This weekend we enjoyed one of India's greatest and most widely celebrated festivals known as Dussehra, which comes from sanskrit meaning "10 days". It is the culmination of nine days of fasting - called "Navaratri" (meaning "nine days") - and worship of Shakti, an embodiment of the Hindu concept of the "Divine Mother" Durga.
The 10th day is celebrated in grand fashion, culminating in the burning of massive effigies of Ravana - the arch foe of Lord Rama as told in the Hindu epic scripture Ramayana. The Demon-King Ravana is flanked by Kumbhakaran and Meghanad, his partners in crime, and all three are symbolically defeated by Rama after he rescues his wife from their clutches, having kidnapped her to their kingdom of Lanka (which most associate with the island of modern Sri Lanka). This is a boiled-down oversimplification as Dussehra is not celebrated uniformly across India, varying in custom and emphasis depending on the region. But the general purpose of the festival is to celebrate the "Victory of Good over Evil" - a particularly auspicious time to initiate a new venture, dedicate a new building, or seek blessing upon tools, weapons, machines, books, etc.
The exciting part was the evening event held to culminate the week's festivities and burn the effigies. These are set up in big venues and in small neighborhood parks throughout the city. We drove through Delhi (to drop off fellow scholar Chris Wilkinson at the train station - he was here for just one day on his way to Kolkata) and saw some very impressive effigies setup near the Red Fort. We also noticed that it was only 4 PM and there were already tens of thousands of people massing for the carnival-scene...way too dense for us to venture into!
We decided to attend the locally-produced event in the next neighborhood known as Rama-Krishna Puram. The picture here shows a close up of Ravana, who is normally depicted as having 10 heads looking in all directions (that's what those thingys hanging off the ears are). He has the trademark mustache and is armed...but he was in for a big shock, as were we, for his demise was imminent! You should know that this is really just a wood and bamboo frame covered in paper and plaster, but is about 45 feet tall! (notice the neighborhood water tower behind him) He is also held up by four ropes, the idea being they will keep him from falling on the crowd as he goes up in flames! Nevermind there were people sitting within the perimiter of its fall - OSHA has no juristiction here. In fact an OSHA inspector would probably have an aneurism if they saw this setup. Ravana was packed with enough explosives to...well, you'll see below. There were fireworks (the REAL BIG boomer-type stuff with awesome colors) that was cooked off literally 40 feet in front of us by guys with matches or sticks that were on fire! And they shot right up over our heads, showering debris onto our laps! Yahoo! It was like the good-'ole-days in America before the Lawyers took over! (Tone...no slight intended, Bro!)
We bought some tickets to enter the "VIP" section, meaning we were in front of a makeshift wooden barricade (where the rest of the neighborhood sat on the grass) and behind a ropeline, which was all that was between us and all the super-flammables. Actually we wisely sat on the back row.
When the time came to begin, the Master of Ceremonies began to narrate a super-simplified version of the story of Rama, Sita, and Ravanna, while a small pack of local boys decked in costumes roamed about the no-man's land (in and around the effigies that were loaded with powder, and literally criss-crossing the launching pad while the fireworks were going up!) pretending to fight each other. It was not coordinated in any way, and it seemed to drag on forever as they just wandered around in 2 groups, occasionally meeting and having it out with their wooden swords.
After his two buddies were reduced to smoldering heaps, Ravana himself had a nice touch - his belly erupted in a spinning wheel of sparks and noisemakers. This, however, did not trigger his demise, and the underpaid, overzealous ignition guys had to creep up to his formidible, half-lit and smoking tinderkeg corpus to try to get him to go off completely. They succeed without bar-b-queing themselves...
And the neighborhood was much pleased to see that good does, in fact, triumph over evil. Even if you had to wait for a very long time to see it happen in such a spectacular and satisfying way.
