Of Festivals

March, April and May have traditionally been "festival months" in Kerala. Many Hindu temples (as well as a few houses of worship of other religions) celebrate socio-religious festivals during this season which also witnesses the turn of the Malayalam year. My trip home to Trivandrum earlier this month coincided with the annual festival at a nearby temple. It has been close to a decade since I was last home in time for the occasion. Several things have changed since then. Most notably the noise output has gone up considerably. Loudspeakers heralding the event covered an area approximately 1 Km in radius. As my house is well within this radius I got to hear music (live and recorded, instrumental and vocal), announcements, religious talks and other sounds almost around the clock. My five day visit completely overlapped with the festival's duration of 7 days to the effect that I was almost always raising my voice to talk to my family.

The loudspeakers usually came to life around 6.00 in the morning, more than an hour after the temple opened for the day. They would then blare "devotional songs" for the next three hours or so. The music was periodically interrupted for announcements. Going by voice these were all made by the same person. The announcer typically started by reciting the day's programme. He would then go on to thank individual donors whose contributions went towards paying for the day's events. Names, addresses and the events which benefited were included. He usually ended with a religious greeting.

The speakers were given a break around 10.00 AM coinciding with religious rituals in the temple. Unfortunately this break lasted barely an hour. The next "session" commenced with yet more songs and traditional instrumental music unless there happened to be a religious talk going on. Following another short break around noon the fare would continue well into the afternoon. Unexpected relief arrived on a couple of occasions thanks to the trusty summer afternoon rains. The lightning accompanying the showers forced the operators to shut down their makeshift Public Address system albeit for a short while.

The noise levels went down whenever a ritual was performed in the temple premises. After the main worship ceremony around 6.00 PM the racket would continue well into the night thanks to the "main cultural event" of the day. Such events tended to live performances of music, dance or comedy with the rare Kathakali session thrown in for traditions' sake. Plays and movies used be a part of the fare ten years ago but have since been dropped. Live performances typically ended by 1.00 AM and the PA system shut down shortly thereafter. On one particular occasion however the music accompanying a Kathakali performance started around 10.00 PM and went on until after 4.00 AM the next morning. The best part was when the announcer came on right afterwards to announce - what else - the names and addresses of the donors! I have since been told that most donors actually expect their names to be aired prominently and repeatedly in exchange for their contributions.

The last day of the festivities was marked by a procession featuring decorated elephants. The procession left the temple in the evening and returned sometime after midnight. The sound of the traditional drums accompanying the procession was broadcast for a while until a solitary voice took over to chant "Om....." repeatedly. The chanting lasted for half an hour while the procession re-entered the temple.

Interestingly several otherwise sensitive people seemed not to mind the noise pollution. These were the same folks who bristled when a political party dared to broadcast musical propaganda or speeches for a half day long meeting. One of the supporters argued that there could be no comparison between "devotional music" and "political music". My argument that both impinged on the personal comfort of those not interested was dismissed with a wave of the hand.

I believe this question was posed before the courts some time ago. The only solid outcome of such litigation has been the replacement of old, noisy, ultra polluting horn speakers with modern box models. Very few abide by the prescribed decibel levels and timings.

An Unique Arrangement

I visited Leh, Laddakh in mid 2001 for trekking and seeing the place. Four of us completed our trek along Laddakh's Markha Valley in about eight days and decided to travel south to Srinagar in the Kashmir valley. Although Laddakh and Srinagar are both part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir they have dissimilar cultures and political atmosphere. The predominantly Buddhist Leh has been spared most of the violence that has plagued the state while the predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley has been at the heart of incidents.

We hired a taxi to ferry us to from Leh to Srinagar. The road connecting the two passes through several towns including Kargil that bore witness to a small scale war as recently as 1999. We started at noon from Leh. In spite of the modest distance (~475 Km/300 miles) ahead of us we were obliged to stop in Kargil at nightfall for various reasons. Traffic through the narrow Zoji-La pass was regulated so that vehicles driving North-South could only travel through from sunrise to noon. For the rest of the day the pass would be used by vehicles traveling in the opposite direction. Moreover nighttime civilian travel was not common, even discouraged.

In Kargil we checked into a hotel for the night. During dinner the manager came over and enquired if we had hired the cab in Leh. After we answered he told us to expect the driver to come up with an excuse to end the journey in Kargil and go no further. We would be offered an identical vehicle with a new driver to take us to our destination at no extra cost. It happened exactly as he predicted. Early next day our driver informed us that the car wouldn't start but we could continue our journey in another vehicle that had miraculously appeared out of nowhere in the predawn cold.

The incident was puzzling until we discovered the reason behind it. Our first cab driver was a Buddhist from Laddakh. He didn't dare to venture into Kashmir valley for fear of his life. His replacement was a Muslim from Srinagar who stayed away from Leh. The desire to survive had prompted them to come to an arrangement through which they could still work and split fares.

The rest of our journey was uneventful save for the hair raising transit through the narrow paths of Zoji-La. We reached Srinagar safely and settled into a house boat in Nagin Lake.

I haven't been to Kashmir since. I wonder if things have changed sufficiently for the cabbies to drop their arrangement.