New Blog Features

After some inspiration to edit my blog (read: frustration at how boring it looked) I decided to add some new features. With my pictures finally ahead of my blog writing, I decided to start accompaying blog posts with pictures - as you can tell from the recent posts of my time in Kerala. You might also notice on the right hand side, there is now an embedded YouTube video. This video is the trailer to the hit international large-screen format film Mystic India.

I plan on making my posts more interactive, and now, with the new Blogger up and running well, I will upload some of the videos that I have taken for your enjoyment as well. Enjoy the blog!

Night Treks in Tiger Territory: Periyar Sanctuary

Our departure from the tea fields of Munnar did not rob us of gorgeous scenery. Quite the opposite in fact. After rounding a bend, the tea fields all but disappeared and we were treated to the rolling Western Ghats fading off into the distance, covered in dense forest that looked more like the Appalachian Mountains than anything else. Kerala's landscapes again did not disappoint.

We descended out of the Ghats to the small town of Kumily, in the region of Thekkady, right at the border of the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. As a consequence, the place was known interchangeably as Kumily, Thekkady, and Periyar... even to the locals. We were put up by The Blue Yonder at some "eco-lodges" run by the KTDC. These bamboo huts were supposed to be "eco-friendly." But the only thing eco-friendly about them was that they were biodegradeable (they're made of bamboo!). Other than that, they were powered by city electricity, they disposed waste into the city sewer system, and trash was disposed of the way it is everywhere else in India - behind the kitchen. In their defense, there was one hut that had its water heated using solar power, but the panels were broken and so the hut didn't have hot water. Not exactly my idea of environmentally friendly. Now I understand that some environmentally conscious people are willing to pay a premium for being green-savvy, but these places were a joke. And their going rate was Rs. 2000/- a night. Not exactly my idea of wallet friendly.

The night we arrived there, we went on a night-trek through the tiger sanctuary. Accompanied by an armed escort and a guide, we ventured through the different landscapes of the sanctuary in total darkness. The flashlights provided by the park were, well, on the dimmer side of mediocre. Which made Mary's collection of LED flashlights a total godsend. We walked for a half hour before getting far enough away from roads to not have the auditory experience ruined by India's unregulated diesel and petrol engines. But once the silence settled around us, and all lights faded but our flashlights lighting our footpaths, I was amazed by how different the sensory experience was. Robbed of vision, my ears began to look for signs of life in the bushes. I could hear field mice scurrying, birds rustling their nests, frogs croaking and then plopping into nearby puddles. The occassional deer crashed through the undergrowth in the distance. And as we emerged into a clearing, our eyes received a real treat. The blackness in front of us was penetrated by hundreds of flowing, slowly-blinking lights. Walking through the unchoreographed elegance of their soft and rhythmic bioluminescence, backdropped by total darkness made me think, this is what God sees walking through the universe. Thousands of stars, miniscule in comparison to Him, blink in and out of existence as He watches over the course of eternity.

Keralan Landscapes and Tea Fields: Munnar

The Keralan landscape is by far the most diverse and most green I have seen in India. Our four hour journey from Kochi to Munnar treated us to palm trees, plains, rice paddies, hills, cardamom fields, mountains, deciduous forests, and deep river valleys. But nothing prepared us for the sight of Munnar's famed endless tea fields that vanish off into the distance in every direction. Everywhere we turned, our sights were filled with the lush green carpet of Assam tea growing on the slopes of the Western Ghats. The intense green gave a pleasant contrast to the clean, clear blue skies above.

I resisted the urge to stop every thirty seconds to take a picture... Yet I still ended up with 50 pictures of tea fields at the end of our day... We honestly didn't do a lot in Munnar except ogle at the amazing teafield scenery and walk amongst them. The plants live for a 125 years and between 10-15 leaves are harvested from each bush every month. And with as much tea as Indian's drink, at that rate, you have to have a lot of bushes! But really, the most fascinating part was the story of the business underlying these fields.

