The Faerie-Pirate Party..

For months now Little Feather has been reminding us that she's going to have her birthday in her new home in Pai. She picked this up from one seemingly innocuous dinnertime conversation from long ago but as with many random things for kids her age it just managed to sink in and scarcely a week has gone by since where she hasn't reminded us of this fact. So the day after landing in Pai she began hounding us as to the specifics of the impending birthday; What presents will I get? What flavour cake will we have? What kind of party can we have? The list goes on.. We opened up most of these questions to her and the answer's came back as 'A new bike,' 'Strawberry,' and most obviously 'a Faerie-Pirate party.'

So then there's me, having been in the country for scarcely little more than a week and still bumbling along with the simplest of things (it took me 3 trips and 4 hours searching just to track down a bath plug!) wondering how in the world we're going to organise a stinking Faerie-Pirate party!! When in steps Wild Flower, aka; Wonder Woman! In the course of ONE DAY she single handedly whips up a strawberry treasure cake, pirate ship watermelon, swashbuckling bananas, eye patches, pirate hats, hooks and a variety of facial hair (both pirate and faerie) and knocked this party outta the park! To give that even more context you have to understand that we don't even have an oven! (Look, you'll have to forgive me but I really can't pass up this moment to brag about how incredible my wife is! Seriously.. she is I.N.C.R.E.D.I.B.L.E!!) 

The thing I found the most disconcerting about the whole experience however, was just how easy it was to throw together a pretty decent pirate outfit from the clothes in my cupboard.. I might have to reassess somethings in my life or otherwise I might wake up at 50 and realise I'm walking around wearing a puffy shirt! And I don't wanna be a Pirate!

So if you weren't able to make it (don't worry, we get that it's a long drive from Australia & India & the rest of the world) then here's a little taste of what you missed out on. And even though you can't yet read this yourself, Happy Birthday my sweetest, dearest, strongest, kindest and most incredible daughter! I love you to the moon and back!!

 

My Faerie-Pirate Birthday Princess..

Chhath Puja..

We've been back in ole Banaras for a little over two weeks now and it feels like our last days living in this city are all too quickly racing away. We've been insanely busy packing up our home and selling off most of the possessions we've amassed over the years, trying to schedule in enough time do decent goodbyes with friends (which I feel we're failing at), trying to not wear out the kids with all the running around (which I feel we're failing dismally at) - and of course, trying to manage all of the above with a family who have all had the flu since arriving back in town.. It's been an exhausting couple of weeks!

But none-the-less, I'm trying to make the most of our last days here and thus trying to get the camera out as often as possible. And whilst those who know me know that mornings are not my most favourable time of the day I decided to get my sorry butt out of bed get and down to the Ghats before sunrise last week to witness Chhath Puja. 

Chhath Puja is a an ancient Hindu festival that centers around Surya (the sun god) in which participants offer puja and gifts to thank the Sun for sustaining life and to grant their wishes. Prosperity, healing, babies and other various wishes are all considered up for grabs over this four day festival in which devotional acts such as abstaining from drinking water, offering prayers at the rising and setting of the sun and prolonged standing in bodies of water are all part of package. Whilst men and women both participate in Chhat Puja, it does seem to be more of a Women's festival and with the noticeable increase of women outside of their homes it actually creates quite a different (and wonderful) atmosphere in and around this overwhelmingly man's world which is Banaras.

I hope you'll enjoy this little morsel from the feast of colour which is the Varanasi Ghats during Chaat Puja!

(And because I can't help myself I have to point out that the compression that occured when uploading these images has done some weird things with some of the colours and really brought out the vignettes. You'll have to be patient and forgive me this time round till I work out how to fix it.)

I Saw Your Nipples On The Balcony..

Our Rootop

Our first home in Banaras was the ultimate hippy pad! It was once the servant's quarters for a rich family (the landlord would swear black and blue that it was previously owned by the King of Nepal) and was just two small rooms that were built on the rooftop of a 3 story building. It was hot, dark, cramped, had no privacy, no hot water, no silence, no shower, no way to keep the dirt out, a squat toilet, you had to walk through the landlord's house to get to the front door, it was infested with rats.. ok, so essentially it was a hovel, but it was our hovel, in the city we'd spent years dreaming about living in, and we loved it. It was close to everything, overlooked an ancient religious site that was potentially thousands of years old and had one of the most amazing views of the city! And out of all the mixture of memories we have from our time living in that most wonderful of homes, one most definitely stands out above the rest; our landlord.

