In America, we have weekends. The rhythm of the work week says that we work
Monday through Friday and we don’t work on Saturday and Sunday. Indians don’t have weekends. In India, you will see children going to
school six days a week. During exam
times, they will go to school every day of the week to prepare for the
exams. People who own shops go to work
every day of the week. Some workers will
work 6 days a week. Churches start late
because people need to work in the morning on Sunday and then will come in at
12 or 1 PM.
During one of the first meetings with Suresh, he asked
whether we wanted to have weekends. We
said that we did. This seemed like it
would be important for our sanity. Some
of the Harvest India staff will ask us to do something on Saturday, but then
will stop and say, “Oh wait, you have holiday.”
The staff members refer to our weekends as holidays.
I wondered how Indian workers keep their sanity without
weekends. One important thing to note:
the people I work with are very depend on their daily wages. If they don’t work, they don’t make money and
they don’t eat. Weekends wouldn’t be
helpful for that. Another note: they
have so many national holidays in India that they don’t need weekends. We’ve been here six months, but there is at
least one large festival every month.
October had Dusserah and November had Diwali.
Hindus celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, as a very
important festival to worship the goddess of weath, Lakshmi. The Hindu celebration focuses on the victory
of darkness over light. Hindus will say
special prayers and go to special services on this day. They celebrate Diwali by buying new clothing
or jewelry or automobiles on this day. In
effort to make Lakshmi feel welcomed in their home, they will light small clay
lamps and set them up outside their house.
They will also clean out their entire home and repaint it if they can
afford it. It is the beginning of the
fiscal year for financial businesses. Finally,
they will light off fireworks (also called bombs) all over town to scare away
the evil spirits. To learn more about
the celebration, please visit the Wikipedia
page.
Our team got to celebrate Diwali. Christians don’t really celebrate Diwali, but
Suresh invited us to eat a nice dinner and shoot off some fireworks for
Diwali. I had to think about why we
would be celebrating Diwali. We don’t want
to impress upon other Christians that we are acting Hindu. We also don’t want the Hindus to think that
as well. I asked Suresh why we were
celebrating Diwali. He said that every
year, people will just give him a ton of fireworks for free. He won’t waste them, so he lets his kids and
the house workers light them off. He
does it for his kids. Thinking about it,
it seems similar to Non-Christians celebrating Easter or Christmas with
gifts. If you use Diwali as an
opportunity to light off fireworks and spend time with family, then how is it
different than the Fourth of July? Anyways,
from my experiences here in India, I think that Indians will choose any
opportunity to light off fireworks.
Before we went to Suresh’s house, we checked some prices on
fireworks. Fifty Rupees (about $1)
bought a package of 10 boxes of sparklers.
Twenty Rupees (less than fifty cents) could buy a bag of 100 small
fireworks that look like mini sticks of dynamite. Fireworks are CHEAP and legal here.
When we got to Suresh’s house, there were a ton of fireworks
and bombs. Bombs are an appropriate name
because when they light off they explode and make loud noises. There were small sparklers that came in boxes
of 100. They were great, but short so
some of the arm hairs feel singed. There
were some fireworks that went into the air and exploded. There were some rolls of fireworks that were
hundreds of small stick fireworks that when lit would set off a chain reaction
of lighting up and exploding. There are
spinners that are attached to sticks similar to sparkers. There are fountain fireworks. All of these are really fun to use.
The Canadian team joined us as we lit fireworks. It was amazingly fun yet super dangerous to
American standards. Bombs were lit and
exploded a little closer than they should probably have. Fountain fireworks were lit by other fountain
fireworks. I had a close encounter one
time when I lit a fountain and it didn’t look like it lit up. The whole thing was caught on video that can
be seen here. Cory also had a problem with a fountain
firework. You could light the fountains
and then hold them as the sparks came out.
One Cory had exploded in his hand and burnt it. We put ointments on it and prayed and it was
healed within two days.
 |
| Renee, Angela, Mercy and Kacie with sparklers. |
I had so much fun lighting bombs with some Harvest India
staff and then running the opposite direction for cover laughing the entire
time. Looking around, there were scenes
of fireworks going off. There was joy on
everyone’s faces. Suresh’s wife,
Christina, looked like a little kid lighting off some of the fountain
fireworks. Suresh’s children and house
staff were so excited and having so much fun.
During it, I realized why Suresh celebrated with fireworks for his
kids. It was a wonderful time
celebrating together as one big family.
We weren’t celebrating Diwali with family, we were celebrating family
with fireworks!
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