There hasn’t been much knitting around here lately. Actually, that’s not strictly true. There *has* been a lot of actual knitting, but not much by way of finished stuff to show for it. One sock has been knit, frogged, knit, frogged, knit and frogged for the third time in the last three weeks. Once for size, once because I got bored with the pattern, and once because I made a stupid mistake and was so incensed with myself that the sock practically unraveled itself in the hope that it would calm me down. (Which it did.)
So I brought out this lovely skein of laceweight/light fingering merino called Lanita that I bought many years ago to make a shawl. I looked online for some shawl patterns, but like Huan-hua said recently, there is some serious lace shawl overload on Ravelry. My eyes begin to swim at all the prettiness and intricacy, and after a point I can never really sort one out from the other and decide what to make. So I looked at the Featherweight cardigan, which thousands of people have made, and which seems to be quite a lovely option for laceweight yarn. I seem to have enough for a cardigan in this yarn.
I swatched it and I have gauge (6 spi on size 4), but am not sure whether I like the way the colours translate from skein to swatch, and am having a hard time visualizing the variegated colours on a larger piece of fabric, and determining if I will like them. I love this bamboo forest type mix of colours, but they seem to shift quite rapidly in the swatch, something I hadn’t anticipated when I saw the skein itself. I’m not saying I don’t like it; there are a lot of people who’ve made it with gorgeous variegated yarn. I’m just not absolutely sure this one works for this pattern.
Also, while I do like the idea of this featherweight cardigan, am I setting myself up for long-term misery with laceweight stockinette? It’s not laceweight on size 6, say, when knitting the thin yarn on the thick needle can be murder on the fingers (to say nothing of temperament!). But size 4 might still be doable, plus this yarn falls just between laceweight and fingering.
I decided to make two sweaters for two babies who were born recently, and happen to live in the same building (in different flats, with different parents). I thought it would be nice to make two different raglans, and jazz them up a bit with some embroidery – one for a girl, the other for a boy. I’ll blog about the one I did finish a bit later for the baby girl, but right now I want to vent a bit about the one that is about to retire in disgrace.
Body done, half a sleeve done, an hour’s work away from finishing up the sweater. I thought I would use some of the golden sock yarn I bought last week to embroider a Cal Bears type pattern on it. But I finally realised that what I thought was just the curl of the fabric is, after all, some serious mis-shaping, and proportion gone wrong. The front is wider than the back by nearly an inch.
WTF? I followed the exact numbers in the pattern (.pdf) all the way through. I got gauge (5 spi). I thought it would be a quick, yet interesting twist on the Reliable Raglan. Instead, it’s weirdly baggy in parts. I peered closely at the sample in the pattern and the photos of the finished projects on Ravelry, and oddly enough some of them do seem a bit loose in the front, but none of the 109 people who made this have complained about the bagginess. So maybe it’s just me, and I knit the front more loosely than the back…. I don’t know. See how one edge peers out over the other:
I hate it when such simple things turn out to be more work than they ought. Am also wishing it wasn’t a seamless raglan, requiring me to frog everything back instead of just one piece. After toying with a pattern of my own, I chose this one because it would be mindless plane knitting during my trip to Vancouver. But in the end I think I’m madder because I chose it over the Vancouver Violet sock yarn I was itching to start working on.
But you know what the weirdest thing is? This yarn really makes my allergies go crazy. It’s bizarre. I wound up a new skein last night, and sneezed like it was a contest and I wanted to win the largest-number-in-a-minute race. Having knit with wool for 30+ years, I still cannot believe that I might be allergic to it in this sneezy rather than scratchy way. Other yarns I have worked with recently have also made me congested, but not like this one. I keep looking at it suspiciously as if it’s the evil cause of the horrid allergies ever since I brought it into the house, even though that can’t really be true, can it? It can’t be casting a spell on my sinuses from within its plastic packaging in my closet.
