Last night in Hyderabad

So this is my last night in Hyderabad at the Tagore International House. Tomorrow at 1 pm we fly to Delhi, to spend 5 days of travel between Delhi, Jaipur, and Agra; the Taj Mahal will be one sight that we will see. Obviously I haven't blogged in a while, honestly aside from not being in the mood to do it, nothing has really happened anyways. I have mostly spent my time writing a paper, studying for exams, and killing time by watching things like THE OFFICE or ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, of which I have done too much.

I am virtually all packed up, aside from a few things I will need to use in the morning and what not. The hostel is really dead, as most people, including half the miami students have already left. So I am killing a lot of time right now, checking my email and facebook every 20 minutes. I did just have some Subway delivered, and for the record, Veggie subs in India taste the same as veggie subs in America; Italian BMT's however, are lacking here, as the meat is of course of a different substance. Nevertheless, that is the highlight of my evening, and a testament to why there hasn't been any blogging.

Exams were fine, though they seemed to drag on and on, thankfully those are done. I am ready to get out of the hostel, as I have grown a little stir crazy by sitting around in it studying and what not, and I am ready to go North for some traveling, as well as looking forward to coming home. I am kind of starved for efficiency, organization, movie theatres, video games, driving my car while singing loudly, and crappy American fast food; such as chicken quesadillas and the McDonald's Dollar menu...I will however, miss the maharaja mac, and you know that I am going to pull up to every McDonald's drive thru attempting to order it, simply to confound the 'angry at life' drive thru worker. I am also sporting the manliest beard ever right now, and will continue to do so upon my return despite any objections; one should look wise and weathered after returning from the far east, and that is how I plan to return.

It has been quite an experience, one with a set of dimensions, though I look forward to coming home, I am glad I was able to come and live here for several months. I do not wish to deliver a synopsis in this blog though, I will reserve that until I have returned. Peace out Hyderabad...the next blog will be state side.

A wild elephant and the Tree of Life...okay not really but still

Pictures from Ooty, Mysore and Bangalore

More photographs

Prodigal Photographs, and the Trip

Alright, since the last blog I have visited two cities, Chennai and Pondicherry, as well as places in between them on the bus ride. It was good to get out of Hyderabad for a bit, even though it was not until we took a trip that I actually started having course work to do, which made for a busy week when I got back. We first saw Chennai and took a flight from Hyd., it wasn't actually that different Hyderabad except that it is on the coast, and it isn't that clean of a city. A bus drove us around to see some different things, which consisted of two temples, the Beach, and the resting place of St. Thomas. When I say St. Thomas, I mean Thomas...as in the guy who doubted Christ. History has it that Thomas traveled all the way to south India spreading Christianity, which I did not know. He was Martyrd in what is now the area called Chennai, by a spear to the back. So in the church, there is what is supposed to be some remains of Thomas, and the head from the spear that killed him. I do not know how anyone would know whether or not it really was the spear or his remains, but Catholics love their relics. 

On the beach there was a little market where we looked around, and walked to the shore. The beach itself is not one you really want to lay down in, or swim in, it was a bit dirty. We spent two nights there, and left for Pondicherry the following morning. On the way we stopped at various old places and attractions, which consisted of more temples and a silk shop where they weave and sell the products. We arrived in Pondicherry that night where we slept and left the next afternoon. The night we arrived though, some of us walked to the shore from the hotel, and sat on the rocks watching the waves of the Bay of Bengal...pretty cool. Then the next day we drove back to Chennai and stayed another night to catch our flight back to Hyd. the next evening. It was a good trip, bought a few trinkets, and a copy of the Mahabharata. I guess we have the funding to take another one, and we are debating about where to go. Some people wanted to go to bombay and Goa, another choice is Bangalore, another is Kerala (which I want to go to), and another is going to Gujarat. From what I gather, Kerala and Gujarat are expensive, and Goa is just a beach, so we will most likely go to Bangalore...oh well. 

Upon my return, I had a Hindi test, a paper, and a philosophy test this week...so I have been fairly busy. There isn't much else to report, and I am not actually in too much of a writing mood, having to walk 15 minutes in hot weather to get online doesn't make one in such a mood. I did get air conditioning in my room however, and now there must be a 25 degree difference between my room and the hallway, it's great. I really want to play some video games though, or just be able to go get some food whenever I want...or snacks....or go see a movie or something, or have a cold beverage. Cold beverages are nearly impossible to find, everything is usually lukewarm, including pop. It isn't that hard, I know there is a fridge in the kitchen downstairs....keep it in the fridge...*shrug. We get Ice cream after every dinner so, I suppose I can let it slide. I am going to have to find mango ice cream when I get back, because it's good. 

