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The Rediff Special/ Rohini Balakrishnan Ramanathan

An American Ramlila?

Much as one wants to keep up with all the stuff that's going on in this Internet Age, it is next to impossible, although many of us have learned to do things faster and faster. This being the case, most of my subscriptions, including some of the most venerable publications, land in my recycling bin very often with only the most glaring items having been read.

The one such among many that were in the process of seeing the end of daylight was an article titled Neon Surrealism; Clothing Optional, in the E4 (Arts and Living, I think) section of the September 5 edition of The New York Times. Not even the, 'clothing optional' part of the heading grabbed my curiosity. So as I flipped through the pages skipping past this story on page 1, a photograph on page three definitely grabbed me by my collar.

It was not quite Ravana's effigy erected during Dusshera (oh, give me back the Ramlila grounds days of my childhood; as I sniff Dussehra in the air, I demand someone do this for me), yet it could have been. The accompanying story was the same, 'clothing optional' story. Gosh, no escaping this nudity story, I thought.

However, by now the effigy in the photograph had tickled my fancy, and so I went back to page one and let my curiosity get the better of me. My eyes began to do the walking. The story began, 'It was the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, and under a frigid Nevada sky about 75 men and women wearing nothing but body paint and their own bravado were cavorting on the barren lake bed here in temperatures that would make your average coyote flinch.'

Just reading this I began to shiver in the middle of a balmy autumn day. To cut a long story short, in 1986 one Larry Harvey, a San Franciscan artist, launched what he called the Burning Man Festival. His initial eight-foot tall man evolved into today's 40-foot tall neon effigy. The seven-day festival that ended on Labor Day (the first Monday of September) and on the Saturday before this is when the Burning Man gets burned to cheers of thousands of 'pilgrims.' About 28,000 this year all through word of mouth -- the best kind of publicity even in the present multi-million dollar ad campaigns age.

Why call the attendees pilgrims? It's because, as the news of the festival spread over the years, it has become a yearly pilgrimage for thousands of performers and artists as well as Internet techies, adventurous yuppies and other counterculture aficionados, many of whom, apparently, travel thousands of miles to attend. According to the author of this article, Jesse McKinley, 'flags from Sweden, Israel, Italy and Ireland billowed over the camps' at Nevada's Black Rock City's expansive naked desert property.

As I continue reading about the Burning Man (basically a neon stick figure) I become curious as to how Mr Harvey got the idea, perhaps from his exposure to the Ramlila event during Dussehra. Nope, no such clue. I'm not convinced though that it did not happen this way. So I tried to track down his whereabouts. I'm amazed that in this Internet Age when everything is within the reach of a mouse click, there is just no ready access available to this Burning Man creator. It feels a bit spooky,s like I'm chasing after some occult figure.

Eventually, I do track down not him, but the editor of their publication and dash off a question whether Mr Harvey had ever heard of Dussehra, Ramlila, the burning of Ravana, etc. A prompt and curt response comes back saying, nope, he has never heard of those things.

In an interview on the origin of this, which to an uninformed mind looks like a Pagan festival, Mr Harvey recalls a solstice celebration on Baker Beach in California, where a friend who used to light a bonfire on the beach every year, once had put three mannequins dressed up in leisure suits on a car seat and burned them. The number spooked me out. Three, the same number of effigies burnt during Ramlila, yet no direct connection between the two!

Anyway, further digging reveals that, though he and his followers are not modern day hippies, what the festival celebrates is individualism and "radical" self-expression in this modern day mass culture. They are anti-commercial, so nobody is allowed to sport any designer or brand names at the festival.

It's fantastic that Indians are told they must try to catch up to America, but it is America that seems to be playing catch up. We all know for how long we have burnt the effigies of Ravana, his brother Kumbhakarna and son Meghanatha, the burning symbolizing the triumph of good over evil. Along the way, we have taken pride in 'radical self-expression.'

A few days back, in a New York Times story about the paan habit in India, a guy whose teeth that from the reporter's description evoke comparisons to a freshly coated orange stockade fence proudly proclaims, 'I never liked white teeth.' Reading this I couldn't help but laugh out loud and think aloud, 'Wow, how "radically self-expressionistic" we Indians are!" So now in America, if it's an effigy burning today, will it be submerging giant-sized statues next, a la the Durga and Ganesh immersions?

Mr Harvey in his interviews explains how humans love rituals and this echoes thoughts that pass through my mind each time I go to the ball game, tennis game, etc. The events have a certain ritualistic air about them. Loads and loads of people traveling hundreds of miles to be a part of something that seems to take on a spiritual overtone due to the reverence that is palpable among the fans for their sports heroes who are like demi-gods to them. The events themselves are sort of a modern day secular ritual.

That highly revered American scholar and professor of comparative literature at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, Mr Joseph Campbell (1904-1987), apparently, 'once said that he sees [the American] culture remythologising itself,' but that he wasn't really sure where it was headed.

One is curious to know what Mr Harvey's Burning Man symbolizes. An in depth research of the printed interviews culled from the burningman.com's archives reveals that Mr Harvey is convinced that, in America, other than the sports events, there are very few rituals as in traditional societies, where they 'work so well,' he observes. Like let's say India. We all know how, according to a recent London School of Economics study, Indians are far happier than Americans; I also notice that some of my own friends in America who are into rituals look so much more cheerful and happier. Maybe, Mr Harvey is onto something.

Indeed, I am impressed by what Mr Harvey says about the human need for rituals because of our primal nature, how we try to invent ourselves against the backdrop of every age's new cultural challenges. Today the challenge seems to be against what feels like an atomised world of virtual communities, where face-to-face contact can quite easily be replaced by mere electronic signals. All connection seems to be only at the spirit level. True that this is the most important connection even face-to-face, but today the spirit level seems to be the only mode, and this even seems to be enough.

On another level however, the Burning Man apparently stands for anti-corporation, anti-consumerism, and anti-establishment. Interestingly enough, many of the 'pilgrims' themselves are from the commercial world. With the admission ticket costing anywhere between $ 95 to $ 250 (no sponsors, however) they all better be well heeled.

Maybe today who we are, are consumers. So is it possible that today's radical expression is to destroy this consumer, the modern invention -- not a pretty one, according to some -- of who we are, as symbolised by the Burning Man, although this act in itself may need some big bucks?

As world bodies like The World Trade Organisation and others that advocate consumerism summit at prestigious cities around the world, the radical opposition to this is also escalating as is crystal clear from the various demonstrations.

Returning to the festival theme, this is indeed the time of the year for many non-Christian festivals like the Jewish Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, the Hindu Dusshera, Diwali, etc. At the secular level, pretty much Halloween (yep, the ghosts and goblins trick or treat festival) and Thanksgiving are the only holidays coming up soon.

As more and more folks are becoming a part of the virtual community, the primitive need to stay in touch (the high tech, high touch phenomenon) may only get stronger and in a democratic society like America's, I can visualise many more Burning Men. Although the original concept as conceived by Mr Harvey was meant to be a show of anti-commercialism and address the human need for the mythical, I see a ton of commercial potential in this festival. We have our Santa, our pumpkins, our goblins, so why not burning effigies, too, or hey, why not even Ravana himself? The mythical and the commercial hand-in-hand!

So my Ramlila dream may indeed come true. Soon I can build my own personal effigy on my lawn like many now display Santa, his reindeer, pumpkins, etc, and then burn him.

The Rediff Specials

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