A glimpse into the two hour cultural ceremony we stumbled upon at a Jain elementary school. | |
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Now for the first in what I’m sure will be a long series of “What NOT to do in India” posts. For instance, you should not decide on a random Sunday night that you think that you’re in the mood for an adventure. And you should not let that idea lead you on a walk around the city’s Krishna temple block. Once there you probably should not start thinking about how cool everyone’s jewelry looks, particularly that of the nose variety. You should not conclude that because you’re by a temple, getting a ‘traditional piercing’ would be a cultural and spiritual experience. You should not trust the little old man that looks like he knows what he’s doing because he’s wearing traditional clothing and doesn’t speak English. You should not convince yourself that it’s ‘okay because it’s traditional’ to use fire and a rusty knife to sharpen the piece of metal that will be attached to your face. You should NOT let him proceed with attaching said metal, and once attached you probably should not pass out on the ground for a solid minute surrounded by a large group of people laughing at the weak American. You really should just stay home and read a book. One of the great things about traveling with someone actually from the area was that we were able to see all of the ‘off the beaten path’ places. It was almost four days before we saw another tourist, and even after a week the amount of foreigners we’d run into hadn’t hit the double digits. This ended up creating a bit of a role reversal situation most of the places that we went, since them seeing two white girls was weirder than us seeing a million people in sarees and dotis. Everywhere that we went we had people of all ages coming up to us asking to take pictures with us or shake our hands or take pictures of us shaking hands or just shouting “WHAT NAME WHERE FROM!” at us. I lost count of how many times I had to introduce myself as Nan-like-the-bread. Talk about getting weird looks. But with that amount of handshaking I think that we can pretty much consider ourselves official ambassadors at this point. …But I had to do it. I HAD to drive a motorcycle. Purely for research purposes, of course. You know, to get the full cultural immersion experience and what not… See, motorcycles might be one of the only things you see more than cows around here. Everyone drives them, from middle school boys to moms with babies on their laps to entire families. Seriously – I’ve seen 5 people fit on one bike on more than one occasion. Ok well if I’m being honest, I didn’t technically drive one…yet. I started bugging Nanda about it almost the instant we arrived in India, until he got so sick of me that partway through our trip he finally called his brother who works at a dealership (strategy = success). Apparently we had some kind of miscommunication though, because somehow they were under the impression that I already knew how to drive one of those things. I don’t know what could have given them that idea? But after almost running over his coworker and crashing through a glass wall within five seconds of being on the bike, it became pretty clear that I had no idea what I was doing and I got stuck in the back seat…oh well, next time.
Nanda, our new friend the Jain priest, Alicia, yours truly, and Sanjeev
It has been exactly 12 days since I arrived at the Bangalore airport, armed with a duffel bag, a camera, and absolutely no idea about what I was getting myself into. Over the course of those 12 days I have traveled more than 1000 miles through 18 towns and 5 cities. I have visited 15+ temples and hiked to a shrine at the highest point in Southwest India. I've drank coconut milk with a Jain priest, been blessed by a Hindu elephant, and watched a sunrise with Buddhist monks. I've crashed an Indian wedding - somehow ending up next to the bride in the family pictures - and had my first saree shop experience. I've survived eating fried chili peppers and actually watched a cricket match (although I'm still not sure who won). I've ridden a motorcycle through the streets of Bangalore and an elephant through the trees of Dubare. I've shaken dozens of hands, collected hundreds of stories, and taken thousands of pictures. But most of all, I have fallen head over heels in love with this country....And I still have four more months to go.
With my attention span it may be a long shot, but I'm going to do my best to keep this blog updated over the course of the semester. Until we start classes on the 28th, I'll start by posting some stories from the insanity that was this past two weeks... Namaste! |