Updates and Tiruvannamalai

After two weekends in a row of traveling I am enjoying taking it easy around the house this weekend. We finally have air-conditioning in our rooms! Very exciting times over here since it hot 39 degrees C today which is somewhere around 100 F. Maybe now that we have AC I won’t wake up looking like I have the chicken pox every morning due to mosquito bites but we shall see. Reportedly there may be a chance the internet will return to our dorm this week but as it has been almost a month now without it I’m not planning on getting my hopes up. So for now I’m hanging around here and battling an epic cold which I picked up over the weekend. Luckily my roommate is traveling this weekend so I can sleep a lot and not bother her with my sniffling and sneezing.

Traveling has been amazing though. This past weekend was such a treat. A friend of the family offered to show me around the ashram and town he has visited a number of times. Five of us took up Martin’s and his traveling companion Peter’s offer and took the trip down to Trivuvannamalai ( go ahead and try and pronounce it) which is in the state of Tamil Nadu. It is a long trip down there because it is farther then Chennai which is itself a good distance. We took many modes of transportation on this adventure: A rickshaw from campus to the local trainstation at lingampally, a train to the larger train station in the city and then an overnight 12ish hour train to Chennai. From Chennai we caught a cab to the bus station and at the bus station a 4ish hour bus to Tiruvannamalai. This was my first train ride ( we were in Sleeper class non-AC) and I liked it although it was cold at night. Transportation in India is a whole other issue which I intend to devote an entry to at some point because there is so much to say about it.

We arrived Friday afternoon and found that our hotel was extremely close to the ashram which worked out very well. We had some difficultly with the arrangement of rooms and the fact that we couldn’t never got the cot we were supposed to get for our fifth person but the rooms were clean enough ( despite the lack of a shower head) and we only planned to sleep in the rooms anyhow. We ate at a very interesting and hippie kind of café next to our hotel.

We met up with Martin and Peter and they showed us around the ashram and explained a little bit about its founder Shri Ramana Maharshi. He was a boy who left home and basically meditated until he became enlightened at age 16 by asking the question who am I?

The ashram was full of wildlife particularly monkeys and peacocks and the usual resident dogs. The main building of the ashram had a meditation hall and a room with a shrine. In the large meditation room, which was also used for chanting in Sanskrit and Tamil ( the state language) was another type of alter with deity. People come and show their devotion before it but another very common practice is to walk around it in a circle. The whole shrine itself is a rectangle and so people do pradakshana around it. The manner of devotion is entirely personal and some people walk quickly and others slowly, some for a long time and others just a few times. No matter when we were in the ashram there was always someone walking.

We were invited to eat dinner at the ashram which was a really neat experience. Everyone eats in a large room and sits on the floor with either a banana leaf or a sewn together mat of leaves as their plate. People come around and spoon food onto your plate. I don’t really know all the things we ate but it was fairly standard Indian food. There was rice and some type of dhal and ghee and then other accompaniments as well as ‘buttermilk’ which turned out to be yogurt with water and salt.

Saturday was the only full day we had so we packed a lot in to the day. In the morning we went to visit the largest temple around. The location of the town is at the base of a large mountain ( possibly an extinct volcano) called Arunachala, literally translated as Red Mountain ( Aruna + Achala). The mountain is sacred because it is where Shiva is supposed to have appeared of a lingam of fire ( basically a pillar of fire) to show his power and masculinity etc.. In many temples you will find lingams being worshiped because of Shiva. This first temple we visited was a massive complex of smaller temples and also housed the small underground room where Ramana spent his years meditating. It was absolutely beautiful there and so peaceful (as was everything there). We also had the opportunity to be blessed by an elephant at the temple. To receive the blessing you put a coin in the elephant’s trunk and then he taps you on the head. Laura actually took a video of me getting blessed which I will have to try and get from her at some point.

After lunch and a bit of rest a few of us moved on to another temple while the rest kept out of the heat. This was a much smaller temple and more secluded but with very interesting sculpture. The outside was guarded by 12 large and colorful statues. Unfortunately power had gone out in the area and so it was hard to see some of the things inside the temple. There were cows being cared for at the temple and a whole huge bunch of monkeys which came out and climbed over all the statues. We walked back from the temple by going through a kind of village. The walk was one segment of the inner mountain path walk which Peter did every morning. People walk either the inner or outer ring around the base of the mountain as another kind of pradakshana. The whole trek is between 6-8 miles.