While there are a number of companies operating on the Western Ghats, the largest by far is the multinational, multi-faceted Indian giant, the Tata Group. Their Tata Tea fields made up for 75% of the tea growing in and around Munnar. Tata is a real behemoth. In a developing country like India, startups have a difficult time raising capital, so it's the established companies that are able to enter a variety of markets to reap a profit by transferring capital from one industry to another. The Tata Group is a shining example of this. They operate in SEVEN business sectors. They do everything from building cars to offering satellite TV, from selling power to managing five-star hotels, and from providing life insurance to producing copious quantities of tea. They are, for lack of a better phrase, all over the place. They employ many people in Munnar in their production of the famed Tata Tea that so many millions of Indians drink on a daily basis. Their harvesters work all day in the field harvesting tea from the tops of the shrubs. The constant preening flattens the tops of the bushes and gives Munnar its famed green-carpet look. Let's marvel at how well-paid these harvesters are (not!). They are paid by the kilo of tea they harvest. All of 50 paisa per kilo. Now if this were marble, it'd be a different story. But think about how much freakin' tea you have to pick to get even ONE kilo! And for that someone pays you ONE CENT. Oh wait, no, the field managers (overseer) pad their own salaries by not issuing payment for every 10th kilo that is harvested.

I thought I wasn't getting paid enough for my "hard work" for Kaplan. Damn.

Kochi... Cochin? Kochin?

Our stay in Cochin (or however you spell it) was to be brief, lasting only a full day. But the first thirty minutes were enough for me to realize that I really liked the part in which we were staying. The Portuguese, though most prevalent in Goa, were allowed to build, in Magellan's time, a fort - what is now known as the heritage town of Fort Cochin. It, alongside it's sister citysprawl across the bay, known as Ernakulam, makes up the town of Cochin... or Kochi... or...

A significant portion of the day was spent (okay more like 20 minutes) asking how what the town's name actually was. Seems like the residents have different opinions. Some call it Kochi, others Cochin, and the occasional, "No, no, it's spelled K-O-C-H-I-N." Bah. It seems that whereas Mumbai has caught on as an alternative to Bombay, and Kolkata has become the accepted nomenclature of Calcutta, the change of the British Raj name of Cochin to (the more Indian?) Kochi seems to not have caught on. In fact, outside of Kerala, (as when I was booking our plane tickets) some people (including travel agents) seem to think they are actually two different cities...

Well, whether we were in Kochi or Cochin, the heritage town was really great. Much like Pondicherry, there were, mercifully, plenty of street signs which made navigating fairly easy. Our morning walk led us up toward the Chinese fishing nets, these giant contraptions that lower a large net into the water and catch fish (though this proves ineffectual at low tide). I would think that fishing all day every day for the past 20 years would have fished that place clean, but seems that the fish in the waters off the city aren't that bright... Though the fisherman are geniuses. Knowing that tourists come to check out their nets, one member of the five-man teams recruits a tourist (like myself) and encourages him to take a picture taking part in the fishing activity. The recruiter hands the rope to the tourist and sits down to watch. The four men + tourist team then hoists (using considerable effort) the net out of the water and reels in the catch. The fish are sorted, the tourist gets his picture, and leaves a small tip... Wait... What? Talk about brilliant business. Yes, in one of the my less brighter moves, I paid a fisherman to let me do his job for him...

As we continued along, the street signs began to disappear and we were lost. A friendly rickshaw driver (they're all friendly, aren't they?) offers us a sightseeing excursion for only Rs. 50/- an hour. And so we take it, despite the fact that we do have a driver at our hotel who knows the city just as well... Anyway, we stop at the St. Francis Cathedral first. I still find the religious mixing of Hindu and Christian norms fascinating. The large pile of shoes at the entrance, bowing at the threshold of the church door... A lady asks us to take a picture of her daughter, a cute little girl in a pretty dress. I oblige and show her the result on my Nikon's tiny little 1.25" display. She's very happy and gives me a quick Indian head-wiggle and a giant smile.

And as I walked away I realized, this small interaction wasn't the same as all the obnoxious Indian men that want their photo taken. They want three or four, and I delete all of them later, most of the time. The look in this woman's eyes and her exuberant happiness conveyed a very different message. She could have cared less that she was in the picture. She was just gleeful with the simple knowledge that somewhere in the world, a record existed of how beautiful her daughter looked on the day she was baptized. She would never see me again. She would never see that picture again. She would have no record but her memory. And for some reason, that made that picture very important to me.

Our rickshaw-wallah is curious about Mary and me - "Coming from India?" he asks to me, giving me an inquisitive head waggle that is so prominent in the south. "I am Indian, a Gujarati," I respond. "Oh! Very good. Visiting Jain Temples?" Puzzled as to the relationship of me being Gujarati to Fort Cochin's Jain Temples I say, "Sure, we will visit the Jain Temples." It becomes clear when my entry into the Temple complex is a departure from Kerala and a re-entry into Gujarat. In fact, for the next 30 minutes, I hear no Malayalam at all, only Gujarati.

