--the festival of colors. there are a few different stories about the origins of this festival, but basically it's a celebration of the coming of spring, of good harvests and fertility, and of the death of the demoness holika. in other words, a perfect excuse for people to close their shops and run around in the streets throwing colored powder at each other! traditionally holi was a hindu festival, but from my experience i'd say it's gone secular- everyone, everyone celebrates (or they lock themselves inside their homes to hide from the hooligans). it is much like jouvert, the early morning mud/chocolate/paint-slinging part of carnival in trinidad. so there's some background, and here's my experience:

this is some of us with a friend from campus at our guesthouse, before we really got started. around 9am some off-campus friends showed up and we all piled into an open-top jeepy car (fondly named "gypsy") and took off- nine of us in the back and three in the front. as we drove through campus we could see that the other students had gotten a much earlier start than we had- already everyone was covered from head to foot in pink, blue, yellow, purple, orange, gold, etc. we had a quick breakfast of dosas and idlis, lassis and tea, and all sorts of chutneys at a favorite restaurant of ours (aptly named chutney's). from there we headed for the farmhouse of a friend of a friend-where all our friends would be (too many names, we'll just call everyone friend:)). the house was about 20km outside of town (and on bad roads, that is no short distance) and we got lost several times, but despite the discomfort of having about three people on top of me- bouncing at every pothole- it was a fabulous ride. everyone on the road was bright pink or orange, entire dayglo families were piled onto single motorcycles, people in rickshaws or on mopeds drove up next to us and threw color, everyone screamed "happy holi!" loud enough to be heard over of the noise of traffic.

the party seemed more like a garden party than a farm party- it took place in a beautiful little yard that you entered via bridge. on one side there was a refreshment tent serving drinks and a buffet- but food was the last thing from anyone's mind, all we cared about was playing color and dancing! there were huge ricesacks full of powder all over the yard, and continually you could see clouds of color exploding and dispersing in the air over someone's head. the rowdier of us were not content with merely throwing color, we instead pinned friends and strangers and smothered them in color- i had my teeth brushed with blue and pink several times- puh! next to the house there were pipes running overhead spraying water- an overhead irrigation system for the holi players. we all kept running back and forth between throwing powder and then dancing in the sprinklers, trying to wash it all off. despite the number of colors we used, everyone seemed to turn the same shade of pink by the end of the day. a huge mud puddle formed in the middle of the yard and people danced in it- and shoved others in it. there was a dj who played all the favorites- the songs that seem to be endlessly recycled in every club every night in hyderabad- and two tabla players who beat their traditional drums in time with the younger generation's soundtrack. on a raised terrace overlooking the yard there was a pool- which early in the day lost all semblance of cleanliness and turned into a huge red bath tub.

the hours fell away unnoticed as we forgot everything except holi, the moment we were in, the people we were with, and the intoxicating colors. by far, yesterday was my favorite day in india. i don't think there was a single person who was thinking of anything other than having fun and making sure those around them had fun. when we finally left, we realized we had been so excited to get there that we had forgotten to gas up gypsy- but after a few waterbottles full of petrol and a joint effort to give her a running start down the long gravel road, we got her going. driving back through the city in the late afternoon i could feel a communal calm despite the ceaseless traffic. hyderabad was tired and content- and a little more colorful than before. we were warned that the powder can hurt your eyes (and possibly blind you) and make your hair fall out; fortunately we dodged those bullets, though everyone with lighter hair looks like they've revisited their rebellious manic panic highschool days. one day and three showers later, my hair is still a nice shade of plum, my nails are pink and my cuticles blood red, my neck looks rather jaundiced, and the inside of my right ear is deep purple. to avoid this, people oil their hair and skin- but judging by the number of color-stained people i saw in the city today with fuschia necks poking out of white collars and pink hands handing over rupees, i'd say that a few days of visible holi aftertaste is inevitable for everyone. today the roads around campus are splattered with color and even the coats of the month-old puppies that live down by gop's have changed from a dun color to every color possible. but as all good things have to end, it's back to life as usual.

HAPPY HOLI!

STUDY abroad?

so...all of you who are getting a little green reading about my fast-paced subcontinent-trotting lifestyle will be glad to know that the first word in that tricky little phrase has finally snuck up on me. my college isn't just paying for me to bum around the subcontinent, there's actually (actually, like the american like, has a way of creeping into every sentence here in india) some education involved, too- despite the absence of it in this blog. for the first time in a long time, this past weekend was not divided into bus time and beach time, train and tourism time; instead i was studying for the first of my interim exams- both of which i had today (hindi and sociology). it's hard to believe that the semester is already more than halfway complete!
anyway, someone or something was pleased with me and decided to grant me the gift of a small taste of monsoon season- which will reach hyderabad only after i am back in d.c. as i biked home it was just beginning to sprinkle, and by the time i reached the guesthouse there were limbs of lightning continuously reaching 180 degress across the sky. i don't really know if i can explain the awesome power of a sudden onslaught of rain (for the past few nights it has rained minimally) after more than two months of nearly cloudless skies and oppressive heat- i can only say that it has the power to turn me into a little kid again. once it really started coming down-with much more force than the water pressure of our shower- ashley and i dashed outside, stuck out our tongues to catch mouthfulls of water, splashed in puddles, and ran barefoot through campus to the amusement of many umbrella-covered and shelter-seeking students and professors. finally, when we came back home, a few inches of water had collected on the roof ( it's walled in) and we tried to plug up the drains so that it would turn into a giant swimming pool. no such luck, unfortunately. however- two of my friends showed up later at dinner (it was a candlelight dinner due to a rain induced power-outage) drenched to the bone, and told us of wading through knee-deep water in a low area. rain here is like snow back home-no one can function. my dance class was canceled, a friend's hindi tutor was cancelled, we had to rethink our plans to venture into the swamped city for tea tonight. it brings me back to rainy days at camp, a bunch of girls cabin-bound with nothing to do (except write excesive blog entries on the wonders of rain).

