St. Mary’s Festival

As a celebration of the Christian Mary’s birthday, we participated with the many Indians in Bangalore city by attending a festival. We reached ¾ of the road to get the festival and had to walk because the streets were blocked off for the festival, as this goes to show how big of a festival it is. In comparison to my own experience, it would take up most of the area on Como Park in St. Paul. There was really no line that indicates the start of St. Mary’s Festival; many statues were placed all over streets as a respect and or celebration of her day. But there was a time when you noticed that you are certainly in the festival.

Many of the beggars sit in lines waiting for any donations of food or money in hopes to pass another day in India. I found that many people were very generous in their giving in quality and quantity to the beggars. In addition, there was a place designated to serving food for anyone. We walked beside this long line for food and above the line was an enormous statue of Mary dressed in a sari. This was a new sight for me because I have never seen Mary be portrayed as such an important figure in the Christian culture from experience. Mary’s beautiful sari along with crowns on her head and people waiting to touch the rock which holds her statue, reassured me of her importance and role in the Christian culture.

Well, we finally made it to a huge church where crowds of people stood and prayed inside and outside in the presence of another huge statue of Mary in the church. Not knowing what to do or where to go, I decided to just take pictures. However, in a minute, Father Emmanuel, a Christian priest who has joined our group in attending the festival after his lecture about Hinduism at Visthar, led us inside the church. As we started walking, I realized we were cutting through lines from the exit door of the church with security guards pointing us to go inside. We stopped in front of a wall sized glass where the huge statue of Mary stood with many flowers and decorations surrounding it. Behind us was a huge crowd of people in line to offer candles with flowers to a center island where workers collected them and showed them the exit door. It was like a Twin stadium full of people waiting to get their tickets. However, in this situation, the line started to form about 10 feet from the center island and behind that was just people scattered waiting to get in line. We were just standing there and taking picture in the center island clueless of what to do while people pass us to touch the glass and kiss it. At this moment, I felt really awkward because here we are, a bunch of foreign students who knows for what reason is doing inside the church staring and standing in front of the statue of Mary while who people have waited for days, months, or years to see, pray, and pay their respect in her presence in their min that they have in the church. We got the privilege like every other Americans to do most things they desire and this made me feel weird, awkward, uncomfortable, clueless, and just the plain ol’ American tourist. Although I also felt honored to be in this position, for the most part it was uncomfortable.

We left the church and outside was more people lined up to get inside. Despite the feelings of being inside the church, I was happy seeing people smiling, laughing, and enjoying their time with food, chatting with friends and family, and just being there. We dined at a Muslim restaurant afterwards. Let me just say how delicious everything was! I ate until my stomach couldn’t take anymore with rice sticky hands and a mouth yearning for water.