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Carnival 2004 - Indian-ishtyle - Sunny Singh Sunny Singh was born in Varanasi. She received her education in various parts of India and the world. She has worked as a journalist, teacher, and as a management executive for multinationals in Mexico, Chile and South Africa. For the last four years, she has been writing full-time. She is also a playwright. Her first play, Birthing Athena, focussed on evolving relationships and the price of ambition in post-liberalisation India. The Times of India described the play as "an intensely cathartic experience." Her first novel, Nani's Book of Suicides, had been published by Harper Collins Publishers India. Described by the Hindustan Times as a "first novel of rare scope and power," the novel explores the cultural identity of an Indian woman through a fund of myths, family lore and contemporary reality. Her second book, Single in the City: The independent woman's handbook was released on Dec 22, 2000 by Penguin India. Visit Sunny Singh's website at: http://www.sunnysingh.net/

In Barcelona, 2004 marks the Forum, intended to showcase the city’s growing multi-ethnic, multi-cultural aspect. The Forum is also intended to promote a “dialogue between cultures.” The programme, spread over a period of four months, accordingly includes a number of concerts, art exhibitions, literary discussions, etc.

Of course, in real terms, Forum is not really about dialogues between cultures. The stark reality is that after the Barcelona 1992, the city was faced with the dilemma of keeping thousands of people employed. These were the people who had been employed for nearly a decade before, and had worked at the organisation and management of the Olympics. Not surprisingly, soon after the Olympics, the city found another excuse to keep the staff employed – The 2004 Forum.

Not surprisingly then, the Forum is really about the Catalan version of the planet’s cultures. It is also about keeping jobs within the population, and much of the city’s burgeoning immigrant (legal and illegal) population has been kept at the margins, not only in terms of organisation and employment, but also consultation and advice.

Having said that, the excitement of the Forum has spilled over to other organisations in the city as well as in the surrounding region. Every district, every local governing body wants to be part of the act. That means finding ways and means of “showcasing” world’s cultures. Of course, these parallel attempts are not only hampered by a lack of people, time and money, but also by a complete lack of communication between the local Catalan population and institutions and the “immigrant” community organisations.

The results can be unexpected, funny or disastrous. Or indeed all of the above.

One such incident occurred as part of the Carnival celebrations this past week. The city of Santa Coloma, an outlying town of Barcelona, decided to showcase “Asia” (as in China and India) for their celebrations. Santa Coloma has traditionally been an “immigrant town,” gaining the reputation back in the 1950s with the arrival of other Spaniards from the south of the peninsula. In recent years, a large immigrant community from Latin America and other parts of the world has swelled the town further. A small community from South Asia – predominantly from Pakistan, although with enough Sikh participation to warrant a small gurudwara – has also appeared in the past few years.

An “Asia” theme parade meant that the town would get their own people dressed up in Indian and Chinese clothes; create a Chinese dragon, and other “cultural” images, and march through the streets presenting “images” of Asia to the town community. And of course the town authorities were trying to call on the local communities of the two ethnicities to participate.

The Chinese, of course, reacted with an “official” response, with a contingent of people being sent in from Madrid to participate. Two regimented rows of identically dressed Chinese, holding paper umbrellas and lamps, walked before the Catalans disguised as Chinese.

The Indian community – predominantly made up of Punjabis (from both sides of the border)– was harder to organise. Our embassy is Madrid is marked by a bureaucratic laziness and stonewalling that was formerly the hallmark of Congress administrations (someone tell them that times have changed in Dilli and the rest of the country!). Not only do they not generally answer the phone, their standard response is “call back later.”

As a result, yours truly (thanks to a dear-although-potentially-soon-murdered friend) was pulled into organising the “Indian” contingent. This enterprise soon turned into a surreal saga.

We first visited the Gurudwara, spoke to the granthi and asked him to help us drum up some people. Of course, a “Punjabi” parade meant getting a bhangra dhol to accompany the contingent. A thorough search – of not only Barcelona but Spain – turned up a single answer: “The community isn’t settled enough!” So the search for the dhol was expanded to other areas.

Our search took us to the only “Hindu” temple in Barcelona: a rather closed door enterprise run by the Hare Krishnas in the seediest part of the city. We sat in the foyer while the Hare Krishnas, composed of shaved-headed white men clad in Indian clothes, decided – in a close huddle - if they wanted to talk to us. The temple was closed (although it was six thirty in the evening) to “ casual” visitors because “they” were holding a “keeer-tana.” After twenty minutes of this series of humiliation, we walked out, my Hindu pride aroused to absolute fury.

(As an aside: My new mission is to establish a proper temple in the city which can be visited by us run-of-the-mill Hindus, where my poor bhagwanji is not held prisoner by some shaved-head cult member who tells me that “Shiva is a servant of Krishna,” and where treatment meted out to the devotee is determined by their faith and not race! So any help and suggestions would be welcome. Where is the VHP when you need them?)

Continuing the “dhol” saga, we decided to order one over the internet from Southall, London, from a shop named Jas Musical, which delivered the drum with admirable efficiency. Indian net-savvy and efficiency takes on special pleasure when faced with the disorganisation and techno-phobia of the Spaniards!

The saga of course didn’t end there. We next needed a dhol-player. The word was spread and some young men rounded up to take turns playing it in the parade. Meanwhile, the Punjabis went out and did their own “research” about the Spanish phenomenon of the Carnival.

The day of the parade dawned with bitter cold and awful rain. Which of course meant that a large number of the Punjabis decided that they weren’t going to ruin their one beloved desi outfit by wearing it for some drunken revelry. Worse still, their research had turned up facts so dear to a Punjabi heart: the Carnival was a street party, with alcohol, revelry and dancing. As far as they were concerned, the parade was to be a version of a baraat, without the hassle of being polite to the bride’s family at the end of it. That of course, means absolute licence to get completely and absolutely sozzled!