Honestly, I could finish the sweater, block the front a bit aggressively and be done with it – like the baby’s ever going to notice, right? – but somehow I can’t bring myself to do it. And if I, usually of the If-It’s-Not-Glaringly-Visible-It’s-Not-a-Mistake philosophy feel like that, that must mean something. It’s going into the closet for a while as I contemplate a different yarn and project for this baby. And maybe start something with the Vancouver Violet. Like these lovely Maeve socks.
This was possibly the best Holi celebration ever. Well, the one when my roommate and I drank just enough bhang to waft around campus in a gentle breeze and the food tasted a lot better and we sang a lot of songs and found everything very funny was pretty spectacular. But it was a long time ago, and this year I had no bhang. This year I splashed around in some unbelievably rich and deep colours, and I didn’t even have to wash them off myself. What’s more, instead of holding my head and wishing everyone wouldn’t talk so loudly, a day later my hangover from Stitches is still a happy glow.
It was a lovely crisp day, and I saw a lot of dyers, vendors and designers I haven’t seen before. Kauni, Jordana Paige, Cheryl Oberle… and many, many others. One of my favourites was Tess’s Designer Yarns, which was like the perfect Holi colour stall with colours spilling all over, except nothing got on your clothes (photo taken with the booth-owner’s explicit permission for posting on the blog):
Manduka, who just finished her first ever sweater to wear in time for the convention, got an amazing number of compliments for it, which is really the best thing about such gatherings. I spotted at least twenty February Lady Sweaters, including two identical ones worn by two friends. I met Fickle Knitter, which was great – after years of reading each other’s blogs, it’s no surprise we plunged right into chatting. A couple of people recognized me, and more importantly, my Ogee tunic from the blog, which was totally awesome.
The best part, though, was seeing Laura, friend and fibre artist extraordinaire, after many years. She is still making magic in many different colours, and I was happy to take some of her yarn off her hands! I bought “Sydney”, a DK merino in a pale green.
So what else did I get? Sock yarn, sock yarn, sock yarn. Socks that Rock in Vancouver Violet (for the Olympics!) and since I’m going up there next week for a conference, I thought this was most apt for the plane knitting. I also got two gorgeous shades, Denim and Terra Cotta, from Anzula Luxury Fibers who truly had an exceptional palette. The one with just a hint of sage, is Tess Yarns’ Super Sock.
Finally, my coveted Blackwater Abbey yarn! Funnily enough, Marilyn of Abbey yarns had read on my blog that I was looking forward to getting some at Stitches, and so she went out of her way to make sure that I got the yarn and colour I wanted. I got some of their new sport weight instead of the worsted, in a lovely blue-purple called Indigo. I cannot *wait* to get started on it. Thanks, Marilyn!
I stepped outside the box this time, and consciously avoided the warm reds, maroons, pinks and browns I usually reach for. My eye kept catching the cooler greens, blues and purples and I went for some paler shades – partly to try something new, and partly to try a lot of the lovely cabled patterns out there that look better in these shades. My Ravelry queue is bursting with projects, and my fingers are itching.
As we drove back and I headed to a Holi dinner party at a friend’s house, my head swirled with ideas and colour, and the full moon rose gracefully in the sky. Really, as I hummed aayaa holii kaa tyohaar jhuume rangoN kii byochhaar.. to myself at night (trying to put the image of Sandhya’s weird dancing out of my head!), I didn’t miss the bhang at all.
So as requested here and on Ravelry, here is the detailed pattern for the sideways hat I posted about a few days ago.
UPDATE: .pdf link for download.
Gratuitous photo reminder:
I am posting the pattern here instead of as a downloadable .pdf, because I’d like some feedback first about steps I’ve missed or errors. If someone (Manisha?!) would test-knit it and let me know if the instructions make sense, that would be even better!
