Festivals are essential drivers for social life

The second day of Edogawa ward festival at Komatsugawa park had some new and exciting shows. The dancers were more professional and their movements were eye catching. There were professional drummers brought to perform at Komatsugawa stage. They took the audience to a highest level of enjoyment.

The social gathering found a new phase when the local Indian community got mixed with the Japanese people in stage performances also. Indian girls performed classical dances and the performance of Bharatanatyam, a form of classical South Indian dance by an Indian girl got wide appreciation from Japanese community. Interestingly the dance performer’s teacher is a Japanese national.

Japanese students also have shown their dance skills for the second day of the festival. The food stalls were crowded. Kimono dress stall also attracted many people.

During one of my trip back to India, I could meet Ms Nakamura from Tokyo, who teachers Indian dance to Indian and Japanese students. She is a well known dance performer in Kummi dance, which is a dance form being performed in Tamilnadu, one of the south Indian states. It was a new experience to hear from a Japanese about classical dances of India.

At the end of the stage performances, the Japanese classical dance was performed. The old woman performer showed her skills at the stage and dancers came down to the ground to join with the public. The public also joined with the dancers and they made a circle, moving slowly with a dance steps around a tree. It was a perfect example of cultural fusion point. People from different nationalities, most of them from India, joined in the traditional Japanese dance.

It was 9 O’ clock in the night and still the music was in the air compelling people to dance with the steps shown by the elder performer at the stage. People were not tired even after making several round around the tree with dancing steps. Departing seemed painful for many people.

The next day, while going to office I could see some people still sitting around the stage and park as if they did not like to go back. This is the gloomy part of any festival. The festival and celebrations will be over, but still people carry the memories with them.

The good moments they shared in the social gathering and celebration linger in the mind. That is one of the purposes of festivals. The sweet memories tempt people to organize and join for festival in the coming years too. This is what we also do, waiting for the next year’s festival. Such small hopes are the bigger motivations for life – essential drivers of social life.

Walking on the road as a foreigner in Japan

Though not common, I have experience of getting surrounded by kids two times so far. Yesterday was the second of such incident happened. The first incident was on July 2008. I thought of sharing this experience here as it was an interesting experience.

Those kids must be below the age of 7. I was walking on a lonely road at Kiba that lead to the Tozai line railway station. On the way back to home is the time when thoughts of the past try to prevail on the routine work related stress. I found this revisiting childhood days effective to control day to day negative experiences if any, by refreshment.

A tree with deep roots may withstand a heavy storm. It is always the tree that do not have deep roots deracinate in storm. Travelling through forgotten roots rejuvenate and makes them adept to survive tempests.

Yesterday there were 4 kids trying to walk up with my speed of walking, all of them in a celebrating mood as if they have found a new creature from another planet! Those Japanese kids were almost dancing around me. I could hear some words like “Kono hito…” and somewhere in between a sound similar to “gaikokujin”. In total I understood that they were happy to see a foreigner on the street.

Hey, that will be interesting! I should not shout at them to go away like we do to dogs. They are kids and won’t do any harm. This situation might have turned little bit embarrassing to me had it been happened in a crowded place. The road was almost empty but I could see two Japanese women back to the kids when looked back. They were calling the kids, probably to stop running behind me. One of the women ran to catch the kids. When she reached near to me, she said sorry for all the things happened.

She got two kids at her hand but one of them was interested to touch me! She again told so many excuses in Japanese and was almost like getting angry towards the kids for their play. I tried to convey her in my broken Japanese not to scold the kids. It is quite natural for kids to get excitement by seeing a foreigner. I looked different to them from other people whom they daily see. Even though Asians, Indians have different physical figure from East Asians.

I could enjoy the excitement of Japanese kids on the road. Walking away towards the station by saying sayonara to the kids, I was thinking similar scenes when along with my younger brother I walked behind the ISCON group when they camped at a temple in the village near to our home. We saw many white skin people and got excited to talk with them. We did not know what to talk. We guessed they were from America. ISCON were getting a kind of popularity at that time. My brother and I targeted a white man, who showed interest in us with a smiling face when we walked near to him.

When the ISCON group camped near the temple, we approached him but feared to talk with him. He called us near to him and asked our name and about our school. He was surprised to see us replying in English to his queries, because English is not our mother tongue, but still student in villages in India could manage to talk in his language. He gave us sweets from his bag.

We were very thrilled by talking to that American man. Is it not that same kind of feeling yesterday those Japanese kids experienced? Astonishment in seeing somebody different from them, touching a foreigner, talking with a foreigner…….for kids and why even for many of the adults these are kind of different experiences.

And that is what the life is: a collection of different experiences here and there in a chain of repetitive similar experiences.