My past experiences in Madurai have been mostly with upper-middle class and higher caste host families. This is a self-selecting group of people who have chosen to open their homes to foreigners, allowing Americans to be part of an Indian family to the greatest extent possible. But now I'm living in a different community, and I'm being treated like a community member, not a child. It's different, to say the least, and sometimes access is more difficult. Not surprisingly, individuals who are more used to foreigners are going to be more likely to throw open their doors to them.
Just this past week, I went with some of the neighbor ladies to several houses to look at the golu displays. Golu is a display of dolls done at Navaratri. But it's almost always higher caste families with financial means who are able to put on these displays as they require a lot of money and leisure time to put on. A golu display is expensive not just because of the dolls involved, but because you are also expected to give the women in attendance free things like sari blouse material, flowers, sundal (a kind of dal), and things like small puja and food vessels. During Navaratiri people like me and my neighbors roam the Brahmin neighborhoods looking to score some booty at their golu displays. It's fun and the free stuff is nice. After leaving the golu, women compare all the families, pointing out whose doll displays were better and who is a miser and who isn't, etc. Golu is actually a very nice way of redistributing wealth and everyone knows this. It's probably the only social and religious occasion that you will find Dalits visiting and eating in Brahmin and other higher caste homes. There were some interesting interactions that took place, particularly when higher caste guests unexpectedly stumbled in upon our rather rambuctious party from Meenambalpuram. But the families who put on the golu hosted us very generously. And hopefully this wasn't just because a white girl was there.
Despite being excluded from some of the Ayudha pujas on Saturday night, I did manage to impose myself on the Ayudha Puja going on at the cycle shop next door. They also "forgot" to let me know that it started at 10pm, but I stalked them until it started. I wasn't invited to stand up top, inside the shop, where the innocuous children were, but I did get a good view from the bottom. They tolerated my presence at least. Then later in the evening they sent their children over with a big bag of prasad for me. An unexpected and very nice gesture, certain to effectively buy off any bad drishti on my part. Ironically, once I got home Chellapandi told me that I was the one who got the evil eye at the puja, because people were watching to see how the white girl prays, etc.. So she rotated some camphor around my head three times, had me spit on it, and then she burned it in front of the house. While we were doing puja at the cycle shop, the neighbor had secretly rotated some burning camphor around his cycle rickshaw to remove his own post-Ayudha puja drishti and then locked himself up in his house before anyone noticed. I was also advised by a friend to take the drishti lemon from our own Saraswati puja that evening and (secretly, in the middle of the night) throw half of it over the back of the house from the roof and the other half in the three point intersection. Lots of "secret" stuff going on that isn't the least bit secret. In such a close knit community people try to be secret about evil eye prophylaxes because it's basically like openly accusing your neighbors of being envious/destructive.
Speaking of neighbors being destructive, I think I committed a faux pas on Sunday. I was hanging out with the neighbors when I somehow, like a good American, ended up complimenting a neighbor's kids for lack of anything else better to say. Well, that was a stupid idea. She told me, with her son standing right there, that he is a complete imbecile who cannot read or write a single word of English or Tamil. He just stood there expressionless and I really had no idea what to say. This was clearly an evil eye prophylactic behavior because according to all available data this boy seems to be quite smart. I clearly made an error, because even the neighbor's aunt who was sitting there was astounded at the extent to which her niece went to slam her own son. I felt pretty helpless then. I might know how to say speak, but it doesn't mean I always know how to speak appropriately. Americans are expected to compliment other folks kids, but that's not the case here. At least you don't compliment them verbally. There really isn't a country on Earth where they love kids more than in India, so you really are expected to be completely taken by kids -- just so long as you don't say so. You are expected to coddle them, pat them, hold their hands, make the same funny sounds people make to their bullocks, carry them around, and basically fawn over them and engage in all sorts of other doting behaviors that don't come naturally to me but do to seemingly everyone else in India. But don't say the kids are smart or cute or you are going to seriously offend someone like I did.
Navaratri is a time for prayer, reflection,
and wracking up plenty of free sari blouses.
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