The great festival week

First impressions from Dussehra
Dussehra started this Sunday, and the tourists flowed in great number. Over 600 deities came from the valley mountains. They are being carried by two persons, poles resting on the shoulders and deity’s mascot balancing in between. We never saw Dalpur in such a condition: clean streets, orange and red plastic stripes, wind and music. Masses of people to commence and commerce.

Firstly, we went through the bazaar, in Hindi - mella. You could get anything in there ranging from sugar cotton to a 4-wheel drive Mahindra. Dussehra went commercial. But how can we exactly now that spending less than 2 months here? Probably, it’s always been like that: a huge festival preceded by a respective autumn’s harvest. Hence people buy and sell and worship the god’s for one’s forsaken prosperity 


Three football/cricket pitches are crowded with around 200 lakhs (thousands) of people on Dussehra. Once everyone is there standing, the gods start passing through towards the central square and all around the city. The guys carrying those spirits start swinging the structures and people have to run away to not get hurt. It was a real stampede! Some women were left injured, and my lungs nearly collapsed upon the pressure from the other bodies :D


Despite that, I ‘ve never felt so free and anarchistic in my whole life – being pushed by the thousands of cheerful folks is psychologically rewarding.
Besides Dussehra, a big international festival is taking place and we managed to see a few performances in the amphitheatre. I personally met a Kazakh troupe and exercised my Russian skills. You haven’t seen their faces, when I proclaimed: “Zdravstvuyte, iz kakye strany vy priehali?” I love being in India, but meeting even people from your own “block” feels special. I cast no doubts there must have been at least one Lithuanian among all of these goras (white skinned ones)!
I’m planning to get some shawls or our relatives and friends, and Dussehra is the right place.

Sitar classes
Today we visited the music school and agreed to start Sitar classes on Friday. Wouldn’t that be nice to bring home from India something more valuable than the Kullu cap? Let’s bring music! One of my friends helped me to fall in love with the Gypsy culture and I owe him one. Here in India, my Gypsy part of spirit is retained for a new life. Dresses, voices and sounds are too familiar to let them vibrate unnoticed.
Our future teacher, Rajeem, invited us to look at his dancers’ performance. There were 20 of them girls around 14-18 years old flexing divine sculptures with their bodies. After the dance they grabbed the Henna paint and drew virulent symbols on Anine’s hands. Meanwhile I had to content with an“OM”, as long as guys aren’t supposed to wear hand paintings  We loved it and made friends with them all. Chay was rewarding as usual.

Limbo
Finding a place to live in India is easy, especially for a foreigner. Conversely, paying the right price is inversely proportional to the whiteness of your skin. Our master is a great man: in his 60's, housong 2 daughters and their children as well. However his 4 floor residence is far too big for an honorbleman of his age and family size. So he'd rent a few rooms for the tourists especially on Dussehra. In order to do so, he "requested me to relocate Anine" back to my room for 2 weeks. This was clearly what we didn't agree on before shaking each others' tongues for the almighty "verbal contract".
In the end, wemanaged to persuade him to give us a notice in case some tourists are coming, so that in a few hours time we'd move our stuff together and be sad. However, the last week as I saw it reminded me of "who's afraid of virginia wolf" scene when e. taylor attacks her historian husband and reveals their most intimate secrets. 6 renters came in total and they all caused lots of troubles. This morning we found Anine's towels covered in a yellow ..spice/sweat/goo, coridoor's odour was strikingly familiar to hashish. Apparently our boys had fun tonight and we'll pay the price by cleaning the bathroom again :)

I should apologize Jezhko for using his towel last year - I know miserable life becomes once your towel becomes a part of the community property ;D (I used it only twice, Jezhko!)

It seems that our master's and many rich but PECULIAR men's dignity can be sold for a staggering price of 300Rs per night.

This morning my iGoogle announced that "Moon Crater Contains Usable Water, NASA Says".