STRIPEY SIDEWAYS HAT
Level of difficulty: Advanced beginner/intermediate. Should know how to cast on provisionally, do kitchener stitch (grafting) or a three-needle bind off, and pick up and knit in the round with circular and double-pointed needles. All you need, really, are the excellent videos at KnittingHelp.com, which demonstrate all these techniques very clearly.
Yarn: Worsted weight (I used Karabella Aurora 8, 98 yards/50 gms), 1 skein each in two colours – one main colour (MC), and one contrasting colour (CC).
Needles: 1 size 6 16 inch circular needle, 1 set of double pointed needles in size 6, 1 tapestry needle.
Gauge: 5 spi in stockinette stitch, 4.5 spi in garter stitch.
Size: Women’s regular, approx 21-22 inches in circumference. (The garter ridges in the central band stretch a bit, so you can adjust its length depending on how loose-fitting or tight you want the hat to be, to fit a man or a child.
Central band: (knit back and forth)
1. Using the ‘provisional’ method, cast on 20 stitches with the MC yarn.
2. Knit two rows – one garter ridge created.
3. Switch to CC yarn, knit two rows – one garter ridge created.
4. Continue in this way, alternating one garter ridge in MC and CC, until the band measures 21 inches. End with a garter ridge in CC. We shall call the needle with these stitches Needle # 1.
5. Undo the crochet chain at the provisional cast on, and pick up the live stitches on to the second needle (Needle # 2) (Cotton yarn is great for this crochet cast on, it prevents the fibres from the live stitches from snagging on to the chains.)
6. At this point, Needle # 1 has 20 st in CC; Needle # 2 has 20 st in MC.
7. Holding both needles together, Needle # 2 in front and RS on the outside, facing you, graft the edges together.
NOTE: If you don’t like grafting, you can always do a three-needle bind off. Remember to do the bind off with the WS of the band facing outside!
Shape crown: (knit in the round)
1. Using MC and the RS facing you, pick up and knit 120 stitches along the right edge of the band with a circular needle. Knit 1 round.
2. *K10, k2tog, repeat * all around for a total of 10 times.
3. Knit 1 round even.
4. *K 9, k2tog, repeat * all around.
5. Knit 1 round even.
6. *K 8, k2tog, repeat * all around.
7. Knit 1 round even.
8. In this fashion, continue decreasing every other round (k7, k 6, k 5, etc) until you have knit k1, k2tog. Switch to double-pointed needles as the stitches get fewer and fewer for the circular needles.
9. Knit 1 round even. (20 stitches on needle.)
10. K2tog all around (10 stitches on needle.)
11. Cut yarn, leaving a 4 inch tail, and threading it through a tapestry needle, draw yarn through remaining live stitches a few times, and pull tight.
Shape cuff (in the round):
1. Using MC and the RS facing you, pick up and knit 120 stitches along the left edge of the band with a circular needle.
2. K2, p2 all around.
3. Repeat step 2 for ten rounds, or for as long as you would like the cuff of the hat to be.
4. Bind off all stitches knitwise, to ensure a firm edge.
5. Weave in all ends. Wear hat, enjoy!
For the last few weeks a song has possessed me in a way that very few film songs nowadays do. This song, malaa zaauu dyaa na gharii (please let me go, it’s past midnight!) is the opening sequence of a Marathi film Natarang that is making quite a few waves in Maharashtra. Based on the eponymous novel by Anand Yadav, the music is by a new composer duo Ajay & Atul, and this song is by Bela Shende, who I have heard often before this, but I must say I will listen to more carefully from now on!
Mainstream Marathi cinema, it would appear, is experiencing a bit of a revival after decades of extremely mediocre popular comedy/family sagas, and marginal arthouse themes. This film is about the lives and struggles of tamaashaa artistes – a popular dance/theatre form of some vintage in Maharashtra, and is garnering great critical and popular reviews. I haven’t seen it, but I badly want to!