I actually found the pictures that I thought were deleted, so some of these below are of the fort, and some from the trip. I have more, but to post them I have to decrease the size of them one by one...and load them, it's a pain. So they will just be put up in installments. I found one that has me in it, there are not too many of those. Is it just me, or are my eyes abnormally close together?

Rituals, Dancing, Divine Food and a Bryan Adams sing along

A few things happened this weekend, I will exposit them chronologically by day.

On Friday evening I accompanied Veena (fellow abroad student), to a temple nearby where a kind of festival was going on, and they have revived some old practices of temple dancing that were banned from temple due to some other historical developments. This marks my second visit to a Hindu temple, as well as the most pleasurable. Prior to the rituals in the temple, there was a guest performance outside of a particular form of classical Indian dance, that everyone gathers to watch, and following it were the temple dances which had more religious roots and derivation. 

The newly revived ritual dances were set up in a very systematic way, beginning at the middle of the temple, circling around it and returning to the center, having a performance at various particular spots that correspond to a deity. The idea is that the dancing is a kind of narrative or descriptive presentation of the deity that it is directed towards, and the observers ideally are treating it as a ceremony of prayer. So I and a group of Miami students that came later apart from my arrival, were able to observe the ceremony which is no short process, but an interesting cultural experience nonetheless. 

After the dances were finished, they brought out the idol (which I prefer to call Icon, as it more accurately describes the roll of the "idol") and marched with it, stopping after so many paces as a dancer performed in front of it before the icon marched forward (reminded me of David bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to Israel, where after so many paces they stopped and worshipped through music and dance before moving forward again), until it came to a place outside where they sat the icon down, performed a ritual of blessing and then marched the icon back to the temple where each dancer one by one circled it while holding a pot of oil with a lit flame. They then returned the deity to its resting place, and proceeded to perform a final ritual of blessing. 

This ritual seemed to be more of a typical one that a devotee would undergo in a normal visit to temple. Where the priest brings out a flame, the warmth of which you are supposed to feel with your hands and touch your face, then blessed water that they put in your hands and you drink, then a metal cylinder kind of hollow object that has designs and carvings on it they briefly place over your head, which represents the feet of God blessing your head. Granted I am not aware of all the symbolisms of these ritual actions, and it would probably be exhaustive to expound upon them justly anyways, so I am just trying to describe the ceremony as I saw it. 

On this particular evening, I did not participate in the above ritual of blessing, as I did not know what is expected of the practitioner, and I personally feel as if I am being very disrespectful, and perhaps even blasphemous if I undergo a ritual having no idea what to do, let alone not knowing the meaning. So I sat that one out, I did however, participate in the partaking of the blessed food (Prasad). When this takes place everyone is handed some leaves that have been pressed and sown together with straw, and the priests come out with rice, and another sweet substance that I do not know the name of, and place a portion onto your leaf-plates, and you eat with your hands the food that has been blessed by god (prasad). It was very tasty, of course at first I was questioning the fact that it was dished out to me by the guys hands, and who knows where these leaves came from, but you just don't refuse 'divine' food that a holy man is offering you, you just take it with thanks. So I did, and it was very delicious, not just plain rice, but a yellow rice that had a spice to it; god makes a good rice I suppose. I very much enjoyed the experience of sitting in an obscure temple in India and eating Prasad with my hands off of a dry leaf plate that no doubt someone hand sown together, not something you do everyday. Unless of course you are a Hindu, of which I am not. 

The dancing itself was of course interesting, but it was probably more interesting to those who enjoy dance. I do not consider myself one of those people, as I do not go out of my way to watch any kind of dancing, be it ball room or dry sex humping in a club. I can appreciate the cultural significance of something like classical Indian dance (like when a particular story I am familiar with is being depicted), however beyond that I cannot have too much of an interest in it; for that, I would need to have an interest in dance itself. 

The temple was set up in such a way that in two corners there were deities inside the 'closet' like space that they are usually kept in, that periodically opens up at the appropriate times, and in the center was the main deity of the temple. It kind of reminded of the "Holiest of Holies" that you would find in the center of the Hebrew temple of the Old Testament, where it is located at the center and only the Holy priests can actually enter in to that space; the same seemed true for the space that this main icon was in, as it was encased in a closet-like space as well, and only the priests could pervade that space where the holy deity is occupying. So the layout of the temple seemed significant, and the same is true for the Old Testament temple as well. 

