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With every explosion, the man with the solid open face of rural England, sitting opposite me, gripped my forearm more tightly, binding us together. His free hand alternatively fished for the beer bottle that his rigid neck would not allow his eyes to see, then formed a jerking fist, pulling on invisible reigns. He was drunk; his head was heavy and his words were slurred. The crack of every detonation and the pulse of each shockwave sliced through his inebriation, leaving him wincing with pain, eyes closed and shivering, stripping back the years to a raw and traumatic past. I leant closer, partly to hear the words he mumbled and partly to free myself. “Falklands”, he spat. “F–k, f–k, f–k. Just make them f–king stop.”
Arriving in Tanzania with the usual anticipation of the random, friends had invited me to the annual celebration of Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Light. The celebrations were to take place in the Indian quarter of Dar es Salaam, or what had been informally termed, ‘Ground Zero’. They warned me it would be chaotic and advised that safety goggles should be worn. Always open to spectacle, I had accepted the invitation with relish.
There was a clear plan to the evening. First, the girls in our party would be left at the new Holiday Inn to watch the spectacle from the roof top bar. They had been in Ground Zero the year before and had decided that once was enough. We would join them later, unless a trip to the hospital intervened. Secondly, we would purchase fireworks from a site next to the main temple, which was laughingly called ‘the ammunition dump’. (There was a dark resonance to this tag as a real army ammunition dump in the city had blown up several months before.) From there we would take food with some Indian friends, before venturing out into the streets, which, I was promised, would be full of firework-throwing revellers. The structure of the evening formed a delightful contrast to the chaos I was hoping for. Emerging from the cool climate control of our vehicle, I paused to take in my surroundings. The air was hot; daylight was fading. People gathered in small groups around lit doorways, the murmur of their conversation punctuated by the cries of excited children. We joined the scene and merged into the city.
There was no mistaking the temple; gleaming white, laced with hundreds of orange lights, it sat just back from the street in rejection of the urban detritus and humanity that pressed up against its gates. One hundred metres to the right, the tower blocks of central Dar rose into the sky, adding their lit windows and luminous signage to the scene. We went the other way, along the street and across a small patch of wasteland to a distinctive red and white two- storey building at the rear of the temple. An old askari sat at the base of a staircase, cradling his venerable shotgun while children threw bangers at one another. They balanced small rockets in empty soda bottles, unleashing thin trails of shrieking light into the night sky. Taking the red stairs two at a time, we entered the upper room and fell silent – briefly – in sheer admiration of the sight before us.
The room was perhaps fifteen metres square; tiered shelving lined the walls upon which were stacked an astounding array of fireworks. Roman candles, spinning wheels, bangers, thunder flashes, mortars, fire fountains and rockets, ranging from a few centimetres to one and a half metres in length, lay in testament to Chinese industry. One type of banger was named after Bin Laden and came complete with a bearded cartoon figure. Was this a political statement I pondered, or simple, glorious irony? Overcoming our initial silence, in our eagerness my friends and I returned to our respective childhoods amazed that not only could we buy anything we wanted, but also that it was all so cheap. The proprietor sat expressionless at a table on which lay his receipt book, a large cash box and a half drunk bottle of Fanta. His greased hair gleamed under the neon strip lighting; held between his fleshly lips, a cigarette burned down steadily. At that moment, England with all her regulations and restrictions seemed so much more than geographically distant.
Sometimes it can be hard to carry both beer bottles and bulging plastic bags full of fireworks, but with true determination we managed it. On the street, children surrounded us begging not for the normal pens or money, but for bangers. The temple guards grinned as they pushed them away. By now more vehicles ran slowly through the streets, filled with families on their way to festive congregations. Explosions were more frequent, though not enough to alarm the crew of the fire engine stationed at the junction; they relaxed on the roof of their wagon, proud in their over-sized uniforms.
Our base for the evening was the Khalsa Sports and Social Club. The bar was quiet as we arrived, so we were ushered through the darkened badminton hall up into the function room. Recently constructed from a rooftop terrace, tinted windows sat in white walls and the lighting was electric, bright and unforgiving. Plastic chairs and tables had been arranged in two lines, filling the centre of the room; at each end the blades of a lone standard fan cut slow strokes through the turgid air. The fireworks were stacked in the corner of the room. More beers were produced, the beads of cold condensation running down the shoulders of the bottles a promise of temporary relief from the oppressive humidity. Cigarettes were lit. Anyone in their right mind should have run screaming from the building, but this was Diwali, this was Dar; this was normal.
