(no subject)
After a fabulous vacation in California, which you, Dear Reader, were more than likely present for, I made my way through the chestnutty but snow-free expanses of London, where I stopped long enough to have a couple of beers with Amedeo, and eventually wound up back in Lucknow. As I mentioned before, I was lonely without Michele, and also without a couple of other people who vanished from our house and program, but other than that, the program has been going pretty well since I got back. My Urdu, and I think everyone else's, has made a pretty radical jump in fluency in the last couple months: in December, I felt like I'd learned a bit more than I would have had I just taken a class and studied really hard; now, it's on a completely different plane. I can speak pretty much with total fluency; my reading and listening aren't quite as good, but if someone is writing or speaking pretty much standard, non-highfalutin and non-dialect Urdu, I can understand what they're saying. It's kind of cool; I haven't been this fluent in a foreign language since I spoke Spanish as a kid.
To fill the time and spend my money, I've done a couple fun things. There's a major Shia holiday called Muharram, which commemorates the martyrdom of Muhammad's grandson Hussain and his followers at Karbala; Lucknow, being a heavily Shia town, is one of the Muharram centers of India and even the world - Lucknowis even introduced the holiday to the Caribbean in the 19th century, where it's now celebrated by all religious communities. The first ten days of the forty-day holiday are the most important, and during them, Shias attend mourning ceremonies, wear black and fast, although of course not everyone does all of that. On the first day, the royal families of Lucknow used to sponsor a huge parade. It still happens, but I'm not sure who pays for it. All around Lucknow, there are dozens of imambadas, where Muharram gatherings take place, and the main two are the Bada (Big) and Chhota (Small) Imambade, which are a mile apart. People gather to watch bands, camels, and elephants take three hours to cover that distance. People are handing out milk and tea to the public, men line up to sing and beat their breasts; children in black carry banners symbolizing the battalions of Hussain's army, hanging from silver hand-shaped staffs (the five fingers represent Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, her husband 'Ali, and their sons Hassan and Hussain); and sundry other symbolic things, capped by the two tazias, models of Hasan and Hussain's tombs. The most moving part of the ceremony is the soz, or lamentation. A man hoarsely chants a marsiya poem, describing the trials of Hussain and his followers, as they were pursued for three days into the Iraqi desert, without food or water, and finally slaughtered. The listeners gather around and weep,a s you can see in this video (the man in the front right is Nawab Mir Jaffar Abdullah):
Soz (lamentation)
The other focal point is the matam, or breast-beating. Men come together in groups and sing another type of lamentation song, and hit themselves with their fists, or sometimes with chains or flails.
Matam (breast-beating)
A few weeks after the Shahi Julus, I went to a majlis, another type of gathering where people also mourn Hussain. They take place throughout the year, usually on Thursdays, when Muslims honor the dead, but Shias consider them especially important during Muharram. We thought it was at the lovely Shahnajaf Imambada, but it turned out to be in some guy's house. Our host looked and acted exactly like Anupam Kher, the jovial dad in every Bollywood movie ever, plus Bend It Like Beckham. We stood around at the beginning for a little while, drinking delicious Kashmiri chai, which is pink and fragrant and I'm not actually sure if it has tea in it. As it happened, the same guy from the Shahi Julus was singing soz, but I couldn't hear as well as I'd have liked, because a cop was industriously befriending me. Eventually we were able to sit down, just as his gut-wrenching soz was finishing, and a handsome young preacher began a sermon. I'd never heard a Muslim sermon before, and I didn't really know what to expect. The text was Abraham and Isaac, which was handy, since I was actually familiar with it, and in beautiful and easy-to-understand Urdu, with vivid Second Great Awakening-type gesticulations and rhythm, he basically argued that the point of the story was that a real sacrifice is what you give happily:
!الله نے ابرحيم كا امتحان ليا! اور وه تهے ايك سو في صد كامياب! ايك سو في صد كامياب
God gave Abraham a test, and he was 100% successful! 100% successful! [wild gesturing]
In the same way, Hussain passed God's test, was the point. He talked about that for a while, and then segued into the lesson he was trying to teach, which was basically that what God requires of Muslims is spiritual dedication, not temporal struggle: he underlined the fact that Muhammad never attacks, he only defends. So I was pleased with the moral. Then there was a procession where they carried Hussain's coffin and paraded a white horse wearing a white cloth with red paint on it, representing Hussain's bloodied horse. Really serious, impassioned matam followed, with a succession of anjumans (neighborhood groups) coming one after another and working themselves into overwhelming frenzies. By the time they really got going, they were raising their fists way up high and slamming them into their own chests with really alarming force, while singing quite moving songs. Again, my cop buddy prevented me from paying as much attention as I would have liked. That was okay, though, because we got invited to have something to eat with some of the other guests, including the Nawab and a hakim (traditional Muslim doctor) who is a pillar of the community and who had come to talk at our school a few days before. We had some really, really, really good biryani and mutton curry, and then went home.
