Weekend...

Saturday was a holiday here in India. The all-knowledgeable Rakhi informed me that it was called ‘Podja’ (guessing on the spelling?) and that it was a holiday for God. I thought about telling her that a lot of American holidays were about God too, but figured the discussion on religious commercialism wouldn’t translate very well into Bengali. Anyway, so I had the honor of going with her, along with my cousin Jocey, sister Linea, and mother to a service in honor of the holiday. Rakhi said to “dress nice” and considering that the nicest thing any of us have here is a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, we all ended up borrowing some of Rakhi’s and her mother’s saris. We got a lot of stares, a group of white chicks sporting saris walking down the busy roads of Bolpur, but I’m not sure how much of that was because we were white and how much was because Linea and Jocey had no idea how to walk in a sari (I was like that last year too, though after last year in India, two proms and a fashion show wearing one I think I’ve got it down now haha). When we got there were hundreds of women (apparently it’s a solely female holiday. Rakhi asked if we had anything like that and the best I could come up with was Mother’s Day), and they were all standing in line with offerings of food or flowers. Once we waited for what felt like a century (yes I am impatient, and yes amusement park lines are never good for me) we reached the front where we were let in through a gate. We left food donations at a shrine and then lit some candles and rang a bell and then left. Like an hour in line for a few minutes inside. It felt almost like a performance, hours backstage for two minutes on stage.

We also managed to discover the hideout for Peter Pan’s Lost Boys this weekend. Or at least we discovered a pottery studio that looked just like it. The house and studio were really more garden than studio and it was incredible, though I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

This morning we got a special treat over at Antaranga. And yes, I do mean that literally seeing as they gave us some ‘mishti’ (Bengali for sweets) but as afore mentioned, those things are gross. More interestingly, today all the children put on a program for us. They acted out a story about two brothers, an older one who was rich but deceitful, and a younger one who was poor but honest. In the end karma caught up with both of them though and the younger one became rich and the older one… well he died. It was a little violent for a bunch of little kids actually, with some of the kids dressed up with skulls dancing around him until he was dead, but whaaaaatever… and there was something about the younger brother asking about a million people for water. Not going to lie I reached the point where I felt like screaming “isn’t there some kind of river or pond somewhere around??!!” But it was still way cute and then the second story was an musical about a mother who ate her husband’s children from a previous marriage and then had indigestion problems (yeah, and you thought the first story was weird).

Possibly just as entertaining as the program itself though was the performance I got afterwards. One of the kids that I tutor in night school was wearing a “Michael Jackson” shirt and so when I asked him about it he said “MICHAEL JACKSON?” Me: “Oh dear what have I gotten myself into…” He proceeded to show me some of his “Michael Jackson dance moves” which I would include a video of except the internet connection is apparently not good enough for that... ask me about it when I get home.

Tonight I leave with my family by train to go to Darjaleen for a week where we’re not going to have internet, so no blog posts for a while. Only a few more weeks though, the time is flying by!