The tamashaa’s main musical ingredient, the laavaNii, is frequently invoked as maraaThmoLaa, the very essence of popular Marathi culture. The comments on the youtube page for this song totally get the dancing wrong – the choreography and dancing are actually very true to the tamaashaa form. The moves are not always smooth and seamless; the neck and shoulder movements, and especially the rapid jerks of the torso, are all classic actions. Although the influence of classical Kathak footwork and turns is clearly visible, the distinctiveness of this dance, it seems to me, is in these jerks, the feet apart from each other, the rough edges. The main difference from laavaNiis I have seen in earlier films, is that the dancers seem a lot thinner than they used to be. I think they haven’t ‘bollywood-ised’ the dancing here, even the music and look is also unmistakably more modern. Here is another dance from the same film which is also very stylised, but does a great job of following these basic laavaNii moves.
I love the sound of the laavaNii – just the familiar opening dholki rhythms, the ting-ting-ting of the strings, and the footwork is very stirring. The language is bawdy, colourful and deliciously alliterative, with quick back-and-forths between the dancer and her companions, with a high-pitched chorus that backs up her pleas or complaints. Of course, the filmi ones are not always the real thing, but they are still very good.
Here is a classic filmi one, bugaDii maajhii saanDlii ga (I’ve lost my ‘earring’ during that tryst to Satara). I used to sing this song often, way back in school and family musical gatherings. It features the gorgeous Jayashree Gadkar, doyenne of Marathi films of the ’60s-’70s. Sung by Asha Bhosale in the original, it was still pretty melodious, even too melodious for the form, perhaps, but I like it a lot.
One of the last ‘tamasha’-themed films I remember seeing was Pinjara, which I really didn’t care for, but whose soundtrack became wildly popular. It starred Sandhya, a terribly hammy actor who is not known as the most graceful of dancers. Sandhya usually did all her dances like an exaggerated laavaNii, especially the jerky peacock-like neck movements. Even in this one, below, she is over the top. But despite the exaggeration, the song and dance are vintage, raucous laavaNii, and part of film lore – aaho daajibaa gaavaat hoil shobaa he vagana bara nava (Really, Sir! Do behave, what will the villagers say!). I love the opening sequence, where the lines musically mock the pretensions to respectability of village folk, who are worried about what the arrival of this attractive dancer will do to local morals.
Performed by a female lead dancer with (both male and female) accompanists and (male) interlocutors on stage, mainly to a male audience, the laavaNii’s themes are usually explicitly erotic. These songs featured regularly in most ‘rural’ themed Marathi movies from the ’60s, which featured beautiful dancers, well-meaning farmers, anxieties of respectability, ill-fated romances, and evil, mustachioed and turbaned headmen. The kinds of gender roles and stereotypes the form has underwritten or transgressed, its role in shaping a lower-caste, popular culture, and most importantly, the problematic ways in which films have incorporated this popular theatre, have seen some fine historical and feminist analysis in recent times, which I don’t want to reprise here. This post is mainly to share this recent obsession and some old favourites, especially with Mary, if she’s reading this.
I narrowly missed seeing Natarang when I was in Pune last month. I wish I was at Prabhat Talkies right now, watching it with all the noise and whistles around me instead of a few snatches on youtube.
Happy Diwali everyone! May the light drive away the demons and darkness and lighten all unpleasant burdens! A dear friend’s mom sent me this diya for Diwali: a silver floating lamp. Isn’t it beautiful?
Speaking of burdens. Things have been awful quiet chez Desiknitter lately because I’ve been so hellishly busy. But speaking also of light, there may well be some at the end of a very long tunnel. Somewhere in the chronology of my classes and the semester, there usually comes a turning point – you enter a familiar century, reach materials you can read backwards and all the people you are talking about in class just seem like old friends, you know them so well. I sigh happily, because an unspoken anxiety that dogs me in the other weeks, despite all my reading and prep, just evaporates and I can babble on happily for hours and don’t feel tense. Does this happen to you? I’ve been teaching for years, but this promises to be a constant feature all through for me.