His name is Tiwari Ji, but we affectionately just called him "Tooza." He would love to tell you just how important he was and would remind me on an almost weekly basis that Brahmin was not just the top caste, but a Super Caste! I'd find myself half expecting him to finish that sentence by busting out a cape that he'd been hiding under his Lungi! But he and his family were a truly wonderful way to introduce us into Banarsi life and culture and the following three episodes are some of my favourite memories from those early days in Banaras that will give you a taste of the learning curve that lay before me!

Bucket Bath Bliss

 

Episode 1 - Mawiage Is Wot Bwings Us Togever

One day I was walking up the stairs to the rooftop from where we could access our house. As I reached the top I saw our landlord and his twenty-five year old son crouched down in the middle of the balcony busily working away at something that I couldn't quiet see. As I crossed the floor I saw that they were huddled over a pot plant, some scissors, a few rolls of sparkling tinsel and some tape and were busily cutting up everything into smaller bits and pieces. I awkwardly Namaste'd them and proceeded to ask what they were up to and the Son replied that it was a special day because Tulsi was getting married and they were helping her to prepare. 

In my mind, I knew that Tooza only had two sons and that one of them was already married, and also knowing that in Banaras it's not really the done thing for men to have interaction with women who aren't direct relatives, so as far as I could see there was really only one explanation.

"Oh, how exciting! Is Tulsi your cousin?" I asked.

Both men immediately stopped what they were doing. The son's jaw gaped open and he looked sideways at me with that kind of expression that makes you feel like you've just said the stupidest thing in the history of mankind. Tooza rolled his eyes and turned his back on me. The son just began to shake his head.

After standing there for what felt like an eternity with the overwhelming feeling that I had unanimously been voted the biggest fool in the country, I tried again.

"So Tulsi's not your cousin?" I asked.

"No," the son replied. "Tulsi is the pot plant."  



(If like me you needed an explanation, try here)

...Home...

Episode 2 - The Illusion Of Privacy

It was very early one morning when Wild Flower asked me if I'd pop out to a local dukan ('shop') to pick up some milk as we had run dry and our fledgling Chai addiction was demanding to be placated. The sun had crossed the horizon yet still the grey tinged darkness refused to flee and so from out of our windows the world appear glum, wet and hazy. I grabbed a bag and made my way to our front door where I sat down and leaned back against it to put my boots on.

But the very moment my back touched the door something caught my ear! In an instant I was reefed out of the illusion of privacy, and sat motionless with the knowledge that I was not alone.. and I listened. The sound was close, very close, too close. And it was repetitive; just a soft sloshing, slapping, moist sound, right near my ears. On all fours I silently turned and faced the door, my nose just inches from the wood, and knew that someone, or something, was on the other side.

Out the window above I could see the awning which overhung the front of our house by a couple of feet but nothing else, and so slowly, very slowly, I raised myself up higher and set a trajectory for the window. 

As the crown of my head reached the lower limits of the window I held my breath. I was still new to this country, still confounded daily by almost everything I saw, still aware that I had no idea what that sound was and therefore absolutely anything could have been waiting for me on the other side. 

As my eyes finally crested the window sill I peered down into the chasm below, and there he was, in all his glory; dear ole Tooza! Our elderly, bald, bushy eared landlord, sitting in the only stream of sunlight that just so happened to be falling upon our front door step, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and rubbing cooking oil all over his body. 

The soft sloshing, slapping, moist sound proceeded to eminate from our doorstep for further 25minutes.. Suffice to say our stomachs went Chai free that morning.

...Sweet Home...

Episode 3 - I Saw Your Nipples On The Balcony

It had been a busy morning in the Thundersong household as we had a big day planned at the River Ashram and Wild Flower and I had spent most of the morning hurriedly going about getting everything prepared. Some things were coming together well (ie; the pots of amazing food Wild Flower was whipping up to dish out over lunch), other things however.. not so well (ie; the sterilizing of the rubber tops of Little Feather's drink bottles which were accidently forgotten about and left in a pot of boiling water, which when the water evaporated away left the rubber to simply melt in the pot, thus filling the house with the charming and toxic aroma of charred rubber. We literally had to put the melted remains on the other side of the building just to get away from the smell!).