Peter handed us pens to give out to the children we passed in the village since they love to get pens. Children swarmed us and it was a bit like being back at the labor rescue school. Everywhere we went people waved and smiled and children followed us around. When we ran out of pens I tried entertaining them with my camera. They enjoyed having their pictures taken and kept asking us to take more. The village had amazing views of the mountain and it was incredible to think of people living there.

When we got back I spent a little time around the ashram waiting for us all to meet up for tea. The meditation room was so calm. I walked around a bit, sat for a while, followed some peacocks around and enjoyed watching people. There is a very interesting crowd down there and a lot of westerners. There was something very moving about that place and I could really feel the stillness there. After chai we hiked up the mountain to skandashram which was the ashram up near the top of the mountain. The views were absolutely flooring and from a spot near the top we could see the temple we had been in earlier. We walked up with an Indian fellow who was traveling around to different ashrams after having lived in one for a long time. He didn’t speak Tamil either and I think he was glad to have some company of English speakers as he spoke Hindi and English.

At the ashram at the top the monk who tends the place was singing a devotional song which we were able to listen to for a while. It was beautiful up there. There was a path which would go up higher but it was a very serious and ambitious hike and it was already late afternoon. Another path would go down into caves as well. We talked to some of the people who we met there was well which was interesting. We hiked back down and most of us decided to take dinner at the nearby restaurant where we had gotten coffee and breakfast. And yes, I have to say it was amazing to have coffee!

Since we had to leave so early on Sunday in order to make it back to our train on time we had decided to save our part of the mountain base walk for Sunday morning. We met up at 7:30 and started the long walk. There were some very lovely views of the mountain along the way and some little shrines along the side of the road. Many other people were walking and out and about as is usually the case in India. It is hardly ever empty anywhere. We stopped at one nice little temple set back a way from the road which we stayed at for a while. It was just off the inner mountain path but could get lost behind the trees if you didn’t know it was there. From there we walked back the way we had came. Martin and Peter gave us some little books on Ramana Maharshi so that we would have a better sense of the philosophy and then we parted ways so we could get ready for our trip home.

The trip was a very nice change and a very different side of India javascript:void(0)than what I’ve seen so far, but exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see in India. What’s next? I have no idea! Well, actually there is a CIEE planned trip to Mysore next weekend and then it’s Holi, the festival of colors, which I am hoping we get to celebrate. After that I don’t know. I need to figure out where to go when. There is some talk of traveling to the islands off the coast but who knows? It is getting so hot and I still need to get to the Taj Mahal!

Holiday in Goa!

So I got back from Goa yesterday morning ( actually early for once!).
Goa is like another world. You can easily forget you are in India there because it is very touristy and it is like any other beach town anywhere. There were a lot of Europeans there and Australians and such. What makes Goa so interesting is the heavy Portuguese influence and the massive amount of churches. As you will see eventually from the pictures you could mistake Goa for a town in Europe.

I traveled with 5 other people which worked out well enough although I would prefer to travel with less people from now on. We took an overnight bus which was supposed to be 16 hours. The bus left later than it was supposed to and had some delays ( not surprising since this is India). It actually wasn't a bad ride overall and for a good amount of time. One section of the trip when we were near Goa was a tiny road down through a mountain. We could see the huge valley next to us as we wove our way nauseatingly down the side of the mountain for may 20-25 minutes. I didn't particularly appreciate that part of the trip.

