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2003-06-01 - Houn (Day 47)

Morning sunlight wakes me and it is soon followed by Chai from Mohinder's mother. I sit outside and watch the sunrise over the mountains of the distant valleys. Mohinder takes his bath and they motion me in to take a bath after he is finished. The bathing room is a small cement room with a running spout of cold water and a bucket of hot. A bit disconcerting is that there is an open window with the morning light shining in and Mohinder's wife is just outside washing dishes on the cement outside, but I assume that everyone has become used to averting their eyes. The setup is fine until I make a mistake, which exemplifies my inexperience with the process. I suds up and wash my face first. With soap in my eyes, I try to find the appropriate mix of hot and cold water with my eyes closed, first dipping the cup in hot water, then under the cold tap. The first attempt shocks me with its ice-cold mountain water into which I seem to have added almost no hot water. The second attempt is the opposite, all hot and no cold. I leave the bathing room chuckling with the family wondering what could have happened in such a simple process of bathing to leave me laughing so. I convey the story to Mohinder along with my amusement of the foreigner who has proven he cannot even eat or bathe with any aplomb.

Mohinder and I set off to the local temple a kilometer down a footpath from the house. We get to the two-story temple and climb up to the second floor where there are about 50 villagers inside the temple's main room and along the balcony outside. I am given a seat directly in front of the door looking into the temple where I will have an unobstructed view but still be rather unobtrusive and not interrupt the ceremony. When I first arrive, a special shaman has been called to the village to help channel the local God so that the villagers can find out why the God is unhappy with them and has withheld rain so long. The Shaman sits cross-legged over a stick of incense and slowly goes into a trance to encourage God to speak through him. Blowing a puff of red powder into the air and taking an iron staff into his hand, the shaman's face becomes contorted into a face of anger and he starts screaming at the villagers. The local head priest tries to assuage his mood and slowly the anger of the local God subsides and the villagers start asking questions of the God in rapid succession, sometimes overlapping and often angry in their own right. The villagers are asking why God is unhappy, and he is responding in a number of ways that he is unhappy, but refusing to tell the reason. At one point, he yells back that the villagers are not pious and says there is not even a goat there for sacrifice, to which the villagers protest that they have prepared a goat and a man is sent to bring the goat up to the second floor.

A questioning session goes on with many of the villagers asking questions of the God through the shaman for personal or family problems by which the shaman answers with a few grains of sacred rice by which the villagers are to divine the reply to their question. The number of grains being odd or even implies assent or decent on the requests. There seemed to be a steady stream of negative answers with the shaman acting angry and the villagers also expressing very angry replies. Unable to get a clear answer from God some of the villagers protest that God is not really there and there is considerable debate among the participants. The goat, which has been waiting for an hour, is led downstairs after it is decided that God has not yet arrived.

The shaman steps aside and a couple of the more devout of the villagers also try to go into a trance. After some time of trying, both go into seemingly epileptic fits, stand, shake, scream and try to climb the walls. However, one of the participants is clearly drunk and the process is half-serious, half amusing as the drunken participant is at stages seemingly overwhelmed with the spirit and others just falling over himself drunk. The assembly decides that God has not yet arrived and after much consternation on if the ceremony should continue, another devout is brought in to try. He goes into the most violent trance yet, convulsing, jumping up and down and raving about the temple. He eventually collapses at the feet of another priest who speaks to the villagers. The villagers up the stakes by offering to sacrifice two goats if god will appear and tel them why he is angry but even though the last process was very dramatic, God fails to come. Its been almost four hours since we first arrived and Mohinder has already asked me four or five times if we can go back and have lunch and at this point I give in as it seems clear we are not going to find out why God was angry today.

We go back to the house and have lunch though without the meat from the slaughtered goat that Mohinder had expected when we set out in the morning. After lunch, we are sitting out on the balcony, which becomes a meeting place for the neighborhood. There is a steady stream of passersby on the road, which all call up or often come up to sit and have a glass of Chai. A few friends stop by and we watch the second and third VCD of Mohinder's wedding in which the whole village attends in the dancing on the walk back on the road with the new bride.

Ritcha comes out changed into a beautiful red sari and we set off to visit her parent's home, two kilometers up the road. Passing through the main village, we seemingly stop every few steps to yell out a Hi to those in a shop or house or to walk up and shake hands. We make our way up the road and climb the last kilometer up a mountain footpath to the house. Ritcha's family is also very gracious and we spend a couple of hours there drinking Chai with Mohinder reciting seemingly all that I have told him about my life, where I come from, etc. The conversation for the most part happens around me in Hindi with my participation generally to clarify some point of the discussion about me, which more information or detail was needed.

Ritcha disappeared as soon as we arrived leaving the men on the porch to talk. She comes out after about an hour, serves dinner, and then withdraws again. I catch Ritcha's father's niece peeking out from behind the door of the neighboring house and pull out the telephoto lens to catch her in the process. Too smart for me she ducks back into the house, but the family now starts yelling jibes at her to come out from hiding. Her grandfather goes over and makes her bring tea out to all the guests and she is given a hard time by both the men and women who have come out to watch the fun. They tell her to pose and won't let up until she assents, but after the first shot, she turns into a natural model. We pack up and leave but walking down the footpath from the house Mohinder tells me to look back up, and the niece has come out onto the second floor balcony looking down on us and earning the nickname "Juliet" as she looks for all the world like the young beauty waiting for her Romeo.

We go back to the house and soon Ritcha bring out yet another meal. We lose power half way through and eat by candle light. After dinner with the lights still out and after having passed a full day, we all decide to retire as without power, its difficult to do much else.

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