A Crazy Diwali in Winter

 This article first appeared in the now discontinued monthly Himachal Guardian issue of January 1994. The author is grateful to Dr. Subhash Sharma (prof. of Fisheries, HP Agricultural University, Palampur) for giving his kind permission to re-print this article in this blog. A few corrections and additions have been made here and there. The original article didn’t have any drawing by the author as he had his right arm in plaster and a sling at the time. (It was typed out with one finger of the left hand, if you want to know). The line drawing was made by his cousin based on verbal descriptions.

Kullu’s Topsy Turvy Diwali in Winter

A festival dating to the hoary pre-Vaishnavite past is held in certain villages of Kullu district. It does not seem to have a definite date, as every village has its own time fixed for the festivities, which may also differ in matter of details barring the main theme. This ‘Diwali’ has nothing to do with the victory of Lord Rama; rather, (according to my late Nana Pt. Chandrashekhar) it is dedicated to the Yakshas, or lesser gods who are said to have baser tastes. It is to gratify the ‘base’ tastes of the Yakshas and Yakshis that things seemingly go topsy turvy on this day.

In January 1989, I had the opportunity to witness the elaborate celebrations of the ‘Maghi Diwali’ of the village Bhrain. This village is a steep climb above Bhuntar, and a little below the Bijli Mahadev top. The really serious climbing starts after you pass through village Jia, at the foot of the Bijli Mahadev mountain.

The Bijli Mahadev mountain as seen from Bhuntar.
Village Bhrain is on the flattish shelf on the right of the mountain

As the name implies, the big day is in the beginning of the month of Magh, just a day after Lohri. My friend and I were the guests of Shri Shiv Lal, who is a resident of Bhrain.

Night had fallen and there was snow all round, which a couple of sunny days had set ice-hard. Every family had the male members around blazing fires in their homes, where one window was left open. Chilly winds blew into the room through the small window and we huddled closer to the fire. A stick of dhoop smoked in the window. There was no chit-chat, and no liquor - only glasses and glasses of tea. Everyone had an eye and ear cocked towards the window. Outside, in the still winter night, a person, in the role of Master of Ceremonies, was to give a loud call at three different times through the night. We all had to be alert enough to hear all three of them. The last call was the signal to start the celebrations, and nobody knew beforehand just when he might call. From past experience one had an idea that the last call would be about 5.00 a.m., just before dawn.

The long wait through the night was quite interesting. The night, the village, had pin-drop silence. The first call came at about 10.30 p.m. There were sighs of relief, “A good thing that this year we have someone with a loud voice.” “Yes, the fellow last year twittered like a bird.” In the knowledge that the next call would not be just yet, there was a little bit of banter. An old gentleman, the family head, told of the evil that had befallen those who missed out on the last call, and the good fortune of various persons who had got all of the festival right.

After about an hour the tension again gradually built up. Twelve... One-thirty… Two... No call; anxiety. Did we miss it? I shuffled uncomfortably and invited annoyed glares – the rustling of my clothes seemed audible a mile off! At 4.30, a thin wail. The room suddenly came to life. Boots were pulled on and a ‘gachi’ (a pattoo tied tightly around the waist) donned by the three men who were to represent this household in the ceremonies. As it was nearing dawn, the last call was due anytime. Three large torches, comprising thin strips of pine-wood tightly bound into a mashaal about a metre and a half long, were taken down from the rafters, where they had been drying in the heat of the fire below. Each man took his torch and held its end close to the fire. The idle ones, like me, cleared out of the way to the door and got the fire blazing and crackling merrily. Now, the tension in the air seemed as real as an electric charge. We all sat, rigid in attention, listening for the last call.

The sticks in the torches, held close to the fire, boiled and bubbled resin, all set to light up at the touch of a flame. The fire crackled so merrily, in fact, that I missed the last call –  suddenly the three men lit up their torches from the fire and were out of the door in a jiffy.

The rest of us struggled into our boots outside the room and followed them to the designated spot in a field. The pile of wood laid there for a bonfire was already surrounded by a ring of some thirty or so torch-bearers. The light from so many torches reflected in an orange glow from the snow underfoot, while the smoke shone a dull red in the otherwise pitch darkness. At a signal from the same person who had been calling through the night, all the torches were hurled at the wood-pile. This immediately blazed up into a roaring bonfire.

This was the sign to start the day’s festivities. Some went home to get a bite to eat while the tipplers produced their bottles of hooch and set to. Tired after the nightlong vigil, I tried to snatch a few winks of sleep in my host’s house, but a small group of drinkers were already there, all displaying the effects of alcohol on an empty stomach. They were reeling off bawdy songs in the Kullvi dialect with the intensity of worshippers singing psalms. After all, today was the great day when the Yaksha gods would be pleased by vulgar songs, and dances so rough that fractured bones are not uncommon. Dawn had broken by now and the village was bathed in blessedly warm sunshine out of a clear blue sky. Thousands of feet below us the small town of Bhunter, with its airfield, was still deep in the shadows. Small bonfires had come up in a couple of the wider threshing floors in the village. The drummers and a couple of shehnai players had assembled near one fire and were beating out music for a slow nati dance.

Or rather, the dance started as a nati, with the men linked together in the usual fashion in a chain, with slow, stately footwork. But the song being sung by them was special for this day: it was full of vulgarities with sexual overtones A stranger might be a bit startled to see an old man with only two teeth in his head, arms linked with a youth who may well be his grandson, belting out the vulgar chorus with fervour. Suddenly, the nati beat ceased, the drums gave a few warning taps. This was a signal for the physically unfit and the squeamish to fall out.

