Thursday 30 July 2015

Behdienkhlam - The Mud Dancing Festival

‘Go to Jowai. There is a festival there. I think you’ll like it. Jaintia tribes-people celebrate the sowing, trying to drive away plague and diseases and hoping for a good harvest. The men dance in the mud and carry huge chariots around and go from house to house carrying bamboo poles and beat the rooftops of the houses to symbolically drive away evil spirits.’

That’s what I’ve been told. And why not go and see men dancing in the mud in a pre-Christian sacred ceremony of a religion that also worships one major god and other lesser spirits?

Incidentally, another Romanian fellow is travelling around the area on a Royal Enfield bike, so we decided to go together. But Romanian customs work just as well even 10000 km away from the motherland and, although we started riding at around 11 AM, we managed to lose track of time and cover the 120 km from Cherrapunjee to Jowai in almost 5 hours. Of course the ceremonies will wait for us; we’re Romanians after all. At least that was what we’d hoped. But by the time we reached Jowai, the biggest city in the Jaintia Hills and the place where Behdienkhlam is held every year in July, the masses of people walking hurriedly through the streets meant that the mud dancing part was over. No matter, the weather was great and the people were in a celebrative mood, so we stayed around to see what else was going on. And, sure enough, our patience payed off: each year after the bad spirits have been chased away (through mud dancing, clearly), the locals have a football match between the upper part of the town and the lower part, making the winning team the agents of good crops on their side of the town.

Not only is this a very serious matter, kept every single year for generations, but it is also the perfect occasion for the townspeople to display their best clothes and accessories. We went along with remarkably well-dressed families (feeling very out of place with our own modest attires) and sat down on the side of the road in a large square lined with shops and masses of people to watch the football match.



The town’s elders, dressed in Sunday clothes bearing ceremonial canes arrived bringing along the traditional ball, the one used over and over again for every match. Something seemed out of place: why would the elders carry a coconut for a football game? But, as it was explained, this is a wooden ball, used so many times that the wear and tear of countless football games shrank it to the size of a fairly round grapefruit.

The players followed in this strange procession: different every year, these young men proudly engaged in what would turn out to be a fight that could have been easily mistaken for a mass kickbox match with a funny wooden ball misplaced amongst them. They would run around the square barefoot, hitting the wooden ball, trying to score for their side of town.


The game began. Kids, photographers, town elders, policemen, and bystanders all gathered as close as possible to the players, leaving only a small circle for the players to pass the ball. Whenever the ball rolled to a side, the circle would also move accordingly. I couldn’t distinguish any delimitation for this football field and it appeared that neither did the players, the referees or the onlookers; nor did they really care about that. Casualties were left to tend to themselves as the game went on while the spectators cheered for one team or another. The confusion climaxed in another part of the square, so it wasn’t clear for me who won. I was to find later that, as it mostly happens, the lower part of town won the game. I suspect that it’s also because the terrain is slightly inclined towards the lower part and, naturally, the ball would eventually find its way there.



The people quickly scattered after the elders proclaimed the end of the festivities, leaving everyone to enjoy the most important holiday of the Jaintias however they liked, mainly by carousing until the early hours of the morning, dancing happily to music played on cell phones, eating barbequed meat and rice, and simply enjoying themselves all night long. We were invited to join a family of no less than 100 relatives, who kept on coming and going, drinking rice beer, shaking various hands and taking countless pictures with us.


Well, the next day, a beautiful, peaceful Sunday, the bike refused to start. No pleading, persuading or cajoling could get the bike moving and no mechanic could be found awake and/or sober to take a look at the electric wiring, as all the people in Jowai were having their well-deserved rest after the celebration. A full day of waiting around resulted in the transport of the bike and us in a pick-up truck that came to our rescue from Shillong, where we spent the night.



To recap: the whole trip turned out to be a hell of a roller coaster ride  fun to be on and eager to look past the next turn  and my disappointment that we missed the actual ceremony of the festival was put aside because everything else was really great. Still, next time, I’ll try to be in time for the mud dancing.

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Working Away the Rain

As you might know by now, I’m in Cherrapunjee (a.k.a. Sohra) in the far away land of North-East India, where butterflies and tribal people roam free all around, and where any good day is a day without 4 hours of continuous rain. Even so, if the rain doesn’t melt the last remaining thread of fabric from your clothes, the humidity – usually orbiting the 80% area – will probably get to you in ways unimaginable to anyone not born here.