To fill the time and spend my money, I've done a couple fun things. There's a major Shia holiday called Muharram, which commemorates the martyrdom of Muhammad's grandson Hussain and his followers at Karbala; Lucknow, being a heavily Shia town, is one of the Muharram centers of India and even the world - Lucknowis even introduced the holiday to the Caribbean in the 19th century, where it's now celebrated by all religious communities. The first ten days of the forty-day holiday are the most important, and during them, Shias attend mourning ceremonies, wear black and fast, although of course not everyone does all of that. On the first day, the royal families of Lucknow used to sponsor a huge parade. It still happens, but I'm not sure who pays for it. All around Lucknow, there are dozens of imambadas, where Muharram gatherings take place, and the main two are the Bada (Big) and Chhota (Small) Imambade, which are a mile apart. People gather to watch bands, camels, and elephants take three hours to cover that distance. People are handing out milk and tea to the public, men line up to sing and beat their breasts; children in black carry banners symbolizing the battalions of Hussain's army, hanging from silver hand-shaped staffs (the five fingers represent Muhammad, his daughter Fatima, her husband 'Ali, and their sons Hassan and Hussain); and sundry other symbolic things, capped by the two tazias, models of Hasan and Hussain's tombs. The most moving part of the ceremony is the soz, or lamentation. A man hoarsely chants a marsiya poem, describing the trials of Hussain and his followers, as they were pursued for three days into the Iraqi desert, without food or water, and finally slaughtered. The listeners gather around and weep,a s you can see in this video (the man in the front right is Nawab Mir Jaffar Abdullah):
Soz (lamentation)
The other focal point is the matam, or breast-beating. Men come together in groups and sing another type of lamentation song, and hit themselves with their fists, or sometimes with chains or flails.
Matam (breast-beating)
A few weeks after the Shahi Julus, I went to a majlis, another type of gathering where people also mourn Hussain. They take place throughout the year, usually on Thursdays, when Muslims honor the dead, but Shias consider them especially important during Muharram. We thought it was at the lovely Shahnajaf Imambada, but it turned out to be in some guy's house. Our host looked and acted exactly like Anupam Kher, the jovial dad in every Bollywood movie ever, plus Bend It Like Beckham. We stood around at the beginning for a little while, drinking delicious Kashmiri chai, which is pink and fragrant and I'm not actually sure if it has tea in it. As it happened, the same guy from the Shahi Julus was singing soz, but I couldn't hear as well as I'd have liked, because a cop was industriously befriending me. Eventually we were able to sit down, just as his gut-wrenching soz was finishing, and a handsome young preacher began a sermon. I'd never heard a Muslim sermon before, and I didn't really know what to expect. The text was Abraham and Isaac, which was handy, since I was actually familiar with it, and in beautiful and easy-to-understand Urdu, with vivid Second Great Awakening-type gesticulations and rhythm, he basically argued that the point of the story was that a real sacrifice is what you give happily:
!الله نے ابرحيم كا امتحان ليا! اور وه تهے ايك سو في صد كامياب! ايك سو في صد كامياب
God gave Abraham a test, and he was 100% successful! 100% successful! [wild gesturing]
In the same way, Hussain passed God's test, was the point. He talked about that for a while, and then segued into the lesson he was trying to teach, which was basically that what God requires of Muslims is spiritual dedication, not temporal struggle: he underlined the fact that Muhammad never attacks, he only defends. So I was pleased with the moral. Then there was a procession where they carried Hussain's coffin and paraded a white horse wearing a white cloth with red paint on it, representing Hussain's bloodied horse. Really serious, impassioned matam followed, with a succession of anjumans (neighborhood groups) coming one after another and working themselves into overwhelming frenzies. By the time they really got going, they were raising their fists way up high and slamming them into their own chests with really alarming force, while singing quite moving songs. Again, my cop buddy prevented me from paying as much attention as I would have liked. That was okay, though, because we got invited to have something to eat with some of the other guests, including the Nawab and a hakim (traditional Muslim doctor) who is a pillar of the community and who had come to talk at our school a few days before. We had some really, really, really good biryani and mutton curry, and then went home.