receiving blessings from an elephant in hampi was only one of this past weekend's events...

finally i am back in hyderabad for more than a few days- recently we've been trying to cram in as much travel as posible before it gets unbearably hot (now that it's march, the temperature seems to be increasing daily). last weekend (thursday through sunday) we went on our first program-sponsored trip since delhi, this time it was to bangalore and hampi in the neighboring state of karnataka. basically the whole weekend was devoted to sightseeing, so forgive me if this entry sounds a bit like a lonley planet excerpt- in lieu of adventures i will give you some facts.
we started off from the guesthouse at 4am on thursday morning, some of us having had only a few winks of sleep or none at all, and caught a 6 o'clock bangalore-bound airplane, my first plane inside india and quite the luxury. taking off from hyderabad at dawn, i stayed awake just long enought to see golconda fort from above before falling asleep for the next hour and a half.
after breakfast in a random hotel, we began our jam-packed day in bangalore, india's fastest-growing city. before my glorious hometown hyderabad surpassed bangalore in the IT world, bangalore held the title of india's silicon valley, which we have subsequently appropriated. at the nandi temple ( nandi means bull and is the vehicle of Shiva; strangely enough nandi is always referred to with feminine pronouns, even though she's a bull...?). better than the temple itself was the wedding taking place outside of it- a LOVE marriage, everyone took effort to note. here you can see the couple holding hands with their garments symbolically tied together as they circumambulate an alter several times in ceremony.
following that we went to the Lalbagh (Lal=red, bagh=garden) Botanical Gardens, containing a profusion of foliage and some interesting signs that read "biodiversity this way," "no playing in the garden," and "trees are my life." later in the day we visited a huge Iskcon temple (International Society for Krishna Conciousness; temple of the Hare Krishnas) where we had to wait in a rollercoaster-like line just to enter. i think it wise to refrain from making any cyber comments about my personal perceptions on anything religious, so i'll just say that it was larger than any temple i have seen thus far and quite interesting. we had dinner while waiting on a train platform and around 8 caught the overnight Hampi express (our first 2-tier train! again, quite the luxury-only 2 bunks high instead of 3), where i settled myself comfortably into my windowside berth, closed the curtains, and fell asleep in my little cubby as the miles passed under me. we were abruptly waken in the early morning, not before but just as we pulled up to the platform, and there was a mad scramble to pack up and get off. so yadda yadda we checked into our lovely hotel blah blah and hopped on two small vans, etc. etc., and then began exploring Hampi, where we saw some of the ruins (dating from the 14th-16th centuries and spanning 25 km) of an ancient city called Vijayanagara, which was once the 'capital of the greatest kingdom in medieval India,' a huge hub for international commerce, and architecturally profuse- temples, mosques, and palaces everywhere! to the right you can see people bathing in the Tungabhadra river, and

to the left you can see the Lotus Mahal. For lunch we ate at a quirky little restaraunt at the edge of a small cliff overlooking the river. from an ancient mango tree there hung a wooden tree swing that took you out almost over the cliff so that you felt you were flying above the rice paddies and all the women in their colorful saris standing ankle deep in water harvesting rice. we saw more temples and temple ruins that day than i can remember the names of, as well as the colorful Hampi Bazaar- full of cloth, beads, jewelry, fruit, and chachkas galore. i bought a beautiful little brass Ganesh; Ganesh is the elephant-headed Hindu god and the 'remover of obstacles.' The next morning we took the busses to Anegundi, which is thought to be the legendary kingdom of Kishkinda, home of the monkey prince Sugriva and the monkey god Hanuman who befriend and help Rama rescue Sita in the the famous epic the Ramayana. maybe these guys are descendants?
we visited the Vitthala Temple, by far my favorite sight of the weekend. the woman in red is not hugging the temple, rather rubbing the pillars to make them "sing." we then took a long drive through billowing dust and banana plantations, sugarcane and rice growing in abundance, lush green surrounded by arid hills strewn with huge boulders, to a village where we met with the founder of an NGO called The Kishkinda Trust . TKT, to paraphrase my itinerary, assists villagers at the grassroots level and empowers them economically, culturally, and socially to conserve their historical heritage. one of their major programs has been the development of eco-friendly products made from natural and local resources (banana fiber, river grass, etc.), this program specifically employs and empowers women who otherwise have no means of earning and income as well as churning out beautiful crafts. here is one of the women spinning string from banana fiber. that night we slept on the train again and had all of sunday free to explore bangalore- i spent most of my time on the main drag, poking my head into stores, sitting outside for coffee, seeing an early afternoon movie called rang de basanthi (less than two dollars for a matinee here!), sitting in an american style pub, and going to bed early so i could wake up again at four a.m. to return to hyderabad- which, being often compared with bangalore, i had actually started to miss. and speaking of...i'm sure everyone is aware that bush was in india for the past few days, but did you know that yesterday he left delhi and took a tour of hyderabad, right through my remote little neighborhood? well, as with religion, i will refrain form making any political comments. besides, the most interesting part of the day was not the president but the fact that as it grew dark the wind picked up with more gusto than i have felt it in india thus far, and sometime around ten there was a downpour...the first time i have felt rain in over two months! it was fantastic-i now understand the joy of a wilted plant that has not been watered in ages.