That happened to me today. This is good because I have two important papers to write from scratch by early December, and I need all the extra time and calm I can get. I am also going to a conference at Madison later this week, where the prospect of meeting some friends, esp. a couple of blogfriends is taking some of the edge off my stress. Mary and Orata, if you’re reading this, please email me your phone numbers!
What’s that you said? Knitting? Fine. My red shawl is in the slog overs stage, progressing miniscule row by miniscule row. I am so obsessed with finishing it that I can’t bear to start anything new. But the end is in sight, my friends, I do believe it will be done this year and then I can re-enter the normal world of worsted wool and stockinette fabric. I swear it, once this is done, I ain’t knitting with lace-weight yarn for a LONG time.
1. Patience is far more critical to sewing than knitting, even though sewing produces results faster.
2. A garment is wearable and comfortable despite the crooked seams.
3. If interested in a good fit, it is always helpful to look beyond chest measurements, to things like ease, length, etc.
4. Do not rely on the sewing store experts or the teacher to pick the right size for you, even if you tell them you are absolutely new to published patterns.
5. Still, it is possible to be imaginative and view sleeves large enough to accommodate the family as a fashion detail.
6. Reading, cutting, ironing and pinning wafer-thin paper patterns is extremely fiddly, but when you painstakingly finish the fifteen hundred complicated steps, and the bands fall nicely into place, it’s really a very good feeling.
7. Pinning is absolutely KEY. It’s the gauge of sewing, that without which you are doomed.
8. Topstitch is a bitch. But the ninth time you try it after ripping it eight times and being close to tears, you can learn to live with it.
9. Motorised sewing machines are not at all scary. In fact the Jenome Heart is quite handy.
10. This is addictive, and browsing for second-hand machines on Ebay and Craigslist is bewildering but fun. What’s stressful is figuring out how to find the time to indulge this new craze in your busiest semester ever.
Thank you, thank you, thank you all for the encouragement for my sewing experiment, the tips about machines, books and classes, and the sewing stories and memories. I think I will resist the temptation of buying a machine and an entire fabric store just yet, and tinker around some classes and machines a bit before finalizing one. Watch this space!
Over the last couple of days, instead of sullenly packing and repacking my bags and bitching about having to go back, I completed this lighting-fast project. It has gone a long way in taking the edge of my irritation and despair, because its recipient, a newly-minted niece of mine, is going to show up at the airport to claim it and I cannot *wait* to set eyes on her:
It’s the Little Sister’s Dress, a delightful, clever and quick pattern (and free!). I made the three-month version, but with slightly thicker yarn, so it would run a little large. I love the way it takes the basic top-down seamless pattern and creatively fashions sleeves out of it even as it does away with them. All you do is cast off, and presto: sleeves. My mum knit the last couple of inches at the bottom, adding a small pattern and a slightly ruffled edge. So it’s not as A-lined a frock as it could have been, but it looks just like what we call a zhabla in Marathi.
Specs: Yarn: Vardhman Little Angel, Shade 123, just over 4 skeins of 50 grams each (anyone know how many yards a skein of this is?) Needles: size 4 DPNs Gauge: Did not bother to check
My mum also knit her favourite booties pattern with the frock, and I knit a little helmet with an antenna. My allergy to baby projects is definitely weakening.
The hat was improvised – I cast on 70 stitches, knit 3 rounds and purled 3 rounds for a couple of inches, and then decreased every other round starting with k5, k2tog all around, then k4, k2tog, etc. When there were only 5 sts remaining, I took them all on one needle and made an I-cord antenna.
This shade of red is very difficult to photograph – worse than black, really, cause it bleeds so much, even in natural light. I realized as I was tinkering with the saturation that I haven’t knit anything non-red or non-crimson in nearly a year. My sampler shawl is also this color, and the BPT cardigan was a similar shade too. I think I need to look at some blues and greens now. Or even redecorate the blog a bit, if I can figure out how to change the header image without my title disappearing. Maybe a visit to Stash or Article Pract will cheer me up when I return, what?