At some point during the flurry we put the last touches on our preparations and were finally ready to go. I put on my backpack and grabbed the large pot of food, Wild Flower hoisted Little Feather up into her sling and together we began our decent into our landlord's house which we always had to walk through whenever we wanted to enter or exit our home. Now that might sound a strange set up, and it was, but after a while you do get a tad more used to having to always walk through someone's home and when you're in a rush instead focus on how to get away with the least amount of small talk possible. But there is glaring problem here; Tooza loves small talk!

Every morning he would race to greet us and the first words out of his mouth every.single.day. would be "I heard your babu crying X number of times last night" *head wobble.* Now if you're a parent I'm sure you can imagine how joyful it makes you feel when someone says such things to you. I would occasionally find myself replying quiet sarcastically that because our daughter was in the same bed as us that we heard her crying X+1 times, but mostly I would refrain and simply return the *head wobble* and ask how his day was going.

But something different happened on this morning. As I stepped off at the bottom of the stairs he raced to greet us in his usual way but this time he did not greet us with his usual story, this time he began with a question, a question which will forever be seared in recessess of my mind! He looked past me to Wild Flower who was only a couple stairs behind and said "No milk for Babu this morning? I saw your nipples on the balcony."

My jaw hit the floor. 

My eyes grew twice their normal size.

My brain exploded. 

As I stood there too dumbstruck to say anything Wild Flower reached the base of the stairs and stood beside me. Without missing a beat she calmly and matter-of-factly replied "Oh yes, I tried to clean them in boiling water... but I burnt them."

I grabbed at the handrail to steady myself from falling.

I tried to force out words; "Did you just..?! But he said..?! How can it..?! What the..?!?!" And for a moment it seemed most plausible that I'd fallen into an alternate universe in which this scenario was so common place that people could discuss it freely whilst being completely nonchalant about it.

But then it dawned on me; Little Feather's drink bottles! The rubber tops (or 'nipples' if you will) that we'd burnt and put outside to get away from the smell..


This moment still haunts me!



We may have moved a number of times since those days back in 2011, but our first home/hovel in India and our dearest Tooza, have captured a place in our hearts and left an indelible mark on our lives which we'll never forget! ...No matter how hard I might try!

Confesticles and Wymns Rhydms..

Me & my favourite Jesus lovin' cats

So not too long ago we landed back here in Australia. We decided years back that we'd return to Oz every 2.5-3 years so that we could reconnect with family and friends and our broader Jesus loving community because we deeply value those relationships, and so that's just what we're doing. It's been an interesting re-enty in Australian life and there have been plenty of moments of reverse culture shock that I wasn't quite mentally prepared for (more about that in a later post) but one thing the Wild Flower and I were really keen to do was get away on Confest 2014!

Confest is essentially a volunteer driven festival that takes place in the bush about an hour outside of Deniliquin (only a lazy 11 hour drive from Sydney) and I'd say that in the 9 years we've been going its probably attracted a turn out of a few thousand people each year. The motto of Confest used to be something along the lines of "the gathering and sharing of ideas of what it means to be a happy and whole being" and so it relies on people voluntarily running workshops on whatever makes their heart sing the most.

 

Essentially, if you play an instrument/have a deep knowledge of something sacred/are skilled at celestial twerking (yes that really was a workshop this year!)/ etc. etc. etc. and one morning you wake up and feel like running a workshop, you make your way to the central meeting area, write it up on the workshop board and you might get nobody turning up, or you might strike gold and get five thousand people turning up.

 
I've always been excited to get away for these few days in the bush with thousands of other people who are interested in digging into the deeper things of life, of meaning and of spirituality. For those who know me, I'm pretty open about my favourite conversation topic being based around 'what do you believe about spirituality and why,' and so a festival that's designed for people to share their thoughts and beliefs on precisely this topic means a lot of the time I'm feeling like a kid in a candy shop.

 

I also feel pretty blessed by the crew that go along with year by year. In the past I've always known pretty much everyone I was going with pretty well before Confest, but this year there was bunch of amazingly wonderful cats I got to meet for the first time and had some sweet moments getting to know them and building some new relationships. Being my first time on Confest with kids meant that getting to spend as much time with people as I would have liked proved to be a more challenging experience than before, but I'll take what I can get, and what I got was certainly nothing worth complaining about.

