When bright yellow pumpkins appeared in the window displays in Paris as part of Halloween celebrations, some Parisian friends sighed at the Americanisation of French culture. Halloween appeared as another commercial gimmick to sell more to the most vulnerable section of our society: the children.
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So it was with much trepidation that I allowed myself to be dragged by my wife to witness the Halloween Parade while we were near New York. This was my first trip to New York and there was such a feeling of déjà vu when you come to this city. We have seen so much of New York in the Hollywood films and television that you feel you have seen it all, been there, done that.
During the day, people made a beeline in front of costume stores to purchase or rent costumes. While passing by these shops, I was amused to see a mixture of costumes of superheroes juxtaposed with fetish ones in latex.
As evening approached, we began to see the beginning of the festivities. People emerged in coloured hair and costumes, Fifth Avenue was choked with people rushing towards Sixth Avenue where the parade was to pass.
We braved the rain, waded through puddles and traversed milling crowds as we made our way as well. Suddenly, a cacophony of screams, shouts and horns made us turn our heads to see a convoy of cars. These cars were designed to be lopsided and they moved on two wheels while the other two were suspended in the air. Costumed people that included some as corpses stuck hands and feet out of the cars, screaming. There was someone dressed as Batman gliding in his trademark black car, vampire faces peered at us through the car windows as people clapped and cheered.
We squeezed into a slot between people to witness the grand parade. And what a parade it was! The air was electric with excitement. There were bands that played as people danced their way waving to us and posing for photographs. There was the group that played Michael Jackson’s Thriller as the group danced as per the original choreography. There was humour, blasphemy, politics and sexual innuendoes, all on display. So there were three women wearing normal clothes carrying placards that said ‘Nudist on strike!’, there were men dressed up as pregnant nuns, there were Bush and Obama masks with messages about their medical care, there was a float with transvestites, drag queens, Rio-style carnivals and what not. There were people dressed up as characters from horror films (those allusions were lost on us of course), then there were those dressed as fairy tale characters, Walt Disney cartoons and films stars (JFK with Marilyn Monroe). One was dressed up as a toilet cabinet! What was interesting was that people moved in their characters. They acted out fantasies and more importantly, broke taboos.
The origin of this festival lies in Celtic traditions in Ireland and was possibly to mark the end of summer harvest and await the hard winter, symbolic of death. But today, it has become a platform for expression where the lines between the sacred and the profane are blurred, where you can say anything, be anything, without fear of reprisal or censorship.
Maybe it would be nice to organise a grand parade in Ahmedabad. This would be a way to censor the censors!
The above article was published in the Ahmedabad Mirror on 07/11/2009