When it’s raining, there’s one of two ways of spending time: counting heaps of money or engaging in the deep-rooted art of making children. Since none of the two is available to me right now, I desperately needed to find something else to fill my time. And that could only mean manual labor. I’ll grant you, usually it shouldn’t be the type labor that requires lots of space and/or proper tools to undertake it, but if there’s no other possibility, even that will do.

Confused? Well, let me explain: out here time is mostly spend inside. And if the inside is not big enough, one must find ways of making it bigger. That’s what we started out to do. Heprit, this great guy, who also happens to own the hostel I stay at in Lower Sohra and me decided to change things around here and make the common room/reception bigger.

Imagine a 4x4 meter room with a door and two windows on one side. Now imagine that as soon as you step in, you are confronted with either going to the right and virtually walking into a DVD rental place, or striding to the left and thus landing in the hostel’s reception. These areas are partly divided by a plywood wall right in front of the door, leaving about a meter in front of that for people to decide which way to go. We agreed that the best (and only) way to make a bigger reception where people could also hang out would understandably be to shrink the DVD rental. Also, in order to give the people some intimacy from the inquisitive eyes of the locals, Heprit, who also happens to own the DVD rental place, and me decided that the best place to expand would be behind the DVD rental.

Our planning summed up no more than one full day of steady work. But as my mother taught me, to get to the real amount of time any construction work takes, you’ll have to multiply what you planned by three and then hope for the best. Still, our minds were racing towards the end of this prodigious effort and didn’t even bother to think that it might just possibly take a little longer, considering the fact that we started at 2PM. After taking down all the DVDs displayed on the shelves and the shelves themselves, we intended to move the back plywood wall about halfway towards the front. But for this to happen, we had to first fix the shelves so that the plywood could be secured onto something. Well, by the end of the day, half of the shelves were in place.



On the second morning, we realized that if we put all the shelves up, there’d be no way of getting out from the back of the DVD rental, because we hadn’t cut through the wall towards the common room. So we started on chopping the dividing wall so that we’d have access on all sides.



Fixing the back plywood proved a bit tricky, as we couldn’t see where to nail it to the shelves from the back side so, on a closer look, you might see a small assemblage of tiny holes (and only imagine the thunderous diatribes we uttered every time we hit nothing on the other side). Still, on the third day, all the DVDs were dusted and put back into place.



The back room is still not ready; we came to an abrupt halt because we are not sure how to go on and what exactly to do back there. But in the meantime, friends come and help out with difficult tasks, such as applying the varnish, being fully, professionally equipped:



There are other projects filling my time. For instance, the 3-day disco ball made of old CDs or the new sign from outside the hostel, complying with Heprit’s requests and fashion sense, so I have yet to be bored.


Before
After

If it ever rains and you find yourself with nothing better to do than change the size of your DVD rental place or brake some scissors while trying to cut through old CDs, feel free to give me a shout and I’ll walk you through any of these projects free of charge and with accurate time spending information. After all, you know what they say: ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try a bigger hammer’. Alternatively, 'If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you ever tried'.

Wednesday 15 July 2015

Cherrapunjee Summer

Lying peacefully in bed, reading a book, and enjoying the peaceful summer night I was startled by some disturbance outside. Decibels got higher as some people started shouting at each other right beneath my window. It wasn’t English; that I knew for sure. But it wasn’t the familiar singsong of the Khasis either, that dialect which although I don’t understand, by now I can at least identify.

By this time the aggravation was almost getting out of hand so I did what any normal local would do: I lit up a cigarette and went outside only to find 4 Indians having an intense argument in what I can only suppose was Hindi.

I got at the scene just in time to see a pissed-off Heprit woken from a good night’s rest stomping bare-chested at high speed in his flip-flops towards the Indians. A quick exchange of loud words ensued and, in a fit of silent wrath, Heprit careened to his house and back again, handing the Indians their money they paid for the room and chasing them away with a definitive attitude. The only word I understood was ‘pulice’, which was enough to paint an entire picture even for the ignorant foreigner that I am: the four drunken Indians, drivers for wealthy businessmen who came to enjoy the holiday with some good quality whiskey, had also been drinking heavily during the evening and got into a dispute, as any drunkards would normally do. But their choice of place to mediate their disagreement was very ill-advised (it appears that some 10-15 years ago the locals would have dealt with this type of problem in a different way, mostly through some well-aimed correctional approaches – read ‘punches’ – to the face; so they should offer praise that it’s not 15 years earlier).

