Festivals
Ganesh Chaturthi ends with a city carrying its idols into the water
A ten-day festival built around household and neighbourhood images concludes in immersion processions that…
· 3 min read
Festivals
When a place changes completely for a week, and whether to be there for it.
20 articles · page 2 of 2
Festivals
A Kerala temple festival is a percussion event before it is anything else
The great poorams are built around drum ensembles performing for hours in the open air, and the elephants…
· 3 min read
Festivals
An urs is a death anniversary observed as a wedding
The annual commemorations at Sufi shrines mark the saint’s union with the divine rather than a bereavement…
· 3 min read
Festivals
Ramlila is weeks of street theatre that end in ten minutes of fire
The north Indian enactment of the Ramayana runs in nightly instalments across a town, performed largely by…
· 4 min read
Festivals
In theyyam the performer stops representing the deity and becomes it
The ritual performances of north Kerala are not a dance about a god but an occasion on which the god is…
· 3 min read
Festivals
A masked dance at a Himalayan monastery is liturgy, not a show
The cham performances held at Buddhist monasteries across the Indian Himalaya are ritual acts with a…
· 3 min read
Festivals
The same nine nights are danced in Gujarat and watched in Bengal
Navratri and the autumn Durga festival occupy the same dates in the calendar, and one of them is built…
· 3 min read
Festivals
A snake boat race is a village institution that happens to be a sport
The long rowing boats of the Kerala backwaters are owned and crewed by communities rather than by clubs…
· 3 min read