Happy Pongol (or Pongal)!...and the New Year too dammit!

This was originally posted on January 14 2009. I'm moving the posting date for this blog so that it is in chronological order with my life:)


So, while this isn't my first adventure in India, this is my first posting, but this particular cultural experience was worth it.

Here in Tamil Nadu the people are currently celebrating the Harvest Festival of Pongol. This is apparently a big deal because, as the doctors at the Uma Eye Clinic (Unite For Sight's partner down here in Chennai) told me, most of India's people still work in Agriculture or recently came to the cities from the farms. This means they still celebrate the old harvest festivals.

However, for some reason the government of Tamil Nadu, the southern India state of which Chennai is the capital, decided that the Pongol festival should be, as of this year, celebrated as the Tamil New Year as well.

Soooo, what this meant for the Unite For Sight volunteers was that we had nothing to do for the next two days because all the people we'd normally treat would be at home enjoying the festival and not showing up at the eye clinic.

To make sure we didn't waste our experience in India, our UFS administrator hooked us up with a tour agency and that's when the fun started.

First we got on an Auto-Rickshaw, which is a three-wheeled motorcycle with a bench in the back and a cloth cover. It is as terrifying as it sounds and the drivers are absolutely crazy. The only thing I can think to compare them to is Egyptian Cab drivers who are actually crazier, except they're in cars and these guys in India are in cardboard boxes.

Auto-Rickshaw

But the Indian AR drivers are just as much of a pain in negotiating prices as their Egyptian brethren. Although there is one important difference. Most of the time in Egypt you could name a price and if you walked away the driver would come down to your price. In India, the guys just drive away, even when they know they are still getting a deal. To this day I have not figured that out.

Of course in Egypt we didn't even agree on a price. We just paid whatever was fair at the end of the ride and walked away. So far in India I have had one success with that method but it has not been tested to the fullest, especially since I don't know the price/distance of most places I go.

Anyway, on this particular day the AR situation was pretty straightforward. There was the normal scam but eventually we got to the Tour Agency we were looking for.

When we got there we arranged for a tour around the city for the next day, but to compensate us for the fact that we couldn't go on the tour that day, the tour guys told us they would take us to the Pongol dance festival going on right then, and they'd do it for free!

Now, that was the first indication that something fishy was going on. NO ONE does anything for free in India (except the one dude who took my Monkey picture). But we went along for the ride because we wanted to see the traditional dancing, so we headed off in the car to the Pongol festival.

When we arrived people with walkie-talkies started directing us to go places. Normally I'd object to being hearded around when trying to attend a cultural event. However, for me the hearding was the cultural event. We started to notice that everywhere we went government-types were maneuvering us in front of cameras. Eventually we shuffled onto stange and presented like an exhibition ourselves. The pictures below describe it in less than 1000 words.



This is what my friends looked like on stage. The black girl right in the middle is whose camera I'm using and the blond girl to her right whose face is hidden is another volunteer.

The man in the middle is the government guy who was directing the "foreigners" into the right position for the photo-op.


This is the mass of photographers that we were looking at from the stage.

And here are the security forces.



This is the peacock who was dancing around us.

After the photo-op was taken to prove that the government sponsored cultural event had lots of international attention, a reporter from a Delhi Radio station interviewed my friends and I.


I tried to name drop Unite For Sight so that perhaps they could get some airtime too, but I'm not sure the woman interviewing us (far left) cared. She asked what we thought of the event and we were extremely kind to it, saying it was a great way to learn about the culture. After she stopped recording I tried to ask question in a way to imply that I thought the whole thing was a farcical publicity stunt, but she either already knew that or didn't care. I hope the quotes she edits out are good...apparently they're going to make the news somewhere.

After all that madness we were shuffled around a little more to take pics with peopel cooking traditional food and what not. There were also other exhibits showing how great the Tamil Nadu ruling party was.


This is an advertisement for the Moon Mission undertaken by the Indians last year. It was posted by the Department of Education. The ruling party in Tamil Nadu is the DMK. The opposition is called the Anna DMK or AIADMK and is an off-shoot of DMK. The moon mission was launched from a state near Chennai and the DMK is most likely trying to capitalize on it's success.

A quick wikipedia search puts this all in perspective:

The current DMK-led Government of Tamil Nadu abolished the traditional Tamil calendar in February 2008 citing a so-called but disputed proclamation in 1920s by a group of so-called Atheists under leadership of Periyar E. V. Ramasamy who assembled in Madurai and adopted first day of Thai Month as first day of the Tamil Calendar. The Tamil Nadu Government has ordered the Tiruvalluvar Era as official Tamil Calendar for the state and abolished the Tamil years used for several millennia. The new year has been changed to begin with Pongal day during month of Thai^[1]. This controversial move however has no public support ^[2] and the traditional calendar that begins in April remains very much in use ^[3]. The opposition AIADMK has vowed to restore the traditional Tamil calendar when it assumes power. The present state government's move has also been challenged in court ^[4].

So the answer is, the government types are trying to sell their new calender to the people of Tamil Nadu. They don't really care if tourists learn anything about Tamil culture (some might, but certainly not all). What they want is to show that their new artificial culture has international appeal. So glad I could help.


I got Garland-ed...


But we did at least get to see a nice beach that was nearby. It actually had pretty nice waves and if I'd had a boogie board I might have been able to teach these Indians a thing or two...none of them ventured out past the shorebreak!