India- Day 7

India

 Day 7

Site seeing day! Neha picked us up in the car with the driver, and sat in the back seat with us the whole day. A little crammed, but it made it easier to talk. I love this girl- I feel like she’s my Indian soul sister! We had so much in common! She studied psychology and fine arts in college, I told her I studied psychology and art history. We are both scared of dogs and reptiles, we both love reading and cooking and obviously now we both work for SIP. So we had a lot to talk about. Our first stop of the day was St. Thomas Basilica, one of only 3 basilicas in the world that have been built over an apostle’s tomb. We walked around the outside and took pictures, then went inside sat for a little bit admiring the architecture and figures and paintings. We then went to the museum across the street that held the tomb and relics of St. Thomas, which required us to take our shoes off before entering. It wasn’t very crowded, but the few people that were inside were kneeling beneath the tomb and kissing their hands then touching the glass. Neha assumed we were Christians so knew we would be interested in coming here, but she did seem a little confused why we weren’t kissing the ground and praying to St. Thomas like some of the others there. Even though we don’t worship St. Thomas, it was still a really neat place to be and still felt very special to us.

We told her a little bit about our religion, and she said she had heard about Mormons before (first person here so far) because she had studied some different religions in school. She is Jain, which is similar to Hinduism in many ways, but she explained that the main tenet of Jainism is to never harm anything, living or non-living. This means no transportation, no electricity, only eating raw foods, etc… She said her parents are orthodox, but she is not as religious. Because her parents are still very religious, they are in the process of planning her arranged marriage, which she said will happen within a year or so. She’s not thrilled about it because she has a boyfriend, but he belongs to a different sect so isn’t a suitable husband. The conversation made me really grateful that Matt and I got to choose to marry each other!

After we left, we drove along the main coastal road that runs along Marina Beach. We drove for quite a ways (actually it probably wasn’t that far, but it took a long time because of the horrendous traffic) then stopped outside of the city at Sri Sai Baba Temple. My biggest disappointment of the day was that cameras weren’t allowed anywhere on the sacred premises. This place was so beautiful, I wish I could have videotaped the whole thing! As soon as we drove through the gates, there were signs saying to turn off all phones, cameras, and electronics. When we got out, we took off our shoes in the little shoe shack, then began walking through the gardens. The gardens had many different stone pavilions that each housed a different idol. Many people were placing flower garlands over the idols and putting petals at their feet. Even Neha, who described herself as not very religious, would bow and kiss the feet of the idols while chanting some stuff we didn’t understand.
We are starting to catch on to some of the names of the gods, I was so glad we had Neha there to explain the meaning of everything. Like why the gods are depicted with so many faces and arms (because they have many powers and different attributes e.g. faith, providence, and love), and why they sometimes have elephant faces (Ganesha has large ears to better understand, small eyes to concentrate better, large belly to digest all of life’s richness), and why they sometimes have blue skin (this is just Krishna, because he was so dark skinned, but it is hard to depict him as black, so instead he is shown as blue). Neha especially worships the female goddesses and explained how they empower women. We went into the main Sai Baba Temple, and the walls were covered in murals depicting stories of Sai Baba that were strikingly similar to stories of Jesus. Like, so similar that you could have easily taken Sai Baba out and put in Jesus and have the same story. One mural shows Sai Baba healing the leper’s sores, then another showing Sai Baba with a woman at the well, another showing Sai Baba caring for the little children, etc… Neha took the bowl of ashes and blessed us each with a dot of ashes on our foreheads, to open up the center of power and divinity in each of us. As we were walking out, she said that she really wanted to bring us to see Sai Baba because she is strongly devoted to him. She said her sister was infertile for 7 years, then began going to Sai Baba temple every Thursday and worshipping him, and within a year she became pregnant and had a baby boy. She said the baby’s first word was “Sai Baba” when he was just 9 months, and now that he is 2, when all the other kids play with toys, he will only play with Sai Baba figurines, and will only sleep next to a picture of Sai Baba. She said ever since this miracle happened, her whole family worships Sai Baba, even her brother in law who used to be an atheist.  She took us over to a tree that was completely wrapped up with yellow yarn, then gave us each a thread of yarn and told us to make a wish so Sai Baba will help us, and tie the yarn around the tree. I REALLY wish I had pictures of all of this! We also went down to the meditation hall and meditated on mats in front of a big picture of Sai Baba. I am not very good at meditating. The music that is playing all over the grounds is special Sai Baba music, and Neha said that it is good to close your eyes and just focus on the music and where it takes you.

When we left the temple, Neha thought we might be thirsty so she flagged down a man wheeling a big cart of coconuts. She got one for all of us. The coconut man took his machete and whacked off the top and put a straw in so we could drink out the center, then he cut it in half so we could scoop out the flesh and eat it. Yummyy.