After being harshly shooed, the 4 of them hopped onto their seats in one of their bosses’ car and drove confoundedly away in search of another guesthouse. And just after they drifted drunkenly away, a weary shadow appeared on the stage. A fifth driver slowly made his way towards the hostel, seemingly confused and dumbfounded. He appeared not to be aware of what had happened in spite of the cranked-up volume of the previous dialog and was unsure what to do. Because of the other four, he had also been thrown out and his car was probably parked at his employer’s hotel. We witnessed his cell phone conversation intently (me totally amused by the situation, Heprit still venting his pent-up anger), where he exposed the others and waited for instructions. By this time the others were on their second round through town and again stopped in front of the hostel, sloshing excuses into their phones, defending themselves in front of their bosses, slightly bending the truth. Not only did we hear what they were saying into their cell phones, because they kept their initial intensity of speech; but we also could hear the lady on the other end of the conversation. The part that Heprit translated for me was how they explained that they – the drivers – were still safe and sound (and out of trouble) in the dorm room with nothing to worry about. Little did they know in their warm hazes of alcohol that the fifth driver had already reported all the facts to the bosses.

They left again, music pounding wildly into their speakers, shouting at each other exactly like they did before. The last driver eventually gave up waiting around and sluggishly left towards the posh hotel where his bosses stayed.

Sitting on my top floor bench outside my room, smoking yet another cigarette to calm Heprit down, my only regret in this dramedy was that I didn’t get to hear the end of it.

‘This is how we spend summer in Cherrapunjee’, Heprit said. ‘Sitting outside at night, smoking a cigarette, watching the fog setting lower… and when everything seems so peaceful, you have Indians getting drunk’.

What could be more entertaining?!

Tuesday 14 July 2015

The Road to Cherrapunjee

The ex-wettest place on Earth; the ex-rain capital of India; a side of India that not even India knows: Cherrapunjee. And that’s my destination.

But how much time does it take to get there? And how can I escape the hectic, tiring India that I know? And – last but surely not least – where can I smoke in airports?

These are the issues that concern me when I desolately wave my mum goodbye as the train leaves the Cluj railway station. It’s easy, I think to myself, it’s just an overnight train ride to Bucharest and from there on it’s just a bunch of flights to get to India… And, once in India, I’ll find a way…

But as I make myself comfortable in the train compartment, the elderly gentleman solving Sudoku starts talking… and so does the young guy sitting across from me. Their polished political discussion makes me cringe and I pray that they don’t include me. But wouldn’t you know it, they are too polite to leave me out of their animate discourse about communist Romania and I have to chip in, trying to look intellectual and attentive. The elderly ex-teacher remembers the outrages of the communist party and the younger one commiserates and contributes with personal stories (although he couldn’t have been more than 3 at the time of the revolution). I excuse myself and jump on the upper bed feeling confident that my counterattack will silence them. Indeed, they retire to their own beds and stillness settles in. Me – 1, train – 0.

As soon as I wake up, the gentlemen start talking again. I can sense that they have been waiting for me to get up so that they continue their war stories. But I interrupt, wondering why the window is badly cracked, in the form of a beautiful snowflake. They are surprised that I didn’t even budge at the loud strike that happened sometime around 3 AM, when some bored people decided that the best way to spend their time was to throw stones at a passing train. Well, I think, good thing I finally decided to take the advice of the older gentleman and not sleep with my head close to the window! Me – 2, train – 0.

Bucharest doesn’t seem such a bad place on a Sunday morning. Traffic is light and the way to the airport seems pretty straightforward. The next 3 ½ hours will pass somehow, if not by talking on the phone with the early birds, then by reading about the Hell’s Angels. But by the time I board the flight, I’m honestly wondering how I will take another 15 hours until I reach India.

