Chapter 7: The Festival

Ganpati came to Hogwada the way Ganpati comes to every Maharashtrian town — with noise and colour and the specific, collective, joyous disruption of a community that has been waiting eleven months for permission to be loud. The preparations started two weeks before. Kamini was on the decoration committee — naturally, because Kamini was on every committee, because committees were Kamini's natural habitat the way sugarcane fields were the habitat of Hogwada's economy.

The chai shop became headquarters. Decoration meetings at nine AM. Procurement discussions at eleven. Arguments about the pandal design at two — the specific, passionate, entirely unnecessary arguments that Indian festival committees produced with the regularity of monsoon rainfall. Should the pandal be eco-friendly this year? (Yes, said the school principal. No, said the mandal president, who had already ordered thermocol.) Should the dhol-tasha pathak play until midnight? (Yes, said everyone under thirty. No, said everyone over sixty. The compromise would be eleven PM, which would become midnight anyway because dhol-tasha pathaks did not recognise municipal noise regulations.)

Vikrant was on duty. Ganpati duty — the specific, exhausting assignment of maintaining order during a festival that was designed, by centuries of tradition, to resist order. He wore the uniform but not the regulation expression — his face had the look of a man who was simultaneously performing authority and enjoying the thing he was supposed to be controlling.

I saw him during the procession. The idol was carried through Main Road — the traditional route, past Sharma's store, past the chai shop, past the Hanuman temple where Bruno (now known to be a mother of four, still called Bruno because names in Hogwada, like potholes, were permanent) lay watching with the serene disinterest of a dog that had seen many processions and found none of them relevant to her puppies.

The dhol was loud. Not the polished loudness of Mumbai's Ganpati celebrations — the raw, percussive, chest-vibrating loudness of a small-town dhol played by Raju, the auto driver's son, who had been playing since he was nine and whose rhythm was not technically perfect but was emotionally exact. The tasha snapped. The crowd moved. The air smelled of incense and marigolds and the specific, communal sweat of a hundred people dancing in September heat.

Vikrant found me at the chai shop counter. The shop was open — Ganpati was Kulkarni's Kadak Chai's busiest day, four hundred cups sold between seven AM and ten PM, the counter a production line of ginger and cardamom and boiled milk.

"Dance?"

"I'm working."

"Your sister can handle it."

"My sister can handle a nuclear reactor. That doesn't mean I should leave."

"It means exactly that. Come. One dance. In front of the pandal. The dhol is playing Ganpati Bappa Morya and if you don't dance to Ganpati Bappa Morya in Hogwada during procession, you're technically not from here."

"I'm from here."

"Prove it."

I danced. In front of the pandal. With Vikrant. Not the choreographed dancing of Mumbai — not the audition-ready, camera-conscious, technically proficient dancing that I had learned and that had not earned me anything except a Vim commercial. Real dancing. The Maharashtrian dancing that required no skill and all heart — the arms raised, the feet stomping, the body moving to the dhol's rhythm the way bodies move when they are not performing but participating, when the movement is not for an audience but for a god and a town and a man in a uniform who had asked.

His hand found mine. During the turn — the specific, crowd-driven turn when the procession curved at Sharma's store and the density of bodies pushed everyone closer and his hand found mine and held and the holding was not romantic, not yet, it was communal, the holding of hands during a festival when the dhol was loud and the incense was thick and the town was dancing and two people who were becoming something found each other's grip in the crowd.

The procession moved on. The dhol faded. The incense thinned. But the hand stayed. Through the turn. Past the temple. Past Bruno and her puppies. Past the chai shop where Kamini was watching from the counter with an expression that said good kurta, definitely good kurta. The hand stayed until we reached the end of Main Road and the procession turned toward the lake for visarjan and Vikrant had to be a sub-inspector again and I had to be a chai-shop woman again and the hand let go.

"Thank you," he said. "For proving it."

"For proving what?"

"That you're from here."