This week has been the week of the biggest festival here in Nuzvid. The festival celebrates the Hindu holiday of Dussehra. This holiday is to remember the goddess “Durga” who, in Hindu fables, was created by the gods when they needed a being to defeat the demon King Mahishasura. The gods all gave Durga their prized weapons to do this task and so Durga is portrayed in Hindu temples as the goddess with all the arms each holding a different weapon. I still think Hinduism is the strangest religion of all time but the people are so nice and they certainly know how to throw a festival! It is sad to see modern day idol worship be this prevalent.
Anyway, here in Nuzvid this is the festival to beat all festivals and it did not disappoint! The festivities have been building all week in the form of preparation for the big crazy parade and celebration on Thursday night. We headed out with some friends around 8 to go see what was going on. As we walked from the hospital down through the town streets there were definitely more people on the streets than normal and this number of people only increased as we moved closer and closer to the main street in town which has a Hindu shrine built beside it amongst the shops. Very quickly the crowd became so thick that you weren’t able to walk you could only shuffle along and the entire mass of people moved around like waves on the ocean. The air was filled with the sounds of people making noise with noisemakers as well as the pounding of drum brigades. Needless to say, it was extremely loud! We moved through the crowd and once we were close to the center of the action we squeezed off to the side to watch a group of drummers and also this dude dressed up as the Indian goddess Durga. He was parading around holding a trident and eating fire! It was pretty cool! Then he hopped on his ox drawn cart that was decked out with hundreds of bright lights in a big design that resembles a male peacock all fanned out. The oxen were actually huge bulls, the white ones with the hump that are the most common here in India, and when I say huge bulls I mean HUGE! The backs of the cows were as tall as Zach and I! I felt pretty small standing next to these huge animals.
We enjoyed the craziness there for a while and saw many of our friends from the school in the crowd. We even ran into Dr. Rao and his wife as well as one of the older guys who plays volleyball with us. It was funny to see Dr. Rao in the crowd because it seemed to unlike him to be out at the festival! We then headed back towards the hospital since the procession actually didn’t start until 11 or 12. I had no idea how crazy this festival was! People had told us it was the biggest of the year and it didn’t disappoint!
We got back to the main street near the hospital and then headed out past the government hospital to the estate of one of the grandsons of the original king of Nuzvid. This is where the procession always starts every year and there were probably 10 or 12 tractors pulling carts with the same type of float we had seen earlier in the main part of town. The lights on these floats were powered by generators, which were being pulled behind the trailers. You would think the noise from the generators would be annoying but these generators also powered speakers on each float that were blaring the ceremonial Hindu music heard all over India so you really couldn’t hear the generators. And don’t forget the drum people… We looked over the floats and then walked back into town to watch the procession. By now it was 11 or so and the procession should have been starting soon but it was late so we ended up waiting until 12 or so. While we were waiting there were different groups performing in the streets. One group was doing synchronized sword fighting with bamboo sticks, which actually looked more like dancing that anything. This was all done to the beat of a drum of course. Other groups were just dancing and drumming.
Finally the floats and people began moving through the streets around 12:15. The first thing in the procession were these giant doll looking things made out of paper mache that people wore and then danced around as they walked. This is one of the famous parts of the celebration that is unique to Nuzvid, so it was really cool to see it first hand. Every couple hundred feet the participants in the parade would stop and do their thing while not moving for 5 or 10 minutes before moving on through the streets. This was really nice because by now we had climbed up on a rooftop and were watching the craziness from above. It gave us a really nice view of the celebration!
The procession slowly moved past us with each “float” having roughly the same things on it: a dude dressed up as a goddess with several maids who were also dudes dressed up to play the part. Evidently here in India males play the roles in spite of the fact that most of the characters in this festival were female. We also were told that one of the groups was not just acting but were cross-dressing eunuchs. You kinda have to expect the unexpected here in India because everything goes!
The procession continued past us until around 2:30. We were told that this procession would move around the town until around 7 AM but we didn’t follow it around for that. We had work in the morning, so once we had seen it, it was off to bed! The pictures are really the only things that do this festival justice and even then pictures are nothing compared to experiencing it first hand! The bottom line of this festival was that Hindus know how to party!
Next time I'll bet you take ear plugs!!
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