Walking to the Moon

It's Hindu festival season, so it seems like every other day, there's some new festival, fast, pooja, or pilgrimage. Plus, this Saturday is Independence Day, so all of the private school girls are furiously rehearsing for the dancing competitions. There are two teams who practice for four hours every morning under the balcony at Sambhali...

The first festival that I celebrated last week was Rakhi, which is the celebration of sisters and brothers. Everyone spends the entire day traveling around and tying fancy bracelets on the wrists of their brothers and sisters, feeding them sweets, and giving them a coconut (I'm still unclear about this one. I think its a Hindu symbol for prosperity.) Brothers give sisters money, jewelry, sarees, etc.

Then comes Tij, the holiday that culturally insensitive Dani has deemed an extremely sexist holiday. It's the day when women fast for the health of their present or future husbands, do pooja for their present or future husbands, and participate in a variety of other prayers and ceremonies to ensure that they are blessed with a good husband in the future or that their current husband is healthy. I told one of my friends at the local juice place (he's this really sweet man named Mohammad, who is a devoted Muslim and stops making juice five times a day to walk to the local mosque and pray. It's just this routine: drop the papaya, and go pray) that I thought boys and men should also fast and do pooja for their wives...that is if the holiday is truly a celebration of marriage.

The truth is, at least from what I've studied and what I've learned from the women I've spoken with, a woman is somewhat made by her husband in Indian culture. This is, of course, a vast generalization both because...well, it's a vast generalization and this is Rajasthan, so many customs and ways of thinking are more conservative. However, a woman really isn't a woman without a husband. A woman's identity is wifehood. So praying for a healthy husband is essentially praying to maintain a female identity. Being single, being divorced, or being widowed all make you less of a woman. As such, many women who are single, divorced, or widowed are cast out, gossiped about, denied jobs, etc...

There is, however, a beautiful part of Rij. The most wonderful part of Tij happens at night. All Hindu women come out of their homes around 11:00 to do pooja for the moon. So I went out with my host mother for a walk and saw all of these female faces lit with the fire of the pooja candle, swirling the prayer tray and chanting at the moon. It was breathtakingly beautiful for two reasons. One, visually, it was gorgeous. Two, the moon isn't a man. The meaning of this ceremony is simply to pray to God to continue keeping the world spinning, the moon in the sky, the tides coming, generally maintain the natural cycles that enable us to live on Earth.

My host father said something really beautiful the other day. I asked him why he believes so fervently in astrology, and he asked me: 'What does the moon do to the ocean?' I answered, 'Well, there are tides..." He said 'If the moon can effect the ocean, imagine how it affects humans, who are 80% water." Kind of a beautiful way to think about things, regardless of scientific accuracy.

Last night there was another festival where women must walk around at night until they see the moon. Until that time, they cannot take food or sit down. It was quite a sight seeing all of these women dressed in fancy silk sarees and jewelry just walking around...

The sexism here has been, of late, irritating and infuriating me. The way my host father speaks to my host mother sometimes, even though they have a really respectful relationship. The stories of sexual and physical abuse. The comments that men direct at women on the street. The way some women are limited to their home.

The fact that there is no word for a female orgasm in Hindi - the word only applies to men.

The name of the leading condom brand is "ManForce."

I had a really startling conversation in the car coming home from my host mother's brother's home. There were two women in the car (cousins?), Anjou and Sultana, and Sultana of them told me how lucky I was to be able to travel around and do things by myself. "I used to travel around India in college," she said, "but now, I can't go 3 km without my husband. I don't want to. I'm too scared to go out. I'm completely dependent on him."