Tag Archives: India

Festivals of India: Sri Krishna Jayanthi

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The festival season in India continues with Sri Krishna Jayanthi or Janmashtami tomorrow. This is the day Lord Krishna, the eight avatar of Lord Vishnu, was supposed to have been born. Also known as Gokulashtami or Sree Jayanthi, this festival is celebrated across the country, but more so in what is known as Braj Bhoomi or the regions where Lord Krishna grew up and became a young man, mostly in Northern India (present day Uttar Pradesh) and where Lord Krishna established his kingdom of Dwarka (in present day Gujarat).

Krishna was the eighth son of Devaki and Vasudeva. Based on scriptural details and astrological calculations, the date of Krishna’s birth, known as Janmashtami, is 18 July 3228 BCE and he lived until 18 February 3102 BCE. Krishna belonged to the Vrishni clan of Yadavas from Mathura, and was the eighth son born to the princess Devaki and her husband Vasudeva.

Mathura (in present day Mathura district, Uttar Pradesh) was the capital of the Yadavas, to which Krishna’s parents Vasudeva and Devaki belonged. King Kansa, Devaki’s brother, had ascended the throne by imprisoning his father, King Ugrasena. Afraid of a prophecy that predicted his death at the hands of Devaki’s eighth son, Kansa had the couple locked in a prison cell. After Kansa killed the first six children, and Devaki’s apparent miscarriage of the seventh (which was actually a secret transfer of the infant to Rohini as Balarama), Krishna was born.

Following the birth, Vishnu ordered Vasudeva to take Krishna to Gokul to Nanda and Yashoda, where he could live safely, away from his Uncle Kansa. Vasudeva took Krishna with him and crossed the Yamuna to reach Gokul. There, everyone was asleep; so he quietly kept him there and returned with Yashoda’s daughter. Kansa, thinking her to be Devki’s eight child, threw her on a stone. But she rose into the air and transformed into Yogmaya (who is Vishnu’s helper) and warned Kansa about his death. Then, she disappeared. Krishna grew up in Gokul with his brother, Balram. He then returned to Mathura and killed Kansa with the help of Balram.

Most people fast the night before Krishna’s birth and also place small cradles in the room to signify his birth, breaking their fast after midnight, the time when Lord Krishna was supposed to have been born.

In most of Maharastra, the festival is celebrated with the breaking of dahi handis which are pots of yoghurt tied high above the ground. Groups of young men (mostly) and women called Govindas go around the city and when they spy on the dahi handis, they form human pyramids and the person at the top of the pyramid attempts to break the handi. If successful, they win the prize money which would be inside the handi (or be given the prize by the organisers of the handi).

In South India, especially in the community I belong to, Sree Jayanthi is usually celebrated in the evening of the day Lord Krishna was supposed to be born. Kolams or decorative patterns made of rice flour are drawn outside the house and little footprints depicting Lord Krishna as a baby entering the house from the doorstep to the Puja room are made. In homes where there are little kids or toddlers, the feet of these toddlers are dipped in the kolam paste and they are made to walk across the house from the door to the pooja room. We did this for a couple of years when BB & GG were young. Since the young Krishna loved butter, this would be a major part of the offering. Other offerings include sweet and salty seedai (round balls made of flour).

In My Hands Today…

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Nine Lives – William Dalrymple

A mesmerizing book that explores how traditional religions are observed in today’s India, revealing ways of life that we might otherwise never have known.

A middle-class woman from Calcutta finds unexpected fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled cremation ground . . . A prison warder from Kerala is worshipped as an incarnate deity for two months of every year . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment watching her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . The twenty-third in a centuries-old line of idol makers struggles to reconcile with his son’s wish to study computer engineering . . . An illiterate goatherd keeps alive in his memory an ancient 200,000-stanza sacred epic . . . A temple prostitute, who resisted her own initiation into sex work, pushes her daughters into the trade she nonetheless regards as a sacred calling.