Heathrow Terminal 4. Instructions: get to Terminal 5 and wait 5 ½ hours. No probs, I think. The terminal is just a bus ride away and if I get there soon, I can pass the security check, browse the stores and sip coffees and smoke cigarettes. As I discard all the loose change in the tray that is being x-rayed along with my handbag and laptop, I fiendishly plot the safe arrival of a refugee lighter to the other side. I succeed and for a minute I stop brooding over the plane seat I received (somewhere in the middle, crammed between many other people), which will become my home for the next 9 hours. I chase away the thought and look forward to some coffee and a relaxing cigarette. But the blonde untroubled lass at the information desk cheerfully informs me that Heathrow airport DOES NOT HAVE SMOKING AREAS AFTER SECURITY CHECK. It’s as if I’ve just won a race and now they tell me there isn’t any prize to win. Airport – 1, me – 0.

I can’t believe my ears. This can’t be. All these people sitting here, waiting for delayed flights, patience running out, nerves stretched thin… How is this possible?

‘Oh, but it is’, says a nice airport officer, who can see the pain in my eyes.

‘But… isn’t there a way?’ I ask, a spark of hope blooming timidly in my heart.

‘Well…’, she says.

The next thing I know is that I’m being escorted out of the airport through a labyrinth of corridors stretching for kilometres taking me outside to where the bus left me, a heaven-sent for smokers, with only a promise that I will come back, go through security check again and be in time on the other side to board my plane. My spirits are lifted, my cigarettes are puffed and my coffee is sipped lazily under a smoke-shrouded tree. Nothing could make me happier. Well, nothing except a nice shower or at least a change of clothes. But I take what I get. Airport – 1, me – 1 (ha!).

Back inside again, sheltering the same lighter and a sense of victory over the higher airport forces. I board the plane, preparing for some 9 hours of:
-       polite conversation – forced,
-       kindly asking other people to let me out of my seat to use the toilet,
-       fairly new movies interrupted by the captain’s announcement (English and Hindi),
-       airplane food, distinguished for its lack of taste (but, in my case, vegetarian a.k.a. savoury),
-       swollen ankles.

New Delhi greets me with morning heat and angry co-passengers. As the flight was delayed, our arrival in Delhi meant that people lost their connection flights or were simply late to get somewhere and, let me tell you, patience isn’t one of India’s strong suits. But I wasn’t worried. I had about 4 hours to spend in the airport until my next flight to Guwahati. A quick smoke outside the airport under scrutinizing Indian eyes while declining taxi drivers made me retreat in the comfort of the airport. Coffee? Yes! And how well would that go with another smoke… But what do you know? Once you get inside the airport, you cannot go out and guess what? There is no smoking area before security check. Indian airport – 1, me – 0.

I cannot check my bag in for another hour so I gloomily drink my (very hot) coffee feeling very self-conscious about my appearance (and, probably, my body odour). Finally, the time comes when I can walk past security check and wander through the unknown insides of the airport. No points for me here because sipping coffee while smoking cigarettes isn’t any fun while using cash-less ATMs and guessing PIN codes (a story for another day).

The gig is the same: board flight, take seat (window seat – yay!), get food, sip coffee, sleep restlessly, watch ground getting closer… come 5:30 PM spring to attention next to the conveyor belt, wait for bag, get bag....

Well, folks, I know that there are some methods of covering the last 100 km from Guwahati to Shillong: shared jeeps, busses, shared taxis. But I also know that from Shillong there are still 50 km left to finally reach Cherrapunjee. Which means that the only possibilities are to a) either find a guesthouse in Guwahati and spend a night so that in the morning you can get to Shillong and, eventually, Cherrapunjee; or b) find a shared jeep that takes you to Shillong and start looking for a hotel there so that the next day you will be able to cover what’s left of the distance. There are no public means of transportation during late afternoon and/or night. Don’t be fooled! The remaining 150 km mean a long, winding series of bends meandering up more hills, which translates into a 4 ½ hours’ continuous ride.

Already having this information, I opted for the third option: hire a private taxi from Guwahati airport to Cherrapunjee. And this proved to be the right way to go, as at 10 PM I was already chatting with the great Khasi people in Cherrapunjee. Impossible Indian traffic – 0, me – 1 (ha! again!).

So, to sum up: It’s really not easy to get here, but once you have, you’ll hardly want to leave again. Why, you ask. Well…



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