I miss knitting. I have this awful gnawing feeling inside me; first I thought it was my research, which is sort of stalled at the moment for various reasons. I’m having a hard time conceptualizing some of it, which makes it difficult to go look for specific stuff in the archives – and while randomly losing myself in the catalogues is providing unexpected joys, these aren’t enough to tide over my anxiety that I should be More Organized And Have Something To Show At the End of My Sabbatical. Then I thought it was just the usual exhaustion that comes from so much travelling – I just booked a whole lot of tickets for many more trips over the next few months, and just looking at my itinerary is tiring me out. But it’s not just all this. I’m a bit out of sorts because I haven’t knit anything substantial since May. Here’s what I have to show for my efforts:
One lousy sock, a foot of lace, and some cables. I can’t even bring myself to properly cast on for the second sock, even though the anklets my sister has asked for should not take more than 2 days to knit, really. The lace is, well, stalled, and the cables for the Tweedy Aran Cardigan are so not calling me to extend them even though I know they have the potential to look like Neither Hip Nor Funky’s gorgeous version.
It’s not like I don’t want to knit these. To paraphrase the great George Costanza, it’s not them, it’s me. It has been hot, to be sure, and not really wool-handling weather. But it has also frequently been quite pleasant, and it’s not like my work is keeping me too busy. For some reason, I’m just not picking up the projects and enjoying them. I have actually been helping my mum figure out a couple of simple baby projects, but she’s the one knitting them.
Any ideas on how to overcome this? I so want to get back to it, cause I do miss it. I haven’t been on Ravelry in ages. Sometimes the threads, knitting and non-knitting, seem so distant. Even apart from Big Issues Debate, so much of it is so totally removed from any non-US concerns that it depresses me. Surfing all my friends’ blogs and seeing the gorgeous stuff they are making or queuing on Ravelry is increasing the gnawing feeling, plus after having been off Ravelry for so long there was virtually a deluge of new patterns. I thought of junking the aran cardigan and making something simpler – like I need yet another stockinette hoodie, but maybe it will give me a sense of accomplishment. Any pattern suggestions? Anybody else in the same boat as me (trying very hard not to use the words “knitting mojo”…..)?
Two posts in a week! Truth be told, I should have posted about this year’s Ganpati festival before my jewelpron, because the festival already came and went a couple of weeks ago. What can I say, the post on earrings took precedence, and as a lover of good things, may the portly deity forgive me!
This is the first year I am in Pune for the Ganpati festival in a decade. Neighbourhood groups or mandals host the god, who visits annually for ten days during the Hindu month of Bhadrapad, in elaborate themed decorations, around which revolve a lot of cultural activities. At the end of his visit he is immersed in water, after he has promised to visit again next year. A big part of enjoying the festival is to wander around the city at night, seeing all these themes brightly lit up. The festival itself began in the 1890s as a means of bringing anti-colonial politics into the public sphere, and these themes have always been explicitly political – about history, contemporary politics, social reform, etc.
In this past decade, a lot of my research has involved examining how this region’s (Maharashtra’s) past is invoked in the public sphere – festivals like this one included. This particular installation commemorates the escape of Shivaji, Maharashtra’s most famous king and founder of its independent state in the 17th century, from the clutches of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb at Agra. Shivaji too got a festival for himself in the 1890s, but it’s really during the Ganpati decorations that a lot of the history of his times and its meanings are commemorated. A good deal of this historical imagery has very sharp Hindu nationalist overtones.
The festival, with its social history, has been in my consciousness mainly as an object of analysis, a thing. We also don’t properly celebrate it at home any more because of a death in our immediate family during the festival some years ago. Plus, all everyone does nowadays is complain – with justification – about how the loudspeakers and traffic and piped devotional music during these ten days are straight from hell. Remover of Obstacles Ganpati might be, but his annual sojourn spells chaos in the city. So I wasn’t that enthusiastic about it.
