Interesting Minutiae by Jon- Westernization

Nothing says "India" like a Chicken Maharaja Mac^TM.

Ganesha Festival!

The whole month of September is taken up by the Ganesha Festival.  For weeks beforehand, roadside stands sell various painted statues of Ganesha (the elephant god - remover of obstacles).

Gouri invited us over to her house for some special Ganesha hospitality!  Again, here we use the word "hospitality" to mean "way too much food".  It was served on a banana leaf and was mighty tasty!

We brought the boys a couple of Ganesha presents - Connect Four and Jenga.  Here they are enjoying the game.

Outside of Gouri's house, the festivities were kicking off with some drumming and dancing.  They live on a very small street and on these kinds of streets all over Bangalore, similar lively celebration was taking place.

Speaking of lively celebrations - check out these guys in the back of a tiny 3-wheeled truck.  They are carrying one of the painted Ganesha statues to the lake where they will throw it in the water.

When we got to the lake, there was a very long line of people with their Ganesha statues.  We were just looking at all of the action (masses of people circling the lake in a clockwise fashion and immersing their statues in the lake) when one of the Police who was working crowd control flagged us down and told us we could cut in front of the line via the special "Police Only" entrance.  Apparently this is one of the perks of being a foreigner here.  We circled the lake with the throngs of devotees.  Every now and then, a large group would push quickly through the crowd with a giant Ganesha statue - bigger than a person.  Excitement would roar through the crowd as they made way for the giant Ganeshas.

At first, this may seem like an unusual ritual, but is it really any weirder than taking your small child to sit on a strange man's lap and then leaving out cookies and milk by the fireplace?

As an interesting side-note, there was a lot of press this year about the Ganesha festival and its impact on the environment.  A number of people brought earthen statues that were not painted or brought statues that were dyed instead of painted in order to lessen the impact on the environment.

More monkey yoga

Apparently even wild Langur monkeys like the yoga too!

Yoga - not just for humans anymore

As you may know from an earlier post, monkeys can ride motorcycles.  However, did you know that monkeys can do yoga as well?  We call this pose, "sitting monkey".  It gets you a good hamstring stretch and a sense of peace, well being, and furriness.

Dunna nunna nunna nunna Bat Cave!

While at Shivaganga with Adina, Prakash took us to a temple that we had not been to before.  The temple entrance is sandwiched between to giant boulders and opens to a very narrow cave with steep slippery steps downward in a passageway wide enough for only one person at a time.

The passageway leads to an underground lake of holy water of which you are supposed to drink some and splash some on your head.  I decided to forgo the drinking of subterranean holy water and opted instead for just a quick splash on the head.  The most interesting feature of the cave however was not the underground lake, but the plethora of bats that kept detaching from the cave walls, flying right up to the cave entrance, turning around, and flying back.  After seeing the bats at the cave entrance, Mandi decided that going into the cave for the holy water really wasn't worth the creepiness.  Though we got rabies shots before leaving for India, luckily we did not have to take advantage of this fact.

Savanadurga

In an effort to get ready for our upcoming Nepal trek, we asked Prakash to take us to some places where we could hike. This is the first place he took us!

Yes, this is a giant rock called Savanadurga.  There is a temple on the top of it, if you make it that far.  Oh, and since it is a sacred Hindu place, you must do the climbing without any shoes.
Wait, you want me to go where??? This looks more like rock climbing then hiking...
Whoa, this is steep!
Well, it started pouring rain on us, causing the rocks to be slippery, and this is Mandi at the bottom grateful that we made it down!

Adina Visits Bangalore!

Well, it's been almost two months now since we've posted to the blog.  All apologies to all of you who check the blog daily and are now very bored from reading the same posts over and over, but we probably saw you when we were back in the US so get over it!  Anyways - on to the exciting stuff - our first visitor!

Somehow - out of all cities in the world - Adina and a few other students from Purdue were randomly in Bangalore for a week to attend a conference.  When we got back from our August US trip, we had a few days to hang out with Adina.

