The People's Party

I’ve never been one to criticize civic holidays. I may not always understand why I am getting a day off work, but the reasons behind the holiday are always less important than the free time it affords me. I don’t even try to understand why we have a “Family Day” in February while we only get one minute of silence on Remembrance Day in November. You would think that honouring our glorious dead would be more significant than extra recreational family-time during the coldest month of the year. But once February rolls around I couldn’t care less what the reason is, I am just happy for the paid holiday.

Well it turns out that this sort of cavalier attitude towards holidays doesn’t exist in India. It’s go big or go home when it comes to civic holidays. In the past week Indians have had three national holidays. The first day was for Gandhi’s birthday. If there is anyone out there who could possibly suggest that this is not a good reason for a holiday, I strongly suggest watching the Ben Kingsley movie and reconsidering. The second holiday was actually only in anticipation for the third day off and historically was set aside for workers to wash their tools and machines.

The third holiday, called Dussera, is the topic of this blog post. To put it in perspective, when I asked my ten-year old friend Maya why Dussera was celebrated she told me “Dussera is in celebration of Rama’s victory in the most amazing fight in the history of the world”. When I asked Maya’s mother for a more detailed explanation, she shrugged her shoulders and told me Maya pretty much had it right.

So Dussera is the celebration of this fellow Rama, and his epic defeat over his nemesis Ravana. From what I understand, Rama was the heir to the throne of Ayodyah and his name literally means “the perfect man”. In spite of being so perfect, his father granted a wish to one of his wives that her son Ravana would become king. Rama was therefore stripped of his right to the throne and sent into exile. Fortunately for Rama he had been a loving husband and brother, because Rama’s wife and younger brother decided to follow him into exile and live in the woods with him for 14 years. So I guess at least he wasn’t lonely.

Less fortunately for Rama, this fellow Ravana wasn’t satisfied with stealing Rama’s throne and forcing him to live in the woods. For some reason Ravana decided to kidnap Rama’s wife. I am not sure exactly what Ravana was trying to accomplish through this, but my guess is that Rama’s wife must have been exceptionally beautiful. Either that, or Ravana was just completely obsessed with making Rama’s life as pathetic as possible and greatly underestimated what sort of revenge Rama was capable of. For example, Ravana probably was not aware that Rama was capable of living a life of “perfect adherence to Dharma despite the harshest tests of life” (thank you Wikipedia). I have never considered kidnapping another man’s life, but I somehow think that if I was into that sort of thing I would avoid anyone who had literally never sinned. I don’t know that much about karma, but I know it would probably be on the perfect man’s side.

For the record, if you are beginning to find this post long please understand that I am trying to summarize India’s most important epic (The Ramayana) in three paragraphs. In an effort to make a long story short though, Rama raised an army of magical creatures and led them to battle against Ravana’s forces. Rama’s army managed to win the most destructive battle of all time, and in the Rama killed Ravana and is reunited with his kidnapped wife. Naturally, he then reclaimed his throne and apparently became Emperor of the world for the happiest eleven thousand years of all time.

Not a bad reason for a holiday in my opinion.

Madikeri, which normally has a population of 30 000 people, is swarmed with over 150 000 visitors during Dussera. I arrived at the festivities at 10 o’clock at night and was greeted by techno music blaring from fifteen speakers piled in a truck. The entire town was overflowing with dancing men. The entire town resembled the most insane and homo-erotic dance party I have ever seen. Every store was open from the time of my arrival until my departure at 4am and was surrounded by dancing teenage boys.

Periodically the music would stop and a procession of drummers emerge followed by giant floats depicting Rama’s army. Following the floats of course, would be another massive dance party.

I have never in my life seen so many men dancing. The women mostly congregated on the outskirts of the dancing with their families, but this did not stop the men from going absolutely wild. As I left I was told that all of the parties would eventually move behind floats to Madikeri’s central square where the dancing would continue until 8 in the morning. The procession was meant to symbolize Rama’s return to India, where massive celebrations met the return of the rightful king.

The Dussera celebrations completely defied every conventional Indian stereotype. The concept of Indians being conservative and quiet is quite clearly inaccurate. I have attended many Canada Day and New Year’s celebrations, but have never come close to seeing a party with as much enthusiasm as I witnessed on Dussera. It’s possible that Canadian history just doesn’t elicit the same hysteria as the greatest fight ever fought. I just can’t get that riled up over the eight minutes it took for the English to win on the Plains of Abraham. Either way, Dussera has raised my expectations of what a national holiday can be. Family Day is going to have a lot to live up to this February.