The remaining dancers formed a ring in the threshing floor and caught each other tightly by the waist-band or gachi. The musicians and bonfire were in the ring’s centre. The drums now started up in a beat fast enough to rival any disco. The dancers vigorously whirled anti-clockwise around the floor in time with the beat. The leading dancer, a man in his fifties, rapped out a line rich in the pahari equivalents of four-lettered words. The answering chorus was “Hi! Ho!” yelled at full volume. Each dancer had his neighbour on either side gripped strongly by the gachi. This was to serve a twofold purpose: to keep his own balance and to try and throw down either of his companions. As the dance picked up tempo, all thought of singing was abandoned and the cheer leader only shouted “Hi-ho”, the chorus responding with a similar cry.

The hi-ho dance, as drawn by Cousin Parag.
Actually the musicians were in the centre, near the fire.

The ring of dancers now took on folds and a confused shape all over the floor. The hard-packed snow ensured a fair number of spills. All of a sudden, the drums would cease and the dancers would jerk to a halt. Most of the clumsy ones would take a fall just then. One fellow, to my horror, flew out of the line and went skidding and spinning over the snow towards the drummers. They seemed quite used to this sort of mishap and neatly side-stepped, and he plunged straight into the bonfire. All the others were most amused. His thick woollen clothing saved him from any injury more serious than frizzled hair, a slight burn on his leg and a bruised ego.

At mid-morning, two races were held. The runners were to run right across the village to the sacred spot in the field. The dancers etc. had moved out of the dance floor and the runners waited there expectantly. A priest and a couple of others collected on the slate roof of the house above, and performed some rituals. Then they threw down a shower of small tufts of dried grass. There was a mad scramble to grab one tuft and run. Anyone who did not have such a tuft at the end of the race was automatically disqualified; it meant that he had either not run the full course from start to finish, or had started prematurely. This apart, the race had no rules.

The evil thorns of Bhekhal bushes (Prinsepia utilis) were no deterrent

Rocky boundary walls, slippery paths, Bhekhal thorn bushes, and a race where pushing, shoving, tripping, short cuts are all allowed, ensure that this too claims its share of casualties. There is a great desire to come first; a belief that the winner will be blessed (feminists, please note) with a second wife or a son, acts as a strong incentive. The winners of the two races are selected for the honour of carrying the ‘god’ of the day on their shoulders.

But first, the two winners were made to run, chased by the disgruntled mob of runners-up. Some gave up in mid-chase and contented themselves by hooting and pelting them with snowballs and sods of earth. The two persons who caught them were selected to help them in bearing the ‘god’.

The ‘god’ for the day is a Harijan who has been selected beforehand. He is given a ceremonial bath and a completely new outfit of traditional Kullu dress. After a lot of elaborate ritual, he is taken in a comic procession by his bearers on a pole, somewhat in the manner of a yankee lynch mob carrying a felon on a rail, after tarring and feathering! In the front are the musicians, then the ‘god’ riding his pole (normally used for pounding rice). The retinue follows behind. The ‘god’ yells abuse from his precarious perch, and the retrain is taken up, sing-song fashion, by the grinning followers. Next, takes place another bout of the “ hi-ho” dance, but on a larger scale. Now the ‘god’ also takes part, but great care s taken to place the surest- footed and strongest dancers on either side of him. Even while everyone tries his best (worst?) to throw down his neighbour, under no circumstances is the ‘god’ to fall down, lest an un-named calamity befall the entire village.

This festival - and others similar to it in other villages - is not mentioned in tourist brochures. In fact most of the settlers in the valley below have not even heard of it, and the villagers would rather prefer it that way. This is partly because outsiders are apt to look down their austere, ‘civilized’ noses at such ritualised vulgarity. A few, who have heard vague rurnours of these celebrations, wrongly think them to be orgies of some kind.

No two versions that I have heard regarding the origins of those ‘diwalis’ are alike. One old man was candid enough to admit that he had no idea why this festival was held, but that it had always been held in exactly the same way as far as he could remember come storm, snow, famine, or even death in the family.

Note added in January 2014: According to late Mahant Keshav Gir of the Jia math, this festival dated from the old times when the local rulers could be unpredictable tyrants. Villagers used this festival as an excuse to air their grievances (“Just joking, Maharaj!”). Contemporary newspapers have started mentioning these “Diyalis” held in various parts of the district. Their explanation – the abuse and vulgarity is for chasing away evil spirits. This seems a facile reason. Every village has it’s own god; virtually every mountain peak or water spring is watched over by a Dev or Devi; besides they are lurking all over the forests. These gods would be extremely remiss if any evil spirit ever got through to the villages. The only evil spirits I ever saw were the home-brewed, bottled kind. An outsider might remark on the strange absence of women in the festivities. Kullu women, as a rule, don’t put up with much nonsense from their menfolk. But on this day they mainly stay indoors and let the men have a good time. The rest of the year the "Kulu woman rules her man”. (Not my words; they’re in the Kangra District Gazetteer of 1917, CMG Press, Lahore).

A ‘Festival of fools’, probably dating from pre-Christian times, used to be held in France and other parts of Europe, which was remarkably similar in a great many respects to this ‘diwali’. Even the dance, judging by a contemporary illustration, was uncannily similar. Such celebrations were firmly stamped out by the medieval Church under pain of death. Let us see how long they survive the reformers here. After all, the participants agreed that even if they did not know the origins, the festival was great fun and was as good a way as any to let down their hair, after the cold winter months.