Our next stop was Dakshina Chitra, the center for traditional South Indian culture. Typically, it costs Indians only 10 rupees to get in, and foreigners must pay 250 rupees. This is only about 5 bucks, so not a big deal, but Neha still thought it was an outrage and tried to argue with the people at the counter. Also, every place we went we had to pay an extra 20 rupees to bring in a camera. This place was pretty cool, there were lots of artists doing crafts and showing us how they weave silk sarees, or make carvings, or paint on silk. This is much more of a tourist attraction so things were overpriced, but we still bought a couple souvenirs we really liked! We took a lot of pictures here so I won’t go in to as much detail.

I had told Neha the day before that I had heard Snake Park was a cool place to visit (but I didn’t use the word cool because every time I do they say “is AC too high?”). She said Snake Park is good, but Crocodile Bank is better. And wow I am glad we went there! I have never ever ever seen so many crocodiles in my life. There were hundreds. I thought they were fake at first because they sit so still. But then one at a time, one will open his mouth wide, or crawl back in the water. There weren’t too many safety precautions so I was actually kind of scared. There was never any glass, and the stone walls and fences were really low. There were a lot of signs that showed how crocodiles can jump out, so to not stand too close. I didn’t see how it was possible since they moved so slowly. We walked through the park and saw all the hundreds of crocodiles, many types I had never heard of or seen before. On the way out, Matt saw a sign for the “Snake Venom Extraction” demonstration and wanted to go. I am glad we did! It was crazy. The sign said there were 663 snakes in the pit, they were divided into about 50 clay pots, most of them were covered with cloth so not too scary. The 3 men doing the demonstration would take turn lifting snakes out of the pot, then put them on the platform and talk about them. We didn’t understand a word, and Neha was so scared she was looking away most of the time. Our favorite was the cobra. It looked like the movies! Its body was coiled up but his head stood tall and he would jab at things trying to bite them. I don’t know how these snake people are still alive. To do the venom extraction, they pick up the snake and press its teeth into a little vile with a rubber top and you can watch the milky venom drip out. They said if untreated, you would die in 2 days. That part we understood because he said in English, “2 days- dead.” Watching all the snakes gave me the heeby jeebies though I couldn’t stop thinking about it the rest of the day.

After Crocodile Bank, we continued driving down the coastal road and finally made it to Mahabalipuram! It is also called Mamallapuram (everything has 2 names).  This was the thing Matt was most excited about- he had read a lot about it before we came. Before seeing all the ruins, we stopped for lunch at Sterling Hotel (now called Indeco). It was by far our favorite meal so far. They had north Indian food, which we are more familiar with, so Matt got his favorite Murgh Tikka Masala and I had Murgh Saagwala. Before almost every meal, whoever we are with asks us “do you take veg or non-veg?” Veg means vegetarian, and non-veg means meat. It’s funny how many vegetarians don’t even know the names of meat- they just call it “non-veg.” Neha is veg, so she made sure to choose a restaurant that offered both. She made us order soups and appetizers and naan as well, so by the end of the meal we were so stuffed. She said we had to have dessert too, and she ordered lime soda for us. I don’t usually like soda, but this was so good! They brought out a bottle of club soda , then a small cup of fresh lime juice, a small cup of simple sugar syrup, and a small bowl of flaky salt. She showed how to mix it all together to make the soda. It was delicious, much better than Sprite!

Next we went to visit the ruins. First we saw the Shore Temple, Matt hired a guide because he wanted to learn all the details. It used to be underwater, but now it’s been fully excavated. It even withstood the tsunami of 2005. Then we took a short drive over to Five Rathas, also very cool. Lots of pictures here as well.

On the drive back, Neha wanted us to stop at the Hare Krishna Temple. We went, but it was being fully re-constructed. It was HUGE! I wish we could have seen it when it was done. During construction, only one small room was being used for the temple. A worker told us that a ceremony was starting in 20 minutes, so Neha wanted to stay. I’m glad we did, it was really interesting. There were only 3 temple workers, us, and then 2 other people. We just sat criss-cross on the ground during the ceremony. One worker played a drum, another worker chanted songs, and the other worker did the ceremony with the three idols. It started off by blowing into a conch shell three times. Then I think he was feeding all the idols, then he fanned them all, then did some other hand motions I don’t understand to them all. During the ceremony, he came over and sprinkled holy water on each of our heads, then brought a handful of petals for us to smell, and gave us girls each a small handful of petals, then brought over a fire oil lamp with a lot of flames and had us wash the steam over our heads with our hands. At the end, we all kneeled with our heads on the ground, the others lied prostrate on the ground, but Neha said it was fine for us to kneel. The whole thing lasted about 20 minutes. At the end, we gave a donation, and the worker gave us each a handful of flowers and a handful of small white round sugar candy. Neha popped them all in her mouth. I put in one to try it and I about gagged so I hid the rest in my purse and Matt handed off his to me. Neha showed us where to put the flowers outside.  I was so exhausted after the long eventful day, we chatted a lot more in the car, and fell right asleep when we got back to the hotel.