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INDIA
Public
Holidays
Virtually every temple in every town or village across the country
has its own festival. The biggest and most spectacular include Puri's
Rath Yatra festival in June or July, the Hemis festival in Ladakh
also held in June or July, Pushkar's camel fair in November, Kullu's
Dussehra, Madurai's three annual festivals, and of course the Kumbh
Mela, held at Allahabad, Haridwar, Nasik and Ujjain.
While mostly religious in nature, merrymaking rather than solemnity
are generally the order of the day, and onlookers are usually welcome.
Indeed, if you are lucky enough to coincide with a local festival,
it may well prove to be the highlight of your trip.
Alas, we cannot list here every festival in every village across
India, but local festivals are listed throughout the guide. We've
listed the main national and regional celebrations. Hindu, Sikh,
Buddhist and Jain festivals follow the Indian lunar calendar and
their dates therefore vary from year to year against the plain old
Gregorian calendar. Determining them more than a year in advance
is a highly complicated business best left to astrologers. Each
lunar cycle is divided into two paksa (halves): "bright"
(waxing) and "dark" (waning), each consisting of fifteen
tithis ("days" - but a tithi might begin at any time of
the solar day). The paksa start respectively with the new moon (
ama or bahula - the first day of the month) and the full moon (
purnima ). Lunar festivals, then, are observed on a given day in
the "light" or "dark" side of the month. The
lunar calendar adds a leap month every two or three years to keep
it in line with the seasons. Muslim festivals follow the Islamic
calendar , whose year is shorter and which thus loses about eleven
days per annum against the Gregorian.
You may, while in India, have the privilege of being invited to
a wedding . These are jubilant affairs with great feasting, always
scheduled on auspicious days. A Hindu bride dresses in red for the
ceremony, and marks the parting of her hair with red sindhur and
her forehead with a bindu . She wears gold or bone bangles, which
she keeps on for the rest of her married life. Although the practice
is officially illegal, large dowries often change hands. These are
usually paid by the bride's family to the groom, and can be contentious;
poor families feel obliged to save for years to get their daughters
married.
Funeral processions are private affairs, and should be left in peace.
In Hindu funerals, the body is normally carried to the cremation
site within hours of death by white-shrouded relatives (white is
the colour of mourning). The eldest son is expected to shave his
head and wear white following the death of a parent. At Varanasi
and other places, you may see cremations; such occasions should
be treated with respect, and photographs should not be taken. |
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