Aside from that though everything was very nice. It was fabulous to be away from the pollution of the city. Goa is actually fairly large and it takes a bit to get around there. Unlike in Hyderabad where it takes 45 minutes to get to Banjara Hills because of traffic, in Goa it takes half an hour to get somewhere because it is that far away. The big market which I was keen to go to in Anjuna was actually 45 minutes away and only open on certain days. We asked the owner of our guesthouse to reccomend a beach and market area which is where we went on Saturday. Friday we arrived and found our guesthouse and ate a lovely seafood meal (yay shrimp!) and then took a bus over to the area with a number of churches in it. Half the group wasn't so much into seeing churches so waited around a shop for a bit while three of us went up to another church and the really cool ruins of another church. The churches are very elaborate but I was dissapointed that I didn't see the mix of cultures in the churches as I had been told about in the lecture I attended on Goa. I looked for signs of Hindu temples or of mosques but in the few churches we visited I didn't see them. As I said though, Goa is very large and there are many many churches so I guess we didn't go to the right ones. I also took a lot of pictures of bridges in the hopes that one of them would be the bridge in the Bourne Supremacy because they are in Goa at the beginning of that movie. I don't think I got it but apparently they filmed in the town we were Panjim.

Saturday we hit the markets and the beach. I'm so tired of hearing "Madame" and "good price" and "Taxi?" you have no idea. I spent a fair amount of money in Goa although it is actually pretty cheap there. After some time walking around and getting food ( I had salad and avacado! other people had burgers but my stomach was feeling a little unhappy so I sadly declined) we went and laid out on the beach. The beach was gorgeous and very clean. We set up next to the aptly named "Typsy food and drink stand".

The water was a great temperature and even just sitting on the beach was nice because of the breeze. The air is so much cleaner! The waves looked a bit strong but weren't actually too bad.

I had steak for dinner on Saturday which was glorious. We also found an amazing French bakery with dirty cheap everything. I don't know how I will be able to live with US prices when I get back. I think I could easily live in Goa as long as I had no schedule because we had to wait a REALLY long time every time we tried to eat. Other than that it is amazing and I bought a whole bunch of things. We also took a really rediculous sunset cruise which had nice views but silly music and dancing. I decided to just watch the water and land from the front of the ship away from the crazy cheesiness which was quite nice.

I will post pictures when the internet is being reasonable again, which it isn't right now. Thursday night I head down to Tamil Nadu to see an ashram so I will update about that when I come back. I will dare to dream that the internet will have returned to the guesthouse by then. We did get curtains in the common room while I was gone!

Buddha walks into a sandwhich shop and says, "Make me one with everything."

That joke appeals to my philosophical and dorky senses and makes me smile every time. :)

I'm leaving for Goa on Thursday afternoon and coming back Monday then leaving for Tiruvannamalai( a small pilgrimage town in the state of Tamil Nadu) on that Thursday and returning Monday. A family friend has graciously offered to show me and some traveling companions around the ashram and local sights. I'm excited for traveling! I will try and update on Goa when I get back. Maybe we will have internet then?!!

And now here is a short list of
Words I won’t forget in Hindi:

Dayalu( kind hearted)- I think of Dayenu the Passover song
Kalam (pen)- sounds kinda like Gollum the way its pronounced
Dhobi( laundry man) – Like Dobby from Harry Potter
Gulab (rose)- For those of you who know Fun with Eggs I think of ‘Gay in the Gulag’.
Kendra (centre)- because it’s a name I won’t forget
Kamzor (weak)- it’s the dinosaur that died out before the rest of them because it’s weak and that’s why you’ve never heard of it.
Lekhak /lekhika (writer)- close to my last name

525,600 Minutes. How do you measure a year? (or Emily's Philosophical rantings)

Right now I’m measuring in Malaria pills. Two a day for the rest of my stay here+ 1 week after I return. I finished my first bottle of pills recently and it was like oh, wow. All my other supplies like conditioner and toothpaste and various vitamins are also making me aware of the passage of time. Our first few days in the old guest house seem like a lifetime ago. Like I’ve said, time is weird here, and I still kind of feel like I’m in summer camp.

Being here has also been a good chance for me to think about a lot of things in my life and who I am and who I’ve been becoming recently. I’ve had a chance to evaluate some of my past actions and look at some friendships which needed to be examined on a number of counts. I hope I can make up for anything I might have done and make right what needs righting. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m so far away or maybe because India is a deeply spiritual place, or maybe it was just the right time, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.

