Geetanjali Krishna: Wisdom down the drain

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

Late Monday afternoon, we drove straight into a traffic jam on the bridge over the Yamuna at Kalindi Kunj. As the car drew to a halt, we heard strains of a popular Hindi film song about hot bikes and cool babes.

Ahead were two trucks full of dancing teens, a traffic bottleneck turned open-air disco. "What on earth do they think they are doing?" I said angrily to my driver.

"Oh there's some festival today," said he vaguely, "something to do with lovers..." I realised he was referring to Valentine's Day. But he was wrong. There were no women among the crowd, for one thing, and most of the men had colour on their faces.

Was this some sort of pre-Holi madness, we wondered? It wasn't, we realised, when we saw some beautifully bedecked bullock carts stop behind us, blaring another Bollywood hit; it disgorged even more youngsters carrying an idol of Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and learning.

Behind them, the traffic snarls got a little worse. Heedlessly, the men headed straight for the rails of the bridge, threw the idol rather unceremoniously into the murky waters below, and joined the dancing mob with loud cheers.

"This is how Basant Panchami, the fifth day of spring, is celebrated in some parts of the country," explained a gentleman standing nearby who was also watching the fun.

"They pray to these plaster of Paris idols of the goddess, and the next day, immerse them in the river," said he. We watched the raucous hordes of 'devotees' in action, struck by the singular lack of devotion in their behaviour.

"Women are not supposed to watch the immersion," he went on, "I guess that's why the men are having such a good time!" So much for Valentine's Day, thought I.

"My family celebrates it too, but for us, it's a solemn and private festival," he said, "You won't think it looking at these people though!"

Inevitably, a motorist struck up an argument with some of the devotees, saying that it was fine to celebrate a festival, but must they block traffic for miles doing it? Suddenly, he found himself surrounded by a throng of angry coloured faces.

"Where else can we take our revered goddess but the Yamuna?" asked one, a red cloth tied rather ominously round his forehead. Did the motorist want poor people to stop celebrating their festivals, another shouted.

"Just because this is a festival observed by the Biharis and not natives of Delhi, he's feeling so inconvenienced!" said a third, probably emboldened by the fact that his face was too luridly coloured to be recognisable later.

The motorist beat a hasty but prudent retreat, realising that it was better to kill the next half hour watching people of various hues dance to disco beats in the name of religion, than to argue about the infringement of his civic rights.

A couple of policemen stood by impotently as the spring madness got madder "" and the rest of the traffic inched forward at snail's pace.

When two trucks or carts full of devotees passed each other, the occupants would greet each other with loud roars, and then do each other the honour of dancing to the other party's music.

After the longest half-hour of my life, we finally cleared the Kalindi Kunj bridge and the horrible stench of the Yamuna's polluted waters. I waved farewell to the man I'd been chatting to.

He rolled down his window and shouted, "Don't judge these people too harshly. After all, how else would you expect them to behave "" after they've thrown their goddess of wisdom down the drain?"

(geetanjalikrishna@yahoo.co.uk)