Let me take this moment to point out how great being a Gujarati can be. Speaking to one of the temple administrators sitting in the main office, my simple, "Kem chho?" is rewarded with huge smiles, offers for tea, and as the conversation continues, with contact numbers for other Gujarati families in Kerala in case anything goes wrong and we need help and a list of the Gujarati shop keepers in Fort Cochin, where I can shop at the non-tourist rate. I'm blown away sometimes by how tightly knit the Gujarati communities can be.

As we re-emerged into Kerala, we headed into the narrower streets of the "Jew Town" of Fort Cochin. Though it was called "Jew Town" (a horrible name, it seems), there wasn't too much Jewish about it anymore. In fact, the synagogue there was the only thing that had anything remotely Jewish about it. The most interesting part, though, wasn't the town itself. The irony in the fact that we walked south of the Jewish town right into the Muslim district was not lost on me. Seems that even in the Land of the Hindus, a quarter of the way around the world, Judaism and Islam can still find a way to butt right up against each other. Figures.

Next came Mary's lesson in bargaining. As we entered a shop that looked interesting, Mary got interested in some shawls. We saw the full price range, from cheap synthetic scarves, to mid-range pashmina scarves, to extraordinarily soft (and expensive "fahtoosh" (?) (I thought that was a Lebanese salad...) scarves. Mary settled on a couple of pashmina ones that she liked. "Rs. 1800 for both" the shop-keeper says. She turns to me and asks how much she should pay for them. "You have to do the bargaining, Mary, they're your shawls!" And so the lesson begins. And the shopkeeper, seeing that I'm giving a lesson on bargaining joins in on helping out, obligingly lowering his "final price" as we raise our starting price.

And at the end of a textbook bargaining session, Mary walks away with two Pashmina shawls for Rs. 1000/-. "Good job, Mary! Saved Rs. 800/-! Wanna buy me dinner?" She punches me.

And after buying me dinner, she and I headed over to a small bamboo hut where we had tickets for an evening Kathakali performance. Our trip to the Kalamandalam in Cheruthuruthy was incomplete - Mary had seen the students, but never the final product. So were we in for a shortened-for-tourists-version of Kathakali that included the elaborate makeup session. The story on show was from the Mahabharata - that of Kichaka, the general of the King Virata's army who makes improper advances on Draupadi (in disguise as a handmaiden because of the Pandava's exile requirements). Draupadi runs to her mighty husband Bhima crying. Bhima vows to kill Kichaka. Bhima kills Kichaka. And that's basically the story. It just takes a good hour and a half to perform in Kathakali. It's little wonder that they make a "made-for-tourists" version. Can you imagine how long the whole Mahabharata would take? Yeesh.

After the show, we called it a night and headed back to our hotel to catch some shuteye before heading to the tea-plantation land of Munnar, in the Western Ghats of Kerala.

My Latest Pictures

Finally, I've gotten a chance to slow down long enough to get some new pictures up on the net. This installment is from Mary and my 19-day trip through Delhi, Gujarat, and Kerala. In Kerala we used a tour company called The Blue Yonder which is a specialist in what is called Responsible Tourism. There were a few hitches along the way, but they're definitely a company that can provide an interesting experience of a non-widely-visited region of Kerala. Gujarat was fun and Kerala was, for lack of a better word, stunning. I'll write more about it later. In the meantime, enjoy!

Nag-Rangolis and Hindu-Muslim Violence.

On Mary and my last day in Kuttipuram we witnessed the creation of a Rangoli. The creators were worshippers of a Nag (snake) deity. Their creation of the intricate Rangoli was a propitiation of the deity to ward off illness and bad omens.

Now many Indians are familiar with the idea of a Rangoli. For most festivals, especially Diwali, Indian families welcome Laxmi with ornate patterns on their doorsteps made of flower petals or colour flour. But these Rangoli's were something else entirely. They were made of colored lime powder and the one made for us was 2 meters wide and 2 meters long, of SOLID color... Four snakes intertwined their bodies to create rich and intricate braids of reds, yellows and whites. The colors were created by mixing natural pigments with white lime, then remixing the colored lime to form secondary colors. For celebrations and festivals, these rangolis can be 5m x 5m and take all night to prepare!

