Human Flower Project

Dussehra: Tools of Life

On the Hindu festival Dussehra, every implement or conveyance that helps someone make a living gets recognition—a garland of marigolds.

A bicycle, honored as a part of one Mumbai citizen’s
livelihood, on the festival of Dussehra
Photo: Anil P.

We’re late for the party – and we’re also 8300 miles away. So forgive and enjoy our overdue tribute to an auspicious Hindu holiday, observed Monday, September 28th this year.

Our friend in Delhi, Lubna Kably, notified us the day-of in tactful and globally-sensitive verb tenses (in Austin, we’re some 12 hours behind): “Today was Dussehra,” wrote Lubna. “Hindus adorn their cars and other equipment with flowers and worship them. Unfortunately, don’t have photographs to share.”

Sharing the information was and is plenty, Lubna! It sent us onto the time-blind info highway, where we arrived at Anil P’s “windy skies.” Anil provides a rickshaw by rickshaw, garland by garland account of Dussehra in Mumbai.

A rickshaw, with flower garlands on Dussehra, 2008
Photo: Anil P.

“I saw a lady ensconced against the retaining wall with a basketful of marigolds, coloured a deep saffron and yellow, resting at her feet where she sat on the footpath. Even as early morning customers, folks who hadn’t got around to purchasing flowers the previous day, began trickling in she continued stitching the flowers into garlands of varying sizes, only pausing to effect a sale. Her young daughter, not older than eight, sat alongside and helped her with stitching the flowers into garlands. Sales were brisk, and before I got ready to venture out after a quick bath and prayers she had shifted from the footpath to the side of the road shaded by a tree. The Sun was gathering strength.”

After the nine day festival of the Goddess Durga, this tenth day (Dussehra) brings her ceremonial procession and immersion. She embodies the triumph of good over evil, and so this day is considered an especially beneficent one. ”The festival is actually the expression of worshiping Shakti,” writes Anil, “cosmic energy, manifested in the form of Goddess Durga, who defeated the buffalo demon, Mohishashur.” Typically, the Durga statue rides aboard the beast, laden with flowers and surrounded by her faithful devotees.

Durga victorious, rides with marigolds in Mumbai
Photo: Anil P.

Anil’s collection of photos is remarkable, and he kindly has permitted us to post a few of them here. He writes, “all implements of daily use, particularly those which help earn a living, are considered sacred and treated as such,” meaning, of course, these everyday objects are adorned with flowers. “In celebrating them as in offering prayers and decorating them on Dussera they’re elevated from being mere implements to that which sustains life. It matters little if they belong to you or not so long as you use them to earn your livelihood.”

A street sweeper’s cart, done up for Dussehra
Photo: Anil P.

What a splendid celebration of labor and all its tools. We still haven’t quite fathomed why vehicles in particular come in for such ceremonial decoration, but this is just the feature of Dussehra that Lubna points out, and Anil’s essay includes many examples, both photographic and descriptive. “To my right a motorcyclist stopped by a handcart to buy a length of garland for his motorcycle… Behind me the drummers sounded their drums, drowning the sound of garlanded vehicles plying on the road.”

Anil remembers wrapping a strand of marigolds about his bicycle handlebars years ago, and during the 2008 holiday, waiting on the platform at the station: “I watched trains pass…, delighting in the colourful garlands adorning the massive engines on the eve of Dussehra. Some trains had their windows garlanded, in effect framing passengers as they looked out the windows.”

Anil’s narrative takes us out into the street among the flower weavers and vendors, overflowing with the energies of Shakti. His account evokes the interplay between flowers and cultures of the spirit – the mystery of animation that our Human flower Project has always hoped to witness and extend.

In a twist of perspective, wonderfully strange, he views this lively scene through the “eyes” of marigolds, also: “Flowers must necessarily invest life in all that they grace,” Anil writes, “and nothing is so insignificant as to be unimportant to flowers.”

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