Week Eleven - The Week Ganesh was Everywhere…

This was the week Ganesh was everywhere. He was five storeys tall in the middle of Hyderabad. He was downstairs at Botanika. He was at Manam when I went for consolation ice cream. Q Mart gave us one. Botanika management delivered another to every apartment. Momi showed us videos of her daughter dancing in front of one. And at 1:30 in the morning, Ganesh was still making enough noise somewhere across Hyderabad to wake us up.

Ganesh, or Ganesha, is the elephant-headed Hindu god associated with wisdom, auspicious beginnings and the removal of obstacles. One version of his story has Parvati creating a boy and asking him to guard her while she bathed. Shiva returned, the boy refused to let him in, and Shiva, unaware this was Parvati’s son, beheaded him. Seeing Parvati’s devastation, he brought the boy back to life with the head of an elephant. The Ganesh festival lasts 11 days, with immersions taking place at different points along the way. Eventually the clay idols are immersed in water, symbolizing his return and the cycle of creation and dissolution.

This being Hyderabad, some of the idols are very, very large.

9:30 a.m. Ganesh

Early in the week, I went with a group of expat women, including women from Japan and Korea, to see one of Hyderabad’s biggest Ganesh idols. He was about five storeys tall. We arrived around 9:30 in the morning, which turned out to be brilliant. There were so few people that we could walk almost straight up to him. A security guard spotted us and invited us onto the platform to participate in the ceremony.

Of course we went.

Shoes had to come off, leaving us to walk through the remains of offerings with dead flowers squishing between our toes. This was not my favourite sensory experience. We were welcomed right into the ceremony. We held the offering plate and drew the warmth and blessing from the flame toward ourselves, following the people around us and trying to look as though we had some idea what we were doing.

Unbeknownst to us, local news cameras were filming the whole thing. Afterwards, two television channels interviewed us. There really isn’t an obvious answer to, “Foreign lady who barely understands what just happened, what do you think of our religious festival?” We told them the truth. We felt very lucky to have been invited to participate. We were really enjoying the festival. No, we hadn’t experienced many of the other festivals yet. And yes, the food in Hyderabad is spicy.

From there we walked to Birla Mandir, the huge white marble temple high on a hill overlooking Hyderabad. Cameras aren’t allowed because it is an active temple, which was slightly frustrating because the views across the city are spectacular. Again, shoes off.

By then the sun was high overhead, so we moved from one patch of shade to another trying not to burn the bottoms of our feet. Once again, people were incredibly welcoming. They invited us to participate in the rituals and patiently showed us what to do. At one point holy water was placed into our hands. One woman in our group misunderstood its purpose and drank it. We are all learning.

Ganesh at home

Our own collection of Ganesh idols has grown without us particularly trying. One came free from Q Mart. Another was distributed to every Botanika apartment by management as a blessing. We still haven’t immersed that one. Jack had his own small, brightly coloured Ganesh and decided to give it to Ganesh, our driver, so Ganesh could immerse Ganesh. I also went with Irina to morning puja at our apartment complex society twice, once for Green Day and once for Pink Day.

Puja is an act of Hindu worship and devotion and can involve prayer and chanting, offerings, lamps or flames, blessings and food. At Botanika, volunteers dressed and decorated Ganesh in a different colour each day. A priest led the prayers and rituals, and afterwards everyone shared prasad, the food that had been offered and blessed.

They held puja morning and evening. The evenings were the big events, with children singing and dancing and fancy-dress competitions. I only went in the mornings, when there might be 10 or 15 people.

The women were incredibly welcoming. There were almost no men there, and nobody left Irina and me hovering awkwardly at the back. They pulled us in, showed us what to do with the flame and offering plate, tied a red sacred thread around my left wrist and made sure we received the blessed food.

As usual, all the women looked gorgeous in beautiful saris and embroidered kurtas. On Green Day I wore a kurta I had bought here. On Pink Day I dutifully put on a pink dress from Canada and looked decidedly frumpy beside them. They didn’t care. They seemed delighted that we had come and that I had at least made an effort to be pink.

Later, Momi showed us videos of her daughter dancing at the Ganesh puja in their community. Ganesh really was everywhere.

Approximately 30 spices

The week had actually started with cooking school at Imli Sarai Restaurant. We made mutton biryani, and each of us got our own individual pot. This meant that, possibly for the first time since arriving in Hyderabad, I had complete control over my biryani. Absolutely no fresh coriander. Slightly less chili. Perfect. The fried onions intended for the biryani were so good that we kept eating them while we cooked, which I suspect was not part of the recipe.

Spread across the table were something like 30 spices, or variations of spices. Cumin seeds and toasted cumin. Black salt and regular salt. Ground coriander and fresh coriander. Then came the various things described as “chili,” ranging from something closer to paprika through Himalayan chili and red chili.

The photograph of the table does a much better job of explaining Indian cooking than I can. We also made roti, naan and paratha. The naan was made with white flour, while the roti and paratha used whole wheat. The paratha was folded over and over to create its layers, and all three were cooked against the hot wall of the tandoor in the main kitchen.

There was dum ka murg, chicken cooked in a cauldron; paneer butter masala; and curd made in a clay pot, which gives it a richer flavour and texture. Then came shrikhand, the first Indian dessert I have really liked. We hung curd in woven cloth and let it drain for the couple of hours we were cooking, then added chopped nuts, saffron and sugar. Since we were making it ourselves, we could control the sugar, which probably had a lot to do with why I liked it so much. It was incredibly rich and delicious.