Their Rangoli was followed up by a musical performance of local village instrumentation accompanying very traditional (and colloquial) songs worshipping the snake deity.

Shorty after, Mary and I readied ourselves for departure for the rest of our Kerala adventure - beginning with two nights in Cochin.

Except that we couldn't leave Kuttipuram. Turns out that recent elections in Kerala caused some violence among members of the Muslim community. It turned ugly and a Hindu was killed. That made it a Hindu-Muslim problem, and a general strike was called. So we had to wait... And we waited... until 3 PM actually, before we were able to leave for Cochin again. We arrived in Cochin at night at the Rossitta Wood Castle Heritage hotel and promptly passed out.

Martial Arts Madness and Serene Boat Rides

The next day brought even more amazing surprises and wonderful experiences. We were joined by a few of the new staff members of The Blue Yonder who were also learning about the "interactivities" that TBY offered. Our first stop was a Kalari. We knew that Kalari Payattu was the traditional, ancient martial art form of Kerala, but we didn't realize how incredible it really was... the first kids (couldn't have been older than 15) came out to give us a demonstration of a... sword fight.

We knew that if clashing swords and shields were the START, it could only get better. And it did get better. From blindfolded knife-fights to flaming fighting staffs, the boys and girls of this Kalari demonstrated without a doubt they were going to be martial arts masters. I found the setup of the place very interesting. The Kalari is actually a pit in the ground - about 10 meters wide and 20 meters long. In one corners is a small altar dedicated to Agastya Rishi, the father of Kalari Payattu, and all the students and even the guruji (an old man and one-time master of the art) would bow down to Agastya Rishi before each small demonstration. The gurukul system (teacher/student) of India was definitely still in practice at the Kalari. The guruji would instruct and the students would follow and without fail, they would touch the feet of the guruji before beginning and after finishing as a sign of deference and respect.

The greatest part was the contrast between the calm serenity, respect, and reverence of the students and the teachers before beginning their practice and the incredible energy, vitality, movement, and downright violence of the combats. There were times that the students would be so engaged and in a zone, they came really close to us - we found ourselves at the end fo the visit backed into one of the corners of the Kalari. We were breathless when we left - at a loss for words at the amazing variety, dexterity, and ferocity of Kalari Payattu. It's amazing to think it may be the oldest martial art in the world.

All that intensity made the boat cruise on the Tirur River all that much more relaxing and peaceful. Lets just say The Blue Yonder's boat cruise on the Tirur River is what tourists going to Alleppey and Kumarakom WISH they were getting. We were the only boat on this river besides the local fishermen in their hollow-wooden-log fishing rafts. The boat itself had an interesting story. As it turns out, the sand and silt at the bottom of Kerala's rivers are particularly good for use in the preparation of cement for construction. So the government has licenced sand miners to mine a few boatloads of sand on a regular basis to sell for this construction. However, thanks to India's corruption and baksheesh (somewhere between a tip and a bribe) systems, these miners exploit the river beds and a destroying the rivers by over mining them for sand. It's a very lucrative and well-paying business, so the TBY, to preserve the river, pays these boat miners to not mine sand and instead take tourists on boat cruises on the river. It was the most amazingly beautiful boat ride I probably have even been on. The pictures speak for themselves. We stopped at a coir (fibrous husk of a mature coconut) factory and watched many hundreds of brown coconuts being stripped for every useful part - except the water inside was being thrown away! So I plucked up the courage to ask one of the women hunched over breaking coconuts in her hand with a machete to give me one half and fill it with water. She did so obligingly. And I got tasty coconut water!

Of course, as the boat cruise continued and the sun began to set, we were treated to young coconuts - the large green ones that you get lots of water from by hacking off just the top. DELICIOUS. I definitely drank more coconut water than real water that day. We reached the mouth of the Tirur at the ocean and enjoyed the sunset before heading back to the resort for the evening.

Onward to Kerala!

Gujarat was fun, but I was really excited about the next part of the trip - 11 days in Kerala. Kerala is India's coconut palm tree paradise. But in reality, it is a small state with an INCREDIBLY diverse range of landscapes.

Mary and I ended up in Kochin in the evening and were met at the airport by a representative of the vehicle company that would be driving us around during our time there. Our transfer to the small town of Kuttipuram near the Bharatpuzha River (Nila River) took on the order of three hours, and we arrived at the Riverside Retreat "Resort" around midnight. We were greeted by a large cottage type accomodation which was neat. But neater were the FROGS that had taken up residence on our shower curtain! Brilliant!

