Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [91]
The Muslims had barely finished commemorating the birth of Muhammad before a myriad luminous snakes streaked across the sky above the Kali Grounds. Celebrated during one of the longest nights of the year, Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, marks the official arrival of winter. The illuminations were to celebrate one of the most beautiful episodes in the Ramayana, the return of the goddess Sita to the arms of her divine husband Rama after her abduction by the demon Ravana. That night in their huts, Hindu families played cards like mad, for the festival also commemorated the famous dice game in which the god Shiva won back the fortune he had lost to Parvati, his unfaithful wife. To achieve this victory, Shiva appealed to his divine colleague Vishnu, who very opportunely assumed the form of a pair of dice. Diwali was thus a homage to luck. The residents gambled with ten-, five- or one-rupee notes, or even with small coins. The poorest would gamble a banana, a handful of puffed rice or some sweets. Every alleyway had its big gambler, often it was a woman. The most compulsive was Sheela Nadar. Padmini would look on bewildered as her mother shamelessly fleeced old Prema Bai.
“It’s a good omen, my girl!” Sheela would explain after every winning hand. “The god of luck is with us. Rest assured that your marriage will be as beautiful an occasion as Diwali.”
In exactly one week’s time, on Sunday, December 2, the happy conjunction of Jupiter and the sun would transform Padmini into a princess out of A Thousand and One Nights. On that day, Jagannath, the glorious avatar of Vishnu worshipped by the Adivasis from Orissa, would bless her marriage to Dilip.
The ritual for an Adivasi marriage is as strict as any that unites high-caste Hindus. Nine days before the ceremony, Padmini and Dilip had to submit themselves to all kinds of ablutions in the homes of neighborhood families, before a meal and the presentation of gifts to equip their household. Four days later, the married women took charge of the young couple for a purification ceremony, in which they were rubbed down with castor oil and other ointments that smelled strongly of saffron and musk. Once this oiling had been completed, they proceeded to the interminable trying on of the wedding outfits made by the tailor Bassi. The cost of these outfits had been subject to keen negotiation. For a humble coolie working at the train station, marrying his daughter off meant substantial sacrifices.
Three days before the wedding, Ratna Nadar and several of his neighbors built the mandap, the platform on which the union would be celebrated. This was a dais about ten yards wide, raised about twenty inches from the ground and made out of mud coated with a smooth, dry mixture of cow dung and clay. Branches from two of India’s seven sacred trees covered the sides of the platform and in the middle, on an altar decorated with flowers, stood the image of the god Jagannath. Strings of lightbulbs provided the finishing touch to the decorations. On the evening of the ceremony, they would be lit by a generator hired for the occasion. Belram Mukkadam had chosen a prime position for the celebration. Padmini and Dilip would be married where all the community’s great events took place—on the teahouse esplanade—looking out at the tanks and pipework of the plant that represented the hope of a better life.
34
A Sunday Unlike Any Other
The dawn prayer. Every morning Bhopal awoke to the call