worship

I went to church twice—to the Methodist in the morning and to the Catholic Cathedral at around 5pm. The supervisors are rather cautious about allowing us to leave the hotel without a chaperone, and while I am indeed full of Christian zeal, I expect I would have done something else in the evening if I’d had more options. And I probably would have missed out. Although the homily was typically difficult to hear, the ritual was moving. The hymns were sang mainly by the two women who also played the organ (and maybe another instrument) and, they used the same otherworldly, very high and tremulous voices that I’d heard at pagwah the night before. And as they started singing the first hymn the wind picked up to rustle the flags and the fluorescent lights came on to add both light and a low, buzzing hum.
And Pagwah the night before—this is a Hindu holiday and took place at a temple. From what I heard, the Pagwah events started with a religious ceremony and ended with the variety show that we watched. A band sang what seemed to be pop songs, using mainly what I would call “Indian” instruments plus a keyboard and conga drums. The band’s performances alternated with performances by a group of very energetic dancers who danced to Indian disco music.