While I can’t say that I’ve had one really life-changing moment ( and I can’t deny that I’m sort of waiting for it a little bit), I can say that the whole experience of being here has been changing me a little bit at a time. I believe we are changed by all our experiences, but maybe this time I can see it a little more. Not only am I getting to see India, I am getting to see the US in a different way. Students in the guesthouse are from all over the country (and some other countries too) and it has been really educational to get to know them. I’ve realized that I stereotype people more than I’d care to admit. Although I’ve traveled to a number of places around the US, I’m still a very East Coast/ New England kind of girl.

In a nutshell my view of the country has been something like this: the Midwest was the part of the country that didn’t matter, California was where all the uber weird hippy vegetarian/vegan people live, the South is just scary, although often hospitable, Florida is its only little oasis/retirement home and the northeast coast is pretty much where everything is happening. Yes, that is really sad, but I never realized just how ingrained those stereotypes were and how wrong they were. I’ve met fascinating people from Washington, Missouri, Georgia, California, New Orleans, Wyoming etc. They may not be the typical representative of their state, but really is there such a thing as a typical representative? I mean yea New York is going to vote Liberal and Texas is gonna go conservative but does that mean you can just compartmentalize people and leave them in their respective boxes?

I also realize I’ve been really lucky to travel the way I have and at the same time it’s shocking that with all this traveling I’ve still had so many stereotypes! I’m extremely grateful to my parents for letting me come here even though they had mixed feelings about it and for giving me the opportunities I’ve had to travel to quite a few other really amazing places. I’ve been lucky to have so much.

Talking with all these people has made me think about a lot of other things too besides just my stereotypes. It’s made me wonder who I am and how I come across to these people who have never met me and are getting to know me now. Everyone here has a very distinct and interesting personality, so I wonder what I’m like to them. I’m not sure who the me that exists right now is, but hopefully I will figure that out while I’m here. I’ve seen some changes in myself over the past several years which I’m not too happy with and I’m working to set myself back to the right place.

Along the same lines on a more philosophical note, I’ve always thought that everything happens for a reason and I’ve been thinking about that recently too. People don’t always like that idea because when something really tragic happens there doesn’t seem to be a reason and it can seem hurtful to imply that a tragedy was somehow deserved in cases where the opposite seems true. I was thinking though that maybe everything happens for a reason but that reason doesn’t necessarily pertain to us specifically which is why it doesn’t seem fair or right or whatever. We think we are the center of the universe but we are just one part of it so maybe something that hurts me needs to happen because it affects someone else in some necessary way?

Perhaps that is very wide view point but seeing as I am here in my Junior year with no real idea where my life is headed, I guess I have to believe everything will fall into place. I think things do fall into place, but lately I’ve been realizing that I need to at least make some effort to find at least a general direction. Direction is probably the wrong word because you can always change ‘direction’ and there isn’t really a destination (another problem I have- I’m always trying to get somewhere and missing the here and now (but I’m getting very philosophical in these paragraphs and I digress a bit)).

A lot of people on my program have a very strong sense of what their future plans are but I’m pretty much out at sea. Seeing as the economy is pretty broken right now and finding a job is a terrible task I can at least not feel too bad yet. I’ve been trying to figure out what I might want to do. There are so many things I’m interested in but I don’t know if I’ve found what I really want to do. Maybe it needs to be a collection of things. I’m interested in writing/editing/photography, which seems like the best bet but I also want to do something community service based and I also want to live on a farm and grow my own veggies and psychology sounds really interesting and possibly something I’d be good at but I don’t really know! There is social work, traveling jobs are pretty cool, and massage therapy… the list goes on. I love listening to people’s stories so I think I need to be involved with people. Therapy/psych is kind of intriguing because it’s the closest thing to getting paid to listen to people tell you about their lives, but I have no official training for that yet. So perhaps I can make some headway on choosing something(s) to do with my life.

At any rate, that was a bit of my inner musings and not so much about India as about my crazy mind and what’s been going on internally. I’ll get a more Indiafied post going soon. I’ve been composing a list of things I miss from the US and things I will miss in India, but it’s a bit early for that yet.

Note: We have no internet in our house because of some problem over in South Campus where we live and so this post is a number of days old now because it has been saved on my computer . I brought my computer down to main campus today to get some things done. Also I have tests coming up and next weekend I will be traveling to Goa which is a very interesting place.