We had dinner with Sitaram and Annu who had not seen Adina since the last time they were in Seattle around 15 years ago

Upon visiting Prakash's village, we were given the usual copious hospitality.  Here, Prakash's mom is applying traditional powder bindis to Mandi and Adina before we leave.

Adina on the steps of Shivaganga

The beautiful view from Shivaganga

Gouri has two sons and no daughters - and it shows.  She has enjoyed dressed Mandi up in saris multiple times before and hearing that my sister would be visiting, she brought over a number of saris with which to dress up Adina and Mandi.  Here, she's braiding Adina's hair.

And here is the end result of Gouri's fun-time!

Mandi's Observations- Consumption

  One of the many valuable lessons I am learning in India revolves around consumption, or rather over-consumption.  Each day I am reminded of the value of each and every resource available to me.  Growing up in the U.S. resources were abundant and available as long as you had the means to pay for them.  An idea of all these resources being unlimited was sure to flourish in this setting.  It seemed as though everyone was always in competition for the biggest and the best of whatever they could get their hands on.  Faster cars, bigger houses, more lavish meals at restaurants, all things that people readily consume without a second thought.  I used to never be able to resist the impulse buys, whether I actually needed it or not, those last minute grocery store counter items always seemed to get me. Although, I worked to change my spending habits over the last couple of years, nothing prepared me for what I would learn about consumption and maximizing one's resources from living in India.  Sitting here thinking about consumption in the place that I am living brings a new meaning to everything that came before. 

 

  Learning the value of every resource seems impossible to escape in a place like India.  You are constantly bombarded with people begging for the most basic of resources, food for survival. There are always people digging through garbage on the side of the road to extract any useable resource that they can.  With as many people living here as there are, resources can be scarce and must be used fully.  Water was a resource that I always took for granted before, naturally you just turn on the faucet and it comes out.  I never gave a thought to where it actually came from, or how it got to me.  Seeing people living without running water, walking to the nearest source of water, returning with a jug full and using it sparingly, has allowed me to view water as a precious commodity.  I don't even know that I considered water a resource before, more likely I saw it as an inevitable, something that was always there.  

  

  Seeing the poverty and hunger that is widely prevalent in my daily life has allowed me the chance to fully understand food as a resource, and again not just something that has always been available to me as long as I had the money to pay for it.  In a place where huge supermarkets are not the norm, and people spend much more time preparing food from fewer resources, it is easy to understand the value of food and not wasting it.  With Gouri teaching me how to cook, I have learned the meaning of wasting nothing.  There are many parts of a vegetable that I never thought about needing to eat, but when she cooks, she uses all her resources fully.  As I went to dump the water that we had just boiled spinach, she stopped me and took the pot, added salt to it, and poured it into two cups for us to drink as a broth.  In her life, everything that can will be used and wasting food is not an option.  When it is scarce to you, you do whatever you can to maximize it.

  

  Thinking about water and food in this context leaves no room in my mind for impulse buys or lavish dinners.  Just thinking about the amount of money people in the U.S. spend on cars on average, blows my mind in the context of India.  When I really stop to think about it, the two clashing images make no sense next to one another.  Yet as India becomes more developed, more westernized ways of thinking about consumption seep into the center of it.  Rich people here too drive flashy cars and shop at malls to buy brand name merchandise.  However, here, driving home from these malls in their flashy cars, they will surely be surrounded by many people begging for basic resources to survive.  They will drive by thousands of people who will be able to scrape by that night, by having a simple meal, washing in a bowl of water, and going to sleep, most likely on a mat on the floor.  More common than anything, this is the India that stares me in the face, day in and day out.  This is the India that has taught me to value every single resource that I use, and to understand it as a valuable resource and not as something I am entitled to.  I have learned many valuable lessons from my time here in India, but the one of minimizing consumption and valuing every resource is certainly one that will follow me for the rest of my life.  The things that I have learned, and the images I have seen, will be permanently lodged in my head and in my heart, most likely forever.  

Welcome to Mutton World!

After seeing meat like this, it is no wonder South India is the most Vegetarian place on the planet!!

Before being turned into cold cuts, your meat looks like this too!

(Check out the tail - Yuck!)