William Dalrymple tells these stories, among others, with expansive insight and a spellbinding evocation of remarkable circumstance, giving us a dazzling travelogue of both place and spirit

In My Hands Today…

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The Wedding Wallah – Farahad Zama

Mr Ali’s flourishing marriage bureau seems to have chalked up another success when his ward, Pari, receives a surprise proposal from a rich, handsome aristocrat. But why is the boy’s family so keen to get him married to Pari – an orphan, a widow, and now a single mother? Meanwhile Communist insurgents on the warpath in India’s rural hinterland, and gays on the march for their rights in the big cities of Bombay and Delhi seem from another world. But soon these threatening forces invade the peaceful lives of Mr and Mrs Ali, their son Rehman and their able assistant Aruna…

In My Hands Today…

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Mrs Ali’s Road to Happiness – Farahad Zama

Mrs Ali’s much loved home is suddenly under threat – a road widening scheme threatens to destroy both it and the family business, the Marriage Bureau for Rich People. Meanwhile, Mrs Ali’s niece, Pari, a young Muslim widow, adopts a destitute Hindu boy, and this unorthodox arrangement offends both Muslim and Hindu in the sleepy eastern Indian town of Vizag. The Ali family are plunged into crisis, threated by police action, social boycott and excommunication.

There is one plan that might just keep Pari and her son together, and the home Mr and Mrs Ali have shared for many years intact, but it’s a desperate gamble. Do they risk everything for a small chance of success? But can they afford not to?

Navroze Mubarak

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Saal Mubarak! With these words, Parsis across the world would have greeted each other tomorrow as they heralded the arrival of their new year. Another greeting heard across the agiaries (Fire Temples) would have been Navroze Mubarak!

I studied for 12 years in a Parsi school and so this community holds a special place in my heart. This small, minority community comprises of the followers of Zarathustra. The Parsis in India are those who fled Persia (modern day Iran) due to religious persecution and arrived in western India (modern day Gujarat, Kutch in India and Sindh in Pakistan).

There’s a very sweet story that was told to me in school about the Parsis’ arrival in India. When they arrived in Gujarat, the leader of the Parsis, the head priest or Dastoorji, sent a messanger to the local king asking for his permission to stay in his land as refugees. The king sent back a bowl full of milk. The Dastoorji looked at the bowl of milk his messenger brought back, added a spoon of sugar to it and sent it back to the king. The King understood the message and gave them permission. Soon one of the people in the Parsi group asked the Dastoorji what just happened and he replied that the bowl of milk the king sent over indicated that the land was currently occupied and full and he didn’t want to do anything to disrupt the lives of his people. By mixing sugar in the milk, the Priest sent a message that the Parsis will do nothing to disrupt the land and it’s people and instead, like how sugar adds sweetness to the milk, they will assimilate into the land and only add to the sweetness of this land and not take away anything. And this is how the Parsis adapted the Gujarati way of life – in their language or dialect as well as the dress. Parsis speak a dialect of Gujarati, which we call Parsi Gujarati and women also adopted the saree as their main form of dress.

The more recent arrivals of Parsis, those who arrived in late 19th and early 20th centuries, fleeing from the repressions of the Qajar dynasty in Iran are differentiated from the original Parsi settlers and are called Iranis. This Irani community is smaller than the Parsi community, though both profess the same religion, but religious customs may be slightly different.

In the centuries that they have lived in India, the Parsis, have integrated themselves into the Indian society, while at the same time, maintaining their ethnic individuality.

This community has been faced with dwindling numbers for a while now, the most significant being childlessness or having less than two numbers (which is basically the total fertility rate) or migration. Demographic trends project that by the year 2020 the Parsis will number only 23,000 (less than 0.002% of the 2001 population of India). The Parsis will then cease to be called a community and will be labeled a ‘tribe’.

During the British rule of India, because this community was highly literate and extremely fluent in English, they occupied many important places in the East India Company.

One interesting aspect of the Parsis is that instead of burying or cremating their dead, they place their dead in a Tower of Death where vultures peck the body and pick it clean. Once the bones are bleached by the sun, they are pushed into the circular opening in the tower. They believe, this way is the most ecological way, where even the dead are used as food by vultures and no part of the polluted human body is pushed back into the earth (by burying it) or into the atmosphere (by cremating it).

The Parsi place pf worship is called an Agiary in the Parsi dialect or a Fire Temple in English. The most holy place for Parsis in India is a place called Udwada in Gujarat. Legend says that one of the groups of refugees brought with them the ash of one of sacred fires from Iran and this ash serves, even today, as the bed for the fire in the Udwada Agiary. I remember friends from school going to the Agiary which used to be opposite our school before important exams. Unfortunately, as a non-Parsi I can’t enter the Agiary.

The Parsis have made considerable contributions to the history and development of India, all the more remarkable considering their small numbers. As the maxim “Parsi, thy name is charity” reveals, their greatest contribution, literally and figuratively, is their philanthropy.