But after a long time, my mum wanted to go check out some of the historic Ganpatis in the area where she grew up, so I went with her. These historic ones are called “Maanache Ganpati” – especially respected idols that have pride of place in the city’s public immersion procession. (The term “maanache ganpati” is also colloquially used to refer to high-maintenance people, usually fussy sons-in-law!). Here is Kasba Ganpati, with pride of place # 1, in one of the 18th c. neighbourhoods:
Next is Tambdi Jogeshwari, # 2. This year, they featured women priests for all their rituals. Women priests are quite the thing now in Pune – a soft reformist move that has become very popular. Lots of institutes train women to take up historically male ritual tasks and become professional priests – some, I gather, are also open to women from all castes.
Women’s participation in this public festival is actually something worthy of more scholarly attention. On the one hand, as a classic public arena, it is heavily male, with female participation disciplined along national/familial lines. Personal safety, especially in the insane crowds at night, is always an issue, so “mandal hopping” or dancing crazily in the streets to the heady and insistent drumming during immersion, however tempting, is not always an option for women.
But of late, women’s participation seems to have swelled – not only through these priests, but through enormous public ritual chants before popular Ganpati idols that attract them in the thousands. It is tempting to immediately bracket this upsurge as part of the religious right’s reformist mobilisation of women for a very reactionary politics. But there seems to be, at least through an anecdotal glance, a wide variety of class and caste or even political backgrounds among the women who participate in this public devotion – certainly worth investigating the nuances of this “politics of piety.”
This one, above, is the Guruji Talim Mandal’s Ganpati, # 3. This one, also of 1890s vintage, was explicitly conceived as, and continues to be, a space where Hindu and Muslim folk from the city could participate in the public celebrations together, as a counter to some of the other more exclusivist and majoritarian ones. We wandered around some others that were open during the day. Directly below is the Dagdushet Ganpati, possibly the most popular one in the city, followed by the Mandai Ganpati (in the main vegetable market of the city), and a few random others that had nice installations.
My personal favourite is the Tulshibag Ganpati (the very first photo in this post), which sits amidst the oldest and best trinkets, crafts, cosmetics, undies, crockery and what-have-you market of the city. A place I adore. They had a beautiful installation about the temptation of the austere and angry sage Vishwamitra by the heavenly siren Menaka.
Much remains depressingly the same, especially the simplistic nationalism, now of course combined with a new flexing of consumerist and globalised aspirations. The scale of things has changed. Some big urban manDals are corporatised, their turnover running into millions. TV channels hook up with popular manDaLs to transmit their rituals, mobile phone companies issue fresh Ganpati devotional ringtones and a whole host of bad singers do brisk business selling off-key devotional CDs. I can’t tell if the overt religiosity on display is recent, or whether I just wasn’t that observant back then and more focused on the food and floats.
And yet, the public platform is not as politically homogeneous; the festival’s decentralized, neighbourhood format continues to allow irruptions of these large, bombastic, chauvinistic celebrations. Environmental themes seemed to be popular this year – there was a big drive to make soluble clay idols rather than harmful plaster-of-paris ones, the nirmalya (ritual detritus) was aggressively collected for disposal in large pots on bridges rather than people throwing them randomly into the river. Lots of installations about female foeticide, farmers’ suicides in eastern Maharashtra due to severe debt and agricultural decline, environmental awareness… it was most interesting to follow it in the papers and on TV. The ones we saw were mostly on mythical tales and religious themes, and it’s a pity I didn’t get to photograph these more interesting ones, some of which were in fairly far-flung places. But still, it was fun walking the crowded lanes – and down memory lane – with my mother, who hitched up her sari and biked all over the old town as a teenager many decades ago.
Ah well. When Ganpati comes back next year. Or when I do!
