Thursday, May 8, 2014

(Not so Hindi) Mindi

     Whew! These last few days have been packed with travel, events, and work! New people, new experiences, new insights, and new situations. During the working week, my Alliance program peer and I have been traveling around Pune filming our documentary, and this last weekend only I attended three Hindu ceremonies.

     Two of the ceremonies were thread ceremonies. As an earlier post described, a thread ceremony is a traditional ceremony performed by Brahmins, for seven year old Brahmin men, to mark their transition from one stage of life, childhood, to another stage in life, scholarship. The first thread ceremony I attended this week was that of my tabla instructor's son. There I witnessed rituals I didn't quite understand at the time, and was given a handful of uncooked rice at one point and told to throw it at my tabla instructor's son, which I did. I also met Pria, a host mother to another group of young American woman in the Alliance program this semester, as well as Pria's father. Pria's father and I got to chatting and I learned that the practice of actually sending male children to a teacher's house stopped "a thousand" years ago, but the day long family gathering ritual remains.

       The second thread ceremony I attended this week was that of my host mother's sister's daughter's son. I know that relation may seem like a mouthful, so I will give you some time to think if over as you look at this lovely photo I snapped of myself:

Me, a young woman with long dark brown hair, 
smiling, with an Arabic Mindi on the back 
of my left hand.

This photo was taken a day before my host family's thread ceremony. The night before the photo, my host family threw a dinner party, with music, dancing, mindi, and bangle selections, and pani puri. Pani puri is a wonderful dish, which consists of small hard flour balls being pricked with a hole and filled with water, spices, lentils, and marvellousness. Mindi, also known as henna, is actually mind flower paste applied artistically to the body, most commonly the hands and the feet. There are different styles of mind designs. At my host family's thread ceremony I learned that the cloth ritual, where the father and son are covered in a cloth involves the passing of a scared knowledge sun mantra from father to son. Upon this ritual's closing the son is expected to repeat this mantra twice daily, at sunrise and sunset. Needless to say amazing food and interesting conversation ensued for the rest of the day. The ceremonies ended with a bang, dinner and various dance, comedy, and song performances by the children who attended the event.

     The third ceremony I attended this week was Uttaraa's (the director of the Alliance program) mother's one thousand moons ceremony, which marks eighty years of her life. It was a beautiful ceremony that I am very grateful to have attended. I was also grateful for the occasional pauses and English explanations of the rituals. One involved weighing the star of the night on a giant balance beam with bags of rice, to demonstrate her pricelessness. Another involved group meditating on the infinite. Sweets were involved as well, and everyone got a bag of almonds and raisins at the end. At this ceremony  through conversation with a friend of Uttaraa I learned that there are two common designs in mindi in India, one Arabic, the other Hindi, and I had gotten the Arabic design. Considering the long and influential Mughal regime in India, I was pleased with this knowledge. Overall, the ceremony celebrated Uttaraa's mother's life, her strength, her longevity, and her knowledge, she has a PhD in a Hindu scripture; and it was truly touchingly beautiful.

     

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