Christmas in India has changed rather India has changed and it reflects in everything this time of the year. Street vendors sell red caps with faux fur linings at intersections, Father Christmas masks that look deceptively like Santa Singh are everywhere. Right next to my local vegetable seller an enterprising young man is selling chinese made fake Xmas trees and he seems to be doing brisk business. The local Indian shop/restaurant that sells the usual array of Bengali sweets and suchlike has set up extra tables near the counter with fruitcakes, plum cakes and an assortment of "western sweets".
Young Indian parents, who as kids had read storybooks with Santa Claus, stocking, and snow can now provide for their little angels at least the first two, if not the last.
All those songs they sung mindlessly at their English Medium Schools extolling the virtues of
"being good for goodness sake", all that waiting for gifts that never arrived and all the
meetings with the mysterious bearded stranger who never visited- its all going to be fixed and taken care of now for their precious little ones.
We went out for what we thought would be a quiet weekend dinner in Connought Place but the restaurant had been taken over by revelers from an office party. After dinner we walked around CP and at 10:00 clock at night it was bursting at its seams with people, the shops were still open, people...entire families...walked around weighed down partly with shopping bags and partly with excessive calories. Street vendors hawked noisy knick knacks to distracted kids, others sold "ethnic jewellery" ( most of it made in China) to young girls. Parking lots were full and there was as much "parking rage" as you would find on any normal working day!
In a country where the majority Hindu middle class is often taken over by fervent religious sentimentalism often bordering on fundamentalism, Christmas is not being seen in any way as a religious festival. It in fact has that distilled secular quality that is typical of shop-till-you drop American consumerism this time of the year.