So while I find the witnessing of religious ritual to be interesting, it is not my area of interest when looking at any religion's ideology. Taking Hinduism as an example, I have interest in the philosophies you find coming from thinkers who happened to be 'Hindu', and I see these philosophies to be a separate thing almost altogether from ritual. To believe that a ritual or recited prayer entertains a spiritual dimension which causes your material situation to be changed, as a result of performing the ritual, is to have a mystical belief, and a purely mystical belief is I feel, irrational. Of course there is the effect that ritual has on the mental state of the person, which then effects their attitude and their situation, but that is different from believing that the ritual itself is responsible for a material change. 

The philosophers of the East however, are occupied with metaphysical views, epistemological systems of "how do you know..." and what "what is knowledge", and then ethical philosophy, all of which are centered around knowledge and not ritual. It is clear then, as confirmed by Dr. Prasad in the Philosophy department here, these philosophers didn't take ritual very seriously, as I don't think that any pursuer of knowledge would. In fact these philosophers would say that liberation is not attained from ritual at all, it doesn't bridge the divide, but knowledge bridges that divide, whereas ignorance furthers it. To me, if religious ritual/prayer is not kept in its proper symbolic place then it can perpetuate ignorance, which you see happening in various kinds of religious outlooks.

So when it comes to ceremony, for me, it is just that and nothing more. Nothing more than a physical experience the practitioner (if it is religious in nature) undergoes to have some particular kind of feeling or emotional state. These states vary greatly in nature, ranging from the kind of person who performs ritual with the belief that it effects an unknown spiritual dimension, to the person who performs ritual without any belief in the spiritual or God at all and simply enjoys the feeling of nostalgia one gets from practicing age old tradition they inherited. The latter is more legitimate and honest a reason to be a practitioner of ceremony/ritual, as it is not treated as a methodical means to attain a supposed "greater" knowledge of something spiritual. It seems to me, that most educated Hindu practitioners take this latter stance when it comes to the practice of the religion, as being Hindu does not only amount to religious belief; as you could be an atheist-materialist, and be a practitioner of Hinduism it seems. So I see no problem with performing any religious ritual for the sake of experiencing inherited tradition, the problem I have lies in the purporting of ritual to be a method for attaining knowledge, or that some supernatural truth lies beyond it that the practitioner effects through repeating a prayer, taking communion, or reciting a mantra. 

Although for me personally, I have never been one to enjoy something simply because it is my inherited tradition either, and tradition for tradition's sake for me is a waste of time. It's one of those things that I want to ask "why..." and then someone says "just because...", which needless to say does not satisfy me; and so apart from having cultural experiences of ritual (be it religious, or a wedding ceremony), I do not care much for it, and much time could very well be saved without it (especially in weddings, there is much "blah blah" that could be cut out). And when it is supposed that a ritual is a method for attaining a kind of Truth, I must oppose that notion and not simply be apathetic towards it, as I am with ritual for the sake of inherited tradition. 

The next day, Miami kids went to a museum, which was okay. Not much to tell about it, and no pictures were allowed. Following it some others wanted to go back to the same temple where they were having some vendors there for the festival they were having, so a few of us stopped there with the Pappus. The little market was less than impressive, so I and another girl from Miami went into the temple with Dr. Pappu, and he told a priest we were students here to study, and so he wanted us to experience the ritual. I was still less than comfortable doing it, but Dr. Pappu insisted, so I suppose it wasn't a big deal, and my feeling of disrespect in not being fully aware of the ritual meaning was probably something I was conjuring; though it was still legitimate, and I was probably one of the few who gave a second thought to it the night before, where several of the other students just jumped in and performed it. So I felt the heat of the flame, drank the water, and had my head blessed by God's feet, as we were standing right in front of the space where the deity was; an interesting experience of course, and it was nice that the temple was so welcoming both nights we were there. They insisted that we all have dinner on Friday night that they were serving, and made sure we experienced everything as much as possible. At the first temple we went to as a group, a very large one, I did not feel so welcome there for some reason, and did not get a kind vibe from it; not that I felt I shouldn't be there, it was just a large temple with a lot of people whereas this was a small one and was more welcoming. One could draw an analogy here between small temples seeming to be very welcoming as a opposed to large ones, and how small Christian churches seem to be more friendly and welcoming as opposed to large ones.