Gradually, the room filled with people, some in party clothes, others in utilitarian preparation of imminent debris. Shirts clung to backs; our skin took on a feverish sheen; the anticipation was palpable. Trays of food brought the smell of spice. Outside the crack and boom of explosions was beginning to increase in both rapidity and volume. The people in the room were being drawn toward the windows, not as voyeurs upon the scene below, but as street fighters in battles long ago or recent, Stalingrad or Basra. Our host became nervous. “Please guys” he said, his palms together in an attitude of prayer, “no throwing of fireworks before 9pm; otherwise the fireworks police will bring trouble.”
This was taken very seriously, obviously. Yet, as soon as his back was turned, the bags containing the fireworks began to fall open, as if by themselves, the contents distributed and strikers readied.
“BOOM!” The building shook. A man flattened himself against the wall. The room fell silent. Red smoke drifted in through the window. Our festivities had begun.
For the next hour, as food and beer was consumed and conversation made, just like at any other party, a battle commenced between the street and the occupants of the flats in the buildings that lined it. Mortars were set, rockets launched and bangers dropped. Offensive actions in turn necessitated a skilled defence, which centred on using the sliding windows to prevent projectiles launched from outside penetrating the room. Smoke made the air acrid; aluminium powder leant a metallic sheen to numerous arms; for some, old memories stirred. For others, still it was not enough: we were only on the periphery of the action. This was more than a cultural event to be viewed with distant, objective interest. This was a shared madness, a rejection of control; this was complete submission to the whims of chance. This was what I had hoped for.
Now the street called and I was quick to answer. Eager to penetrate the heart of this night, to expose myself fully to the risk and the rhythms of this elemental celebration, I joined my friends who would only be found where the noise was loudest and the smoke most dense.
The epicentre of the festival was one particular street corner just across the way from the temple. Here people launched rockets from hollow street bollards, laid tens of metres of burning daisy chains across the junction and detonated mortars under passing cars. The crowd ebbed and flowed like a surging tide, at once eager to see, but also reluctant to risk fully the burns of miscalculation or sheer bad luck.
By now my ears were num from the compression of repeated blast waves. Sharp cracks no longer shook me and my throat was dry; each swallow lined with a sharp edge. Only the people closest to me had identifiable features, the rest were shadows. Some darted into the road to crouch, silhouetted by the headlights of an approaching vehicle, before disappearing back into the crowd. Cars sliced through the night like sharks in murky water; some accelerating quickly to pass over a burning fuse, others cruising at a constant speed, confident – or reckless. Small children clung to their parents, faces buried in cloth, as those without vehicles but with somewhere to go hurried through the streets. Others, of the same age, but perhaps possessing a more anarchic spirit, gazed at the scene around them in fascination. All around the edges of the crowd, street kids hustled pockets and scavenged plastic bags, looking for lost fireworks, setting off bangers between the legs of the unobservant.
Time seemed to pause amid this cacophony. As each anarchic scene formed before my eyes, only to be obscured by the creation through fire of another, I soon lost any idea of how long we had been on the streets. However, our ammunition was not inexhaustible and so, after giving the last of our bangers away to the street kids and with empty bags, we returned to the Khalsa Sports and Social Club. While outside, the night sky continued to be rent by explosions and adorned by falling flames of colour, inside middle aged Indians with spreading waste lines drank beer and whisky under the gaze of four Bengali pin ups, who posed against exotic backdrops, hung on dark green walls. Behind the bar, an old mirror reflected the dull lights of low watt bulbs. Despite the maelstrom, my friends and I sat in the corner of the room and shared aa moment of quiet contentment. It had to be quiet, as by that point we were largely deaf.
Before the evening’s festivities began, in order better to understand the festival I had made a mental note to research the theology and the history of the Diwali celebrations. Sitting, sated, in the club, it was very clear to me that the essence of the festival could never found in study; it could only ever be experienced. In its inherent contradictions, Diwali perhaps reflects the essence of human nature. Fleeting beauty is created through destruction; expectation must overcome fear; catharsis is explosive. Or maybe boys just like blowing things up.
Leaving to pick up the girls at the Holiday Inn, I noticed the solid faced man propped on a high stool at the end of the bar. He was staring, blankly, benignly, at the back of a gaudily dressed woman stood beside him. For now, it seemed his demons had drowned, leaving just the bright lights and other, softer, distractions.
Copyright © 2009 Mark Gillies
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