We slept well, because we were just really tired. Our first morning excursion after breakfast was to the Kerala Kalamandalam - a school where youths from all over Kerala were taught classical Indian music, instrumentation and dance. I really enjoyed the visit to the school because it put into perspective the way that the traditions of India are built. How masters are made, in a sense. The only thing that it lacked was a summary - it showed all the pieces of how Indian musical art is made, but it never put them all together. It would have really been cool to see students of dance and those of music joining together for a short performance at the end of the visit to demonstrate to visitors what the finished product looks and sounds like.

After lunch, though, we were treated to a live lesson and performance on the growth, development, and advancement of Keralan percussion. Centered around an old village temple, the master, Aravindakshi, demonstrated along with other students and members of his family and village the various types of percussion and wind instruments that pervade the music of Kerala. One by one, each instrument's design was explained and played for a short period. We were then explained how the instrument progressed to it's next form, and so on and so forth until we reached the janda, a large two-faced instrument that is the percussion of choice in Kerala's many dances such as Kathakali. Then after the progression explanation was complete, the artists put together the various instruments simultaneously for one VERY cool percussion jam session.

But the best part of the "Musical Trail" was not the actual music. It was the people themselves. Members of a lower caste, they are not allowed to perform at "more important" temples because they are not brahmins, despite the fact that they ARE masters of their respective instruments. So they host these private performances to supplement their income from other jobs (Aravindakshi was a bus conductor) and to share a bit about the musical history of Kerala. It definitely was far from the Made-For-Tourists version that I'm sure most people run into.

We thought day one was pretty good, but we had no idea how cool the next days were going to be.

New Pictures... Again!

Well in one of the more amazing things to happen in my time here, I'm uploading pictures more than once every decade or so! These next installment of pictures come from my trip to Rajasthan. I'm here with Kim Swanson, also another Rice Grad (and a high powered one at that) who is using her Watson Fellowship to study the effects of microfinance on women. Hot, huh? Yeah, all the Indian guys think she is too... But I'm guessing it's the blond thing. Just kidding, Kim!

These pictures are from Jaisalmer, a real sandcastle of a town, crowned by the city-within-a-fort known now only as Jaisalmer Fort. The narrow streets, and the crowded markets were a lovely assault on the senses, but the 4-day camel safari into the Thar Desert was the highlight... Until it rained on us, but those stories will come later. Enjoy the pictures!

Flowers and the Taj Test

I was surprised by how happy I was to see Mary when she arrived from the states. I think I expected the time apart to sort of dull my reaction, but I was wrong. I was also surprised how much of a mountain-woman she looked like (don't kill me, Mary, for saying that in public). Vasque hiking boots, 2 backpacks, camo pants and a sleeping bag. Serious gear.

We got to our homestay in Delhi - a very nice mother/daughter family - and Mary promptly fell asleep. So I took the chance to finish a few errands and snag us some dinner. The next day we hung around Delhi and let her get acclimatized to the "pure chaos," as she would put it that evening. We also went to Akshardham and I played tour guide. I think it's funny that I actually have a "tour-guide" mode. But it was still a slow day and we turned in early because we were going to see the Taj Mahal the next day at the crack of dawn.

As it turns out, the area in front of the Delhi Tourism office is a wholesale flower market from 4 AM to 9 AM. So when we arrived, we were assaulted again by Delhi's many scents - but this time of roses, marigolds, birds of paradise, chrysanthemums, anthuriums, and other assorted plantlife. Not so bad. As we wandered around in awe of this massive wholesale market, the air filled with shouts of prices and the deeper buzz-like tones of chai vendors selling chai, garam chai, we came across one chap wanting to sell us flowers. Odd, I thought, considering this was a wholesale market. So I started talking to him about his business and how flower sales in India worked. Turns out it's the same concept as in the USA but carried out differently. At home wholesalers keep stock in big refrigerant houses based on expected need and deliver based on orders from flower vendors with prices changing as the stock ages over a period of days, the wholesale market is emptied and restocked virtually every day, and prices change by the quarter-hour. But because flowers don't wither immediately even if they're not in a fridge, but have to be sold by end of the market because they won't last unrefrigerated till the next day, prices RISE slightly over the course of the market day as more vendors arrive to purchase flowers, and by stocking less anthuriums than are needed, wholesalers can push the price up as vendors bid on the flowers. Then as the vendors begin to leave, prices fall rapidly toward cost as the remaining stocks must be eliminated. The economist in me was utterly confused. But the best description I can give is that of a currency market. During trading hours, the prices of various currencies stays bouyant, but as the market begins to close, the rates begin to drop and stay low overnight till the next market opening.