 

Like most Confesters, our crew really loves the Confest magic and we always strive to invest our love and skills into making it a greater festival experience for everyone (and I feel I can say this without compromising because in general all of the creative energy and greatness comes from others in our crew and not from me! I just get the joy of riding on the back of some truly fantastic coattails!). Over the years we've put on parades, Jesus Easter Gatherings, bush sculpture workshops, meditation sessions, classic 80's pop rock jam sessions, acrobatic classes, Javanese inspired back lit puppetry shows, all of which have been amazing, but without a doubt one of my favourite highlights each year has got to be the Chai High Tea.

For weeks in advance we're baking treats, hoarding Chai ingredients and raiding op shops for the most garish and outrageous outfits possible. We decided this years theme was 'Oscar Wild goes to a Rave' so a bunch of us went storming throughout Confest singing and dancing and inviting people to join in the festivities which saw about 50 or more people rocking up to join in the good vibes.

 

There's always this moment at the start of the Chai High Tea (just after this blessing was offered from up on high) when the cloth covering the baked goods is pulled back and the place explodes into a cosmic free for all. With live music, platters of amazing food, pots of hot chai and a forest full of crazy shenanigans, really, how could it be anything less than amazing?

One especially great element is thats everyone's "welcome at the Chai High Tea, where the Chai is hot and the love is free!" Even if you're a dirty feral, or a high flying corporate, we don't mind, bring in the lame, bring in the blind, even bring in this sleazy bearded homeless lady on her way from a Phd graduation ceremony, everyone's welcome!

And if you ever get a chance, you should most definitely do what we did and get yourself into the same space as these fine creatures in the above image! We've known these cats for more than a decade now and suffice to say they're some of our favourite people on this green planet! Reverend Rainbird, Lady Wildwood and their lil ones live (& kind of run?!) the Homelands community up in Bellingen on the midnorth coast of NSW so if you're WWOOFing or looking for an amazing place in Oz to be, these are most assuredly the people for you!

A friend I was talking to about Confest yesterday was asking me a bunch of questions about my time and we had a great moment when he looked me in the eye and said "Let me get this straight, you spent 5 days at a Clothes Optional Hippy Festival in the middle of the bush and you don't have any crazy stories to tell?!" And I think that's kinda true (Banaras what have you done to me?!?). I had an amazing time and feel greatly encouraged, but "crazy" stories, not so much this time round. Upon reflection, I guess naked bike riders, dog whisperers, tantric energetics, polyamorous communities and packs of naked mud people running around pretending to be cavemen have all become a more normal feature in my life than I first realised.

 
It was however, very sweet wandering around and running into people we hadn't seen in a number of years, especially when those relationships felt like they just picked up exactly where they had left off. We first went on Confest in 2004 and have gone every year since (except for 2012-13 when we were overseas), and so you make a lot of "Confest friends" who because they live in Melbourne of somewhere outside of Sydney, you really only connect each year when you're back on site, but it is interesting how much Wild Flower and I value some of those relationships, even if we only spend a very small percentage of time together each year! We even got to catch up with a good friend we met in Varanasi!

 

We begin each morning at our campsite with a time of connection. It's such a beautiful way to begin each day; praying together, meditating on the Scriptures, someone sharing a reflection or teaching, speaking the love of Jesus into each others lives and getting into plenty of great music and singing.

I had two gorgeous moments during our morning times of devotion this year; the first was playing along to some Yeshu Bhajans (Jesus Devotion Music in Hindi) with Wild Flower who played her harmonium in front of other people for the very first time. I've played with countless people, countless times throughout my life, but sitting side by side with my gorgeous wife, our backs warming in the morning sun, singing and making music together, aaah, it'll be a sweet memory I'll hold with me for a long time to come. The other was sharing a Bluegrass song I wrote last year and hearing it sung by a group of people for the first time. Around eighteen months back I was going through a real Bluegrass Gospel phase and set myself a goal of writing a song in the genre, so to then have 25 people all stomping their feet and belting out a tune I'd written was a pretty surreal moment.

Prayers, Scriptures, Devotional Songs, This Crowd = Bliss.

