maha shivaratree & the longest ride home ever
Original Date: February 14, 2007
When you are a student living on an island where import taxes are so high that used cars run $10,000 dollars, where the people who do have cars drive so precariously that it's unsafe to walk on the sidewalk much less bike in the street, and where nothing is ever as close as you'd think, naturally you naturally spend a lot of time in buses.
However, on good days (i.e. when you’re not being harassed by the ticket collectors of said vehicles), riding the bus in Mauritius is fascinating, both on account of what you observe inside and what you see outside.
Take for instance the red bus line. Owned and operated by a Muslim family, the red line is the only direct bus service to Curepipe, meaning that it does not have to compete with other bus companies on many of its major routes. The red bus line does not misuse its relative monopoly, however. Compared to other companies, the red buses are modern and comfortable. Nonetheless, you can’t help but feel that it is a class action law suit waiting to happen… until recently, I never spotted a female or non-Muslim working the buses. However, late last week, I took a red bus that was staffed by a woman of either Hindu or Creole origin. Who knew?!? I guess the red bus company has good legal consul....
Then there are the blue buses, run by a government corporation. Like true bureaucrats, the blue bus people are so rule-adherent it’s painful. Yesterday, a bus refused to stop for me because I flagged it 5 feet in front of its appointed bus stop, rather than at the bus stop itself. Never mind that it was stopped at a red light!
Unlike Kenya’s glorious system of matatus that provides passengers with first class entertainment while keeping their wait-times down to 2 minutes, due to the sheer number of vehicles on the road, Mauritius’s own places environmental sustainability ahead of customer convenience. Quel dommage.. So after you miss one Express bus to Port Louis (you know, because you tried flagging it down 5 feet to the left of the bus stop sign, instead of at the bus stop itself), it’ll be another 30 minutes before you find one, and by then you’ve sweat through your work clothes standing in the sun and you’re late for all you meetings.
And then there are the small contractors, which undoubtedly have the most character. Buses are colorful, airbrushed with inspirational and pithy phrases.. my favorite being “God is love”. The small bus lines connect urban Mauritius to Rural Mauritius --- geographically speaking, the Central Plateau to the South and the East, ratcheting along less traveled paths and exposing the hidden-away parts of the island.
Due to a curious change of events, I took the longest longest longest bus ride home imaginable... 3.5 hours, which up until now, I hadn't realized was possible given the island’s size.
My journey began at a garment company in Riviere du Rempart, and took me through a labyrinth of rural roads and fields of sugarcane. Sugarcane is such a constant feature of the Mauritian landscape (partout partout partout) that you'd mistake if for grass if you weren't careful... you know, the tall grass you get when your lawnmower breaks down and you don't bother to fix it for the whole summer.
It's definitive: there isn't a square foot of arable land on the Island that isn't growing sugar cane. In fact, there is such much land under sugar cane cultivation I would be surprised if the Island had as much as one farm devoted to fruit and vegetable production. It makes me wonder how I manage to get fruit so cheap here ... i.e. 3 green apples for 30 cents, mangoes for 15 cents.. bananas and oranges for mere pennies.
During hour two of my trip (well, to be precise, hour 1.5 to hour 2.5), rural landscapes were replaced by urban cityscapes. Leaving the country, we ran smack dab into the Maha Shivaratree festival, at the height of its revelry.
For those less conversant with Mauritian flavored Hinduism, Maha Shivaratree is an annual pilgrimage undertaken by Hindu devotees.. The Mauritius specific myth concerning Maha Shivaratree is that Lord Shiva was flying over the then-uninhabited island on a chariot of flowers when he accidentally tipped over a pitcher containing the Lord Ganga (of River Ganges fame), leaving a small lake in his wake. In an attempt to appease the angry aqueous god (sorry, I couldn’t resist alliteration). Lord Shiva declared lake Ganga Talo a holy site, and announced that Hindus would take up residence on the island and make annual offerings at its shores.
Every year more than 500,000 of the Island's 1.3 million citizens take part in the pilgrimage to Ganga Talo. Considering that Mauritius is just under 60% Hindu, there is almost a 90% participation rate within the community. Some Pilgrims come as far as the Eastern Coast of the Island, taking the better part of four days to make the round-trip journey to and from Ganga Talo. Others come from the Central Highlands, traveling anywhere from three to seven hours each way. Finally, children as young as five years old and persons as old as 60 also made the walk.
The Maha Shivaratree celebrations that unfurled before my window were both a visual and an aural spectacle. The roads were filled with thousands of Hindus of all ages and descriptions, wearing white and carrying floats adorned with brightly colored faux flowers and statues of Lord Shiva.
Accompanying the marching faithful were slow-moving cars with speakers mounted on their roofs and Shiva posters splayed out across their hoods, inching along as Hindi hymns boomed out of their sound systems. Also providing a soundtrack for the march was a Hindu marching band that played prayer songs and chants using a combination of Indian flutes, brass instruments and traditional Indian drums.
In addition to all of the bustle dans la rue, there was also a flutter of activity on the sidewalks and shoulders of the road... Voluntary societies flanked both sides of the street, serving food and refreshments to the pilgrims and offering them an opportunity to repose at tented resting areas, equipped with sleeping mats and red plastic chairs.
Upon reaching the Vacoas – Quatre Bornes road, snacks and beverages were being served in such plenty and abundance that the roadside was effectively transformed into a mobile buffet, with new assortments of delicacies available every few feet. Watching the passerbys delighting themselves on lassis, pakoras, bhajias, fruit and milk tea, I couldn’t help but recall the bedtime stories my dad told me during my childhood... grand grand tales where the tortoise, toujours the mischievous protagonist, gorged himself on a procession of food that suddenly materialized in the desert, a floating oasis, only to find himself stuck hand and foot to the emptied dishes, bopping along unwittingly to the Gods' dinner table.
No such calamities befell the voracious marchers, however, not even those who temporarily forgot the holy nature of their trip and discarded their spent cups and napkins on ever-heaping piles of litter. To the contrary, the voluntary societies were infected with such a spirit of gentilesse and generosity that even motorists and bus passengers left with little cups of lassi and fried goodies ...
The last hour of my never-ending trip home found me shifting from passenger to pedestrian. Stuck in Vacoas at the height of the sacred shuffle, I abandoned my bus and took to the road, walking against the Shiva floats, the marching bands, and the throngs wearing white. Yet and still, despite my blackness (or rather, non-Hinduness), my business casual and my decision to walk clear in the opposite direction of the sacred lake, I still had to refuse offers of food and beverage at least a dozen times.
My journey home from Riviere de Rempart finally ended at 6:30, 3.5 hours after it began. In the end, what I found most astounding was the fact that in spite of being comparable to Rhode Island in size, Mauritius still manages to fill me with wonder..
Alas, Om Na Maha Shivaratree...
post script:
this entry is dedicated to Salman Rushdie, for teaching me to revel in verbosity and take pride in the occasional run-on sentence...
Labels: religious festivals