We discussed flower market over tea that he brought for me and Mary and suggested that if we REALLY wanted to see something truly fantastic, the Taj was all good and well but we really should visit this amazing place - "it's not exactly a temple," said the man, "it's more a place about old Indian culture. But it's called Akshardham temple. It's really great." Hehe.

Of course there is no way to compare the two. My criticisms of the graveyard-esque kind were put to rest as the Taj rose above Agra in all her splendor. But after about 10 minutes, I was done with it. And so was Mary. So the highlight wasn't REALLY the Taj, it was how I got in. See, make-rich-tourists-pay-more-because-they-are-rich mentality isn't only espoused by rickshaw drivers. At all the sights in India, tourists are regularly charged 10X the amount that Indians are charged (except at Akshardham, of course). At the Taj, however, Indians pay Rs. 20/- and foreigners pay $20. That's almost 45X more. So I decided I would be Indian. I bought the ticket without a problem, but as I was entering, the ticket taker asked the Indian man in front of me (who really was from India but had on a baseball cap and a decent jacket) where he was from. He said "Visakhapatnam" and the taker asked to see his I-Card (Gov't. ID). Great, I thought, I'm screwed. And so when I came up, he looked at my jeans, shoes, and beanie and said,

"Where are you from?"
"Gujarat."
"Where in Gujarat?"
"Vadodara."
"Can I see your I-Card?" The moment of truth.
"I don't have it as it's not required by law and I don't want to lose it."
"Then how am I supposed to know you're Indian?"
"The same way you do most everyone else - I look Indian."
"NRI's have to pay foreigner ticket."
"I'm not an NRI." A bold-faced lie.
"Then who is the CM of Gujarat?"
"Narendra Modi," (whew! glad I knew that!) then, feeling emboldened, "but everyone knows that!"
"Who's the PM?"
"Manmohan Singh. And the President is Abdul Kalam and the Congress leader is Sonia Gandhi."
"Fine fine. I just have to check, go ahead."

Victory!

Delhi with JM

Oddly enough, some of the first proper sightseeing I've done in Delhi came with JM. We got a driver-for-the-day and put his Indica through its paces. We visited the Red Fort, the Jama Masjid, Humayun's Tomb, the Lotus Temple and Akshardham with Pareen Bathia (also an Owl). And my suspicions were confirmed. The Moghul historical sights of Delhi just really aren't all that interesting. And after JM visited the Taj, he was glad he did everything else first because he would have been even more disappointed. The Lotus Temple is great (though a VERY brief visit) and JM said Akshardham was pretty cool too. But I contend that unless someone is a REALLY good storyteller, visiting tomb after tomb after giant tomb can get just as bad as temple after temple after temple.

TNB - Srirangam and Tiruvannamalai

The next morning had JM and I visiting the largest temple complex in South India at Srirangam, the nearby town across the holy Cauvery River from Trichy. As it was nearing the end of the year, the Vaikunth Ekadasi festival was in full swing, and as a result the temple was packed. All seven concentric rings to the inner sanctum were a sea of moving bodies. As I went in toward the inner sanctum for darshan, the crowds just kept getting bigger and bigger. And then I noticed the "special darshan" line. There were about 600 people in it. And about 2,000 people in the general darshan line. And neither were moving. At which point I said a small prayer to Ranganathswamy asking for forgiveness for not having the patience to wait and turned around and walked out. I was greeted by a CCTV showing, amazingly, the reason why the line wasn't moving. Ranganathswamy Himself was on procession- He wasn't IN the inner sanctum. The CCTV's were giving a live, close-up feed of the murti being paraded through the complex. I prayed that Television Darshan still counted and after some photos, JM and I were on our way.

Our driver, however, was not at the car. So JM and I found some lunch, shared my 'magical' gatorade powder that turned water blue and made it taste like fruit, and played a little cricket with some school boys for a while. We then left for Tiruvannamalai.

