making it loud

8/3/2019 Making It Loud

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The day had started on a brilliant note.

It was unfolding like those perfect

Sunday mornings which effortlessly

stretch themselves into the late after-

noons. It was forcing itself, albeit quite beauti-

fully, upon me by making me ponder over one

of the most important questions of bachelor-

hood that has stretched itself into the early

thirties of a not so eventful life. The question,

too, did not have much to do with any meta-

physical quests or the complexities of modern

life. Rather, it was quite a simple and rather

endearing one- if I should get off the bed to

make some tea for myself or if I still had some

time left to lazily stare into the white nothing-

ness of the ceiling. Then, some people some-

where in the vicinity took the burden of snatch-

ing me out of the unproductive slumber unto

themselves.

And what better way could they have found

to ensure that than by unleashing the gods

themselves on these lazy limbs wasting the

Sunday morning? So they did by switching on

what seemed and sounded like a thousand

loud speakers blaring religious songs into my

hapless ears. This was it for that idle gaze fixed

on the roof, that pondering over making tea

and all that made a Sunday morning beautiful.

What I did not understand, though, was how

these people got to know that on the question

of god I concurred with that wreck of a person

called Friedrich Nietzsche. If only he was

around, he would have known how wrong he

was. The god was yet not dead, just that he had

come to live in my neighbourhood. This one

was an intrusive one on top of that who has

entered my house riding on the sound waves

produced by the loud speakers.

This was not the first time though when the

god has come to grace the neighbourhood I

have been living in. Quite on the contrary, and

despite all the problems I started having with

him since my late adolescence, he has always

been there. I have grown up with him for he

was an integral and inalienable part of popular

culture. He was there in the prayers of my par-

ents every single morning. He would come to

our mohalla every other day, whenever anyone

had any reason to feel happy and declare that

to the world at large. There would be

Satyanarayana Kathas (tales of a true god). I

always wondered about for they told all the

tragedies that struck the people who were sup-

posed to listen to the katha but forgot. They

would tell the tales of how this misfortune

went away when they rectified their sin and

organized the recital of the katha. Yet, there

was no tale in the katha and no one in the

mofussil who could tell me what the real tale

was about!

This, again, does not mean that I had any-

thing against him during those heady days of

growing up. I would definitely ponder about

O | B | V | I | O | U | S | L | Y O | P | A | Q | U | E

| 2 2 | U T S V O I C E > N o v e m b e r 1 6 - 3 0 , 2 0 1 1

Pretended religiosity now overtakes festivities in daily life

BY

SAMAR

Making it loud


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| 2 3U T S V O I C E > N o v e m b e r 1 6 - 3 0 , 2 0 1 1

the actual tale that was missing from this

katha but would love the prasad, especially the

sugary flour we would get after the pujas. Then

there would be those fairs (mela) we wouldwait for throughout the year. The melas would

make our sleepy mofussil come alive and fill it

up with a kind of frenzy pregnant with a hun-

dred opportunities where there existed none

throughout the rest of the year. The melas

would serve as our only windows to the big-big

world that existed outside the peripheries of

the mofussil. They would bring us things test-

ing the limits of our knowledge and bewilder

us. They had a bigger role to play than thatthough. They would make us realize the worth

of growing up for they would be the only times

when we would get some pocket money com-

pletely of our own.

Mofussil towns are, and were always, very

different from the big urban centers in that the

concepts like pocket money did not exist in the

mofussil. After all, the kids did not need to use

public transport to go to the buildings referred

to as schools. They were schools in the basic

minimum sense of the word where the opera-

tive part was minimum. The kids from the

mofussil would walk to the school and theones coming from the villages peripherally

attached to it would either walk/cycle to it or

would be dropped by their brothers, parents or

relatives. Well, I concede that motorbikes have

replaced most of these cycles since those

times of 20 years ago when I walked to one

such school.

Not one of these schools will have anything

even remotely akin to something called can-

teen, in fact that was a word I got familiar with

only when I left my mofussil for senior second-

ary studies, and there would be no need for

carrying any money. Coming back to the point,because we would not need any money of our

own to live in the mofussil, we would not get

any pocket money. That was a concept that

remained completely alien to us till the melas

came as saviours giving us money that was

our own. I did not have any particular liking for

the god, or even for the concept of the god, but

then I was quite happy for the fact that he

brought us melas at least twice a year.