So the parade started to the sound of the dhol, and a group of huge Punjabis intent on having a good time. What resulted was sheer chaos! They would stop to dance, for the boliyan, for egging each other on. Every so often, someone would break out fresh bottles of scotch. They proceeded to get completely drunk through the route. And the dancing got wilder and more exuberant.

Given that it was a community enterprise, local Punjabis would join in from the crowds lining the street, play the dhol, dance for a few minutes and then return to their jobs. Only a few Sikhs, full bearded and observant of their faith, wore turbans. The rest wore their habitual wear: jeans, boots and leather jackets! One Sikh gentleman from Jullundhar who (lives in Santa Coloma and had found us accidentally as he was taking a walk and joined us for the parade) explained to me: “Madam, they wear disguises for carnival; for us, pugree is usual wear.”

In retrospect, there is a great deal of truth in those words. The Punjabis had - unconsciously, instinctively, without articulating the thought – refused to present our traditional clothes as “ethnic costumes.” When an organiser commented on the “lack of costumes”, I told him (albeit facetiously) for our boys, wearing western clothes was disguise.

Soon, the parade organisers began to panic, specially since the contrast with the “Chinese” who followed couldn’t be more dramatic. The Chinese contingent walked in straight lines, and stopped every so often to run in tight circles with their red paper lanterns and umbrellas. Every so often, when they pulled up too close to us, some of the Punjabis would turn around and yell, “Hindi-Cheeni bhai-bhai nahin!”

Moreover, the organisers had imagined some form of Oriental fantasy, with women in gorgeous silks and jewellery walking daintily with their hands folded before them in namastes. And the men in turbans and dhols escorting them with decorum, as in some fantastic “royal” procession. Or they had expected a contingent dressed in bright colours chanting mantras (we had been brought to the township in a car that insisted on playing a trance version of “Om Nama Shivai” for the duration of our journey.)

That is probably why they had placed the Indian contingent right at the start just behind the Carnival king’s float. (Oddly enough, the Catalans who were dressed as Indians in matching clothes had been placed right at the back, in a separate section.) Which of course meant more mayhem! Midway through the parade, the Punjabis realised that the back of the Carnival king’s float provided a fabulous space for storing jackets, and more importantly, booze bottles. So the float driver was told, in basic but extremely expressive Spanish, to shut up and hold their stuff. Every so often, a foray into the decorative folds of the float would produce another bottle, much to the horror of the organisers for whom the float was practically “sacred.”

By the time the parade ended, the Punjabis were in full force: drunk, dancing and itching for a fight (which made me grateful that I hadn’t asked the granthi-sahib for a display of swordplay so typical of Punjab). All our attempts to maintain some semblance of order was futile. As one of the men pointed out quite accurately: “Madam, this is not Republic Day parade to be so serious…it is a party, so we will also bhangra..”

The “finale” was to be a three minute bhangra performance in the town square. Except the organisers goofed up royally at this crucial moment. They insisted on playing Nusrat Fateh Ali on their sound system. That meant that the sounds of the dhol was drowned out. Of course by this point, nothing could faze the Punjabis who ran up with to the beat of the dhol and proceeded to “bhangra-paale” with the exuberance that marks the best of Baisakhi celebrations.

To make things worse, the (in)-famous Punjabi fighting instinct – barely hidden in sobriety and very apparent when inebriated – had come to fore just before entering the plaza. And the discussions continued as they left the plaza. Fortunately, we weren’t quite in the gaze of the cameras anymore, and the various groups were separated by and sent off in different directions.

My friend and I were relieved when it was over…although probably less than the organisers whose cherished fantasies of the Indian as mystic, pacifist and graceful had come crashing down. For the rest of the evening, we sat in utter shocked horror, wondering if we had completely wrecked our country’s image for this poor town in Catalunya. I remembered with envy the carefully regimented uniformity that the Chinese from Madrid had presented.

But as even as I write this article, I have begun to reconsider my horror and irritation. We presented what appeared to be complete anarchy, which is in many ways what marks us as Indians who have little respect for Chinese-style authoritarianism. We had participated with no institutional support from any governmental body (Indian or Spanish), and yet the enough of the local community came together for the event.

More importantly, every member of the contingent had a great time, and enjoyed themselves thoroughly. A mark of the contagious nature of bhangra was that a number of Catalan spectators who joined in spontaneously to dance along with us. If the carnival spirit is about the spontaneous enjoyment of the festival, then the Punjabis fitted in quite well with the revelry.

At the same time, if the Carnival is about “community”, then the spontaneous nature of the Indian contingent, where young men took a quick break from their jobs to join the parade for a short while, is also in keeping with that spirit.

However, the Carnival experience has also been a lesson in the gaps in communication that arise between cultures. The Catalan organisers assumed that the Indian community would participate with a contingent that would “fit” their image of the culture. Of course, they never took into two factors:

That most Carnival participants spend a year preparing for the parade, and a couple of weeks is just not enough, especially when the community in question is so small and so recently relocated. That the understanding of a “Carnival parade” would be quite different in another culture, even when explanations were sought and received.

From our side, we failed to articulate the formality that the parade demands in Europe to our community.

Yet, as I finish this article, I am glad we participated. At least for one little town that witnessed the joy, the energy, the community spirit of our people, India will no longer be associated with the saffron-clad sadhus, mysticism, Ravi Shankar and the decadent Maharajas. The earthy nature of “Carnival-Indian-ishtyle” took care of that!

Till we connect again...

This is the fourth article in the series of 'Shorter Route to India' by Sunny Singh. To read the earlier articles by sunny Singh please visit her mezine Sunny Side"

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