We went for darshan at Arunachaleshwar in Tiruvannamalai when we reached, but as much as I hated to say it, we were pretty much templed out. And after Meenakshi and Rameswaram and a great experience in Tanjore, Arunachal's temple wasn't so enthralling. But JM did get his palm read for free (the guy wanted American coins - and he did have quite a collection of international coins - but we didn't have any). The great hill-fire that makes Arunachal so famous was not lit. That and the fact that we were just tired after literally blazing our way through Tamil Nadu meant that the next day we just decided to head back to Chennai and pass-out till our flight the next day.

Which is exactly what we did.

TNB - Trichy: Thoughts on Christianity in India

In one of JM and my less intelligent decisions during our trip to Tamil Nadu, we decided to drive overnight from Kanyakumari to Trichy. Had we a proper driver (who wasn't hacking up a lung every 3 seconds or exacerbating his ingrown thumbnail by keeping the horn pressed), the drive might have actually been bearable. But to say the least, it sucked - and we didn't get any sleep either.

So in the morning we made it to Trichy, but we were so early, we didn't want to check in to our 24-hour checkout hotel to keep from getting booted early the next morning. So we climbed the Rock Fort Temple. JM was convinced that I pick really bad hills to climb after reading about Pavagadh and Girnar, so he was a bit hesistant. As it turned out, it was a really easy climb with a very quaint Ganesh temple at the top. The priests invited JM and me inside and offered us prasad. My first-note-out-of-the-pocket donation of Rs. 100/- got the other priest excited and asked also for another Rs. 100/-. He said it went to feeding kids at a local orphanage and showed me a very official looking card for an orphanage in Trichy. Then he asked me to leave my address in India, so come end of January, when they had a festival at he Rock Fort, he could send me prasad. So I left him Jayu mama's address. And my last Rs. 100/-. He noticed that my wallet was empty. So he attempted to give the Rs. 100/- back saying that he didn't want it if I didn't have any money left. Satisfied, I insisted that he keep it. I didn't know whether the kids got the money, but I DID receive prasad at the end of January from the Rock Fort Temple. Cool.

We then checked into the Hotel Mega (great name) and promptly passed out, having dismissed the driver until the next day so he could sleep. We woke up in the afternoon and decided to walk around the city. Except that Trichy is really big. Mercifully, it had an friendly, not-TOO-crowded (relative term...), and super efficient bus service. Cheap too. So JM and I hopped on the first bus that said they were going in the direction we wanted to go. We ended up at a catholic church - St. Lourdes - that looked like the architect didn't know too much about the Gothic style or just wasn't trying very hard. But the inside was far more interesting anyway. Painted pink and white with streamers it looked a bit like a birthday cake, but inside was a total haven of tranquility. Churches seem to be able to do that in a way that Hindu temples REALLY need to learn from.

But the most intersting parts were the blend of 'Hindu'-culture and Christianity. There were no pews, so everyone sat on the floor (which meant they didn't do the sit-kneel-stand calisthenics of Western Catholic churches). Many also left their shoes outside in proper Indian style. And those that didn't took them off before kneeling or sitting to pray. But the most amazing part of it all was how JM and I could just explore - no one to tell us to hurry up, no pushing, no shoving, no wanna-be-priests either. The priests were easy to discern - they were up in the front wearing robes that nobody in the church could possibly afford (or want to wear... seriously, Roman Catholic robes are just plain extravagant).

But why Christianity grew so quickly and was so popular became quickly evident. The churches brought the stillness of mind that is a mandir. The churches said everyone can reach God and can be redeemed. The churches said birth and caste do not matter. And the churches in India were saying that truly accepting Jesus as savior means living by his teachings. Well damn, of course Christianity was popular. The Christians were teaching the people to be better Hindus than the Hindus were!

Granted, saying everyone else is a heathen, as many Christian ministers do in India, isn't kosher in my mind, but I have a lot of respect for how Christianity is molding peoples' lives in good ways in India. They have a lot to learn from Sanatana Dharma and Hindus have a lot to learn from them.

After our church visit, JM and I just began to wander. We passed through a vegetable and fruit market - and one vendor was kind enough to give us a zapota fruit so JM could try it. We were in a quandary because we didnt' want to by a kilo of zapota to just eat one, so the vendor, realizing our plight, picked a good one and handed it to us. He tried to refuse the Rs. 2/- I gave him because a kilo only cost Rs. 10/-, but I made him take it. We weren't so much concerned with cost, just what we were going to do with a kilo of the stuff. Eventually we hopped on another bus number we had seen at the stop we left from and ended up back at our hotel. Wow, good public transport is amazing.