I also learned that making powdered sugar is considerably less complicated than I had imagined. Put sugar in blender. Blend.

The chef didn’t speak English, and it really didn’t matter. He demonstrated, we copied, and he seemed perfectly happy with all our picture taking. When we genuinely couldn’t work out what a particular spice was, the manager came in and translated.

The quest for sufficiently light hair

Tuesday I attempted to get my hair coloured at a new salon. I arrived only to have them explain that they generally don’t carry colours lighter than a level 5, occasionally a 6. I need a 7 or 8. This suddenly explained why the guy at the previous salon had made my hair so dark.

They were very helpful and started calling other Mirrors locations around Hyderabad trying to find someone in possession of sufficiently blonde hair dye. Apparently nobody was. So I left without getting my hair done and consoled myself with ice cream at Manam next door.

Manam is apparently somewhere Swiss visitors are taken to try the chocolate because it is so good. I’m not entirely convinced the Swiss would agree, but who knows. It is still pretty good. And naturally, Manam had a Ganesh puja happening too.

On Wednesday I called the original salon and asked if they could colour my hair again, only lighter this time. Friday appointment booked. Success. I once again have the right-coloured hair.

Ganesh goes swimming

Friday night, Jason and I went to the immersion celebrations so he could finally experience the festival. We brought one of our little clay Ganesh idols with us.

There are supposed to be designated arrangements for immersions rather than everyone simply throwing their Ganesh into Hussain Sagar. Larger idols, or groupings of smaller ones, are supposed to be handled on platforms with cranes or immersed in special ponds. We saw neither a special pond nor a functioning crane.

We did, however, see a man on the forbidden side of a fence who seemed to know exactly what to do. So we paid him to put Ganesh in the lake for us. He took our idol, dipped him three times, held him up so we could see him one last time, and then sent him off. Whether Ganesh gracefully floated away or immediately sank to the bottom of Hussain Sagar remains unclear. He is made of clay, so eventually he will disolve. Hopefully all obstacles will now be removed for us.

Then we walked over the bridge, above the six-lane-but-really-eight-lane road, and went back to see the enormous Ganesh I had visited earlier in the week. What a difference. Instead of walking straight up to him, we waited in lines in the heat, surrounded by very sweaty people with very different ideas about personal space. Crowds like that can make me claustrophobic, and I don’t particularly enjoy being in constant physical contact with strangers. Eventually we got within about 15 feet.

At night, he was spectacular. The colours were incredible, and the sheer number of people who had come to worship was amazing to see. Apparently waits later in the festival can stretch to 10 or 12 hours, so we actually got off quite lightly. The celebrations continued long after we went home.

At about 1:30 in the morning, immersion parades somewhere across the city were still loud enough to wake us.

Hyderabad also has a deep passion for inexpensive fireworks. Quality seems considerably less important than quantity and volume.

So Much Orange

While I was sensibly still asleep on Sunday morning, Jason was up before dawn for another photography lesson with Mr. Ram and his friend Sagar. They met at 6 a.m. at the Gudimalkapur Flower Market, Hyderabad’s huge wholesale flower market.

By six, Jason said the place was already a madhouse. Cars and tuk-tuks everywhere. Trucks unloading crates and enormous bales of flowers. Men carrying them through the gates. Merchants sitting barefoot in front of huge piles of flowers while others made garlands by the thousands, much of it destined for pujas across the city.

Water lilies, sunflowers, irises, marigolds and dozens of flowers Jason couldn’t identify. Yellow, white, red, purple and orange. So much orange.

The ground was carpeted in petals. Everywhere he looked, somebody was weighing, sorting, carrying, stringing or selling flowers. Then there were the men sitting among mountains of marigolds with calculators and scraps of paper, scribbling numbers and negotiating deals with the intensity of investment bankers. High finance, Hyderabad flower-market style.

The photography lesson was about composition, the rule of thirds and getting more story into a photograph. Mr. Ram had Jason concentrating on hands and feet, layers within the frame and the little details that showed what was happening around him.

Jason came home extremely excited about the photographs. Annoyingly, they are very good.

Sometimes you need to say no

The rest of the week included the usual Hyderabad routines: squash, baby cuddling and morning monkey yoga.

Guruji from yoga invited us to join a Saturday-night outing to the Golden Temple. Normally, our answer to almost anything here has been yes. We’re only in India for a year, and there is always something happening, somewhere to go or an invitation that may never come again. This time, we said no.

It may actually have been the first time since we arrived that we turned down an experience simply because we wanted to stay home. Apart from squash, we did almost nothing. For dinner I made tagliatelle Alfredo. Pasta, Parmesan and butter. We opened a bottle of wine one of Jason’s colleagues had brought us and had a wonderfully familiar dinner at home. It tasted amazing.

The Golden Temple will have to survive without us. Sorry to say “no” India…we just needed a small break.

Blessings with the big Ganesh….

So much spice…

See Gen’s interview with Hyderbad TV6 (turn off “autodub” on Youtube, otherwise there is a really weird voice over).

http://youtube.com/watch?is=UJ4zvkLZ0flJKzyf&v=GDmd9PFWEw4&feature=youtu.be