This was pretty much my weekend, the only other thing to report is that last night I watched Shawshank Redemption; which was severely overdue. It was a good movie, and the reason it has been regarded as a classic is very clear; I mean...Morgan Freeman...enough said. 

Oh I almost forgot, we also had a little bon fire outside, where some other Indian students joined. One had a guitar who is learning, and someone volunteers me to play it. So I do, and one of the Indian guys asks if I knew "Summer of 69" by Brian Adams. I don't actually know the song, but I remember an MxPx cover of it very vaguely, so I just played the chords according to the melody. So me and some random Indian dudes have a little brian Adams sing along while sitting around a small fire in Hyderabad, India...not exactly something I foresaw happening, ever. So I just played random songs, they also recognized Free Bird. There are two bands I have noticed Indians being fond of, Coldplay and Linkin Park. The former I have no problem with at all, the latter however, can't say I am a fan. I also overheard that Iron Maiden was performing in Bangalore...go figure. 

Back sweat, and the little victories in life.

The internet has stopped working in the international hostel, and it could be a few days before it gets fixed. Which actually means it could be a couple of weeks. So I just now have managed to get to the library and get online for TCB (takin' care of business). This week has been slow and there isn't much to blog about, I just feel like posting one; so here are some totally insignificant events that have occurred, I will try to spice them up. 

As you know it's hot in India, and getting warmer as we approach spring months. This kind of climate forces a mid-western United States citizen to opt for a different showering/bathing schedule. Typically at home I shower every morning, both as a way to get clean and a way for me to awake out of the pseudo-slumber I am in just after waking. Though this past semester I would opt for evening showers if I had worked that night, to rid myself of the nastiness of quiznos. However, it is impossible to walk to class (which is a 20 minute hike from the hostel) and not sweat hardcore. This has lead me to opt for a twice a day shower schedule, one when I wake up, and one when all my classes and hikes are done for the day. By the time I return I am on the verge of stinking anyways, so the morning shower is mainly to rid me of my pseudo-slumber, and the second post-class shower is for deep cleaning. 

Since I carry a back pack, it causes my back to sweat. I have never had this problem before, and it isn't that pleasant because it causes the upper back of my shirt to smell as well the back of my back-pack. So I can't wear shirts twice without washing them, they pretty much need a wash after one wearing. I am not sure what to do about my back-pack accumulating an odor, I am thinking of applying deodorant to my back as well as a drastic effort to solve the problem; which may not be too pleasant and brings me to my next insignificant topic. 

So I had one stick of Degree High endurance I had brought with me, and early this week it started running thin. Not good for such a climate. As I went to apply it one morning the remainder simply crumbled, so I, being the resourceful person that I am, pick up the crumbles and apply it to my body via my hand. This might be odd and gross, but it's also economical and better than no deodorant at all. I kept this up for a couple of days, until I found out that in one of the stores on campus they sell toiletry items. So yesterday I proceed on a journey to find this holy grail of cosmetics, and alas, after looking around in this tiny little shop I see sticks of fresh deodorant in a glass case among other items. 

The time-worn shop clerk approaches and asks "What is it that you seek traveler?", and I say "I have come in search of deodorant". He leads me to the selection and lays my choices out in front of me and says "choose wisely...". So I weighed my options and tested each scent and weighed my logic desperately trying to figure out which stick (grail) is the right (holy) one until I figure it out and make my decision. The time-worn shop clerk says "you chose...wisely", I immediately apply it to my odorly wounds and it miraculously heals me of them. The ground started to shake and rubble began to fall around me as I barely escaped with my life, and with a fresh new stick of deo. 

Okay so that didn't happen, and is only a satire of Indian Jones and The Search for the Holy Grail; but at this point, a fresh stick of deo was a holy grail, so it works. All they had was the gel kind, and I am not sure about it. It doesn't seem to last very long in such a warm climate, it might not work if I try to apply it to my back to solve the back sweat problem. Nevertheless, I came out victorious obtaining some fresh deo. 

Other random stuff, I watched a bootleg copy of Burn After Reading yesterday with some fellow students, odd movie...

And I learned how to play a song I should have learned how to play a long time ago, Blackbird by the Beatles. Another student bought a cheap guitar, so it gets passed around among those who can play, which oddly is a lot of students in the hostel.