Nothing of this was comparable to the

intoxicating trance that used to descend over

our Kasbah during the Dusehara festivals. That

used to be the only time we felt proud of livingwhere we did. The town would be full of pan-

dals(tableaus) reconstructing the imagery of

the victory of good over evil. Well, I accept that

I have always had my doubts about what actu-

ally constituted good and evil but that did

never stop me from living those days to the full.

In the dark distant past when we did not have

any cable television or computers, when face-

book was almost a generation away Dusehara


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celebrations were our only shot at freedom to

celebrate. It gave us a semblance of a night life,

the only week in a year when we could afford

to return home really, really late.

It also gave us our best friends. The friend-

ships had started developing over edibles

bought in the melas and shared with the bud-

dies we found ourselves really close to and it

was the time for them to cement themselves

into relations that would last a lifetime. Well, let

me also concede that these friendships based

themselves over many a things that could

qualify to be called sinful, at least on the

thresholds. We would roam around almost all

night and attend every single devi-jagaran or

ratjaga (all night singing and worshipping the

goddess). We wont do that for any religious

reasons though. The ratjagas would give us our

only shot at spotting the beautiful girls of our

mofussil and waiting for that elusive smile that

would make us fall in love with them.

Our chants would be replete with elbowing

each other and announcing our love for the girl

we would most often not even know the name

of. Those would prove to be one of the most

precious moments of our lives. singing some

devotional song or chanting that ubiquitous jai

mata di we would be poking our best friend

and telling him about the girl in blue suit,

decades before That Girl in Yellow Boots was to

come. There would be sacrifices, of course

very silly ones, too. One would not take a

moment to relinquish his love if the other pro-

fesses it before him!

Forget the fact that more often than not we

would not get a chance to talk to that true love

of ours even once in a lifetime. We were happy

with the god (in fact, the goddess) that one

could steal a glance at her, and got a smile in

return as well at times, of course as presumed

by him and vehemently supported by the bud-

dies. Forget the fact that the true love kept

changing year after year.

Forget the fact that nothing remained the

same after we left the mofussil for higher stud-

ies. Forget the fact that we were shocked to

find our true loves having aged at a pace

much higher than us, often married and with

babies, when we got back for those holidays

that shrank every year.

Forget all this, for nothing of this takes

away the celebration of the life that was so

intrinsic to the festivities. The festivities, in

turn, trumped religiosity inherent to these fes-tivals. Whether or not the ratjaga celebrated

the victory of good over evil, it did celebrate the

triumph of love (the possibility of love at least)

against the repressive system hell bent against

any assertion of individual choice. The ratjaga

might not have been anything comparable to

starry nights that defined the metropolitans

but they did give us something to feel proud of,

something to talk about to our blessed cousins

growing up in cities.

The festivals, and the festivities attached to

them, celebrated something more than that.

They marked the triumph of the collectivewhile accommodating the individual. The

mofussil did never have any event managers,

they do not have ones even today. Everything

that got organized was organized by the com-

munity often obliterating the caste and reli-

gious divides. No Dusehara was ever possible

in my mofussil without the lighting and fire-

cracker works done by the Muslims and no

procession of Moharram would ever be com-

plete without active and enthusiastic partici-

pation of Hindus. The mela at Karbala will

always have its ulta baja (the drumming that

marks sadness) played by the Dalits.

Well, this is not to say that everything was

beautiful in the mofussil, but it certainly was

inclusive. The festivities brought cheers to us

for everyone knew everyone and participated.

The ratjagas gave the budding singers their

first shot at public singing and the emerging

percussionist his or her first at playing tabla or

dhol. Loud speakers would of course be there

but they would never be able to drown out our

voices, neither would the lighting be able to

outshine our smiles.

Yes, I had, and still have, a problem with the

god for a thousand reasons. Yet, I could live

with him for all the festivities that came in his

name. Not anymore, for the mindless noise

blazing out of the thousand loud speakers with

no recognizable human voice. Nietzsche was

wrong but not in his assertion that the god is

dead. He was in fact murdered by his urban

devotees and the alienation that permeates

their lives. The weapons used, I am sure, were

the loud speakers.UTS

No Dusehara was ever possible in my mofussil withoutthe lighting and firecracker works done by the M uslimsand no procession of Moharram would ever be com-plete without active and enth usiastic participation ofHindus.

making it loud

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