Lastly, I have a small confession to make. I have a guilty pleasure that I indulge each year after Confest. On the trip home, it's not unusual need to stop for petrol in the first could of hours after leaving the site and it's par for the course that many Petrol stations will be adjacent to a McDonalds. Now in general I don't eat McDonalds (I think I went 15 years without touching the stuff) and I don't crave eating it while driving home from Confest, but I do LOVE trying to make eye contact with other dirty footed confesters while they're sheepishly running to their cars with bags full of maccas. I think people must feel like they're committing the ultimate betrayal; 4 days of mostly organic, vegetarian, local grown foods at a Hippy Festival, followed swiftly by Micky Dees! Truthfully I really don't mind what people eat, but the look of horror on people's faces when they see they've been caught out with a mouth full of cheeseburger is just too priceless to pass up! So if you're one of those people I've seen over the years then I must convey a giant thank you for making my drive home just that much more enjoyable!

More realistic..

So finally, if you find yourself wandering around Bliss or Tranquility one day and you come across this campsite, make sure you stop in and enjoy the hospitality of some of the finest & furriest Jesus lovin' folk this side of the Jordan.. he's the cat on the right.

Lolark Sasthi..

In these last months the Festival Season has kicked off here in India. I've turned up to university more than once only to find my building all chained up and a bunch of young guys laughing at the hairy foreigner who didn't know it would be closed because of Festival X, Y or Z. Just this month we've had Navratri (a 9 day festival to celebrate Hinduism's Mother goddess in her various manifestations), Durga Puja (which celebrates Hinduism's warrior goddess Durga by filling the city with hand crafted statues of her likeness, and once the rituals are completed the statues are paraded through the city to the Gunga where they're thrown into the river), Dussehra (the 10th day of Navaratri which celebrates Rama's defeat of Ravana, the demon king from Sri Lanka) and in a couple of weeks it'll be my favourite; Divali (which is meant to represent either the killing of a demon fella by a couple of Hindu gods or in other traditions when some different Hindu gods returned from their exile; I've heard conflicting stories), but in reality, it's a wonderful excuse for everyone to load up on fireworks and go to war with one another! It's terrifyingly amazing!

But these photos here are from a different festival, a local one that took place last month known as the Lolark Sasthi. It's an amazingly colourful festival that occurs right outside our old house here in Banaras. The Kund ('Well' - 'Sacred Body of Water') is an Ancient Well that was quite literally below our bedroom window and we used to get the most amazing views of the various Pujas ('rituals') that took place there as we peered straight down into it. And whilst everyday something small would take place, it was the once a year blow-out festival that would literally attracts thousands upon thousands of men and women to bath in the waters and make access to our front door a complete nightmare.

My understanding of it's meaning is that on a certain day of the year when the sun reaches a certain point in the sky it shines directly into the Kund, creating a particularly auspicious moment. By bathing in the waters on this day and offering certain fruits and vegetables to the sun god Lolark Aditya, the pilgrim hopes to attract his favour and thus fall pregnant (with a male child). I'll admit that it's that bracketed part of the last sentence which irks me the most! India's Dowry system means that often Daughters are despised as they represent to the parents a significant financial expense whilst at the same time Sons are greatly prised for they represent to the parents a new Goat, block of land or a foreign BMW when it comes time for their son to marry.

The view from our old Bedroom window

But putting that to the side, one thing is for certain; the Lolark Sasthi is a colour feast for the eyes! After taking your dip in the waters, pilgrims remove their old clothes and leave them on the steps, walking away dressed in brand new outfits. It doesn't take more than a few hours before the entire area is covered in layers upon layers of brightly coloured sopping wet Saris and the water is full of various Melons and Loki (a phallic vegetable if ever there was) which the Pilgrims will abstain from eating until they birth a Son.

Having myself gone through many years of struggling to conceive a child with my wife, my heart breaks for many of the Men and Women I see descending those steps with that look of pained hope in their eyes as they seek to win the favour of a Sun god who is largely ambivalent towards them. I do pray for them to my God; the Son of God, that in His great love for them he would open the wombs of many of these sweet women who feel the shame of not being able to bare children at all. I pray that these families would be blessed with children (boys AND girls) who they would adore, love and cherish and who would grow up to be Men and Women that would radically change this cultures perception of the worth of girls from a curse to a blessing. And in amongst all this beauty and colour, it is nice to imagine what a place this could be!