God-appaloosa Part 3: Water for Elephants

I didn’t anticipate many things before coming to India: the traffic, the frequent monsoon rains, the 2010 Commonwealth Games. But more dance-offs with strange men, again? Really?

The Ganpati (Ganesha) festival started on the same day as Eid-al Fitr, and it ended last Wednesday. It is a ten day festival for Lord Ganesha, whose birthday is then. He is the elephant-headed Hindu god of good fortune and prosperity (though his mother is the goddess of wealth, Laxmi. She has all human features). After my interview, I biked back to my family’s flat, thinking I was late. Luckily, the Indian minute is not a New York minute. The family consisted of Aai, Baba, their son, their daughter-in-law, and their grandson, Adu. The cricket game was on, but it was turned off so the traditional Ganpati music, played on a CD, could be heard. Aai and Baba had taken their shiny metal Ganesha idol out of the case in my room and began the ceremony.

The ceremony was a complete sensory experience. Ganpati was adorned with a cotton necklace, several flower necklaces, bindi of a special powder, seeds, turmeric, and more flowers. While the music played and the family gathered around the idol clapping softly with the music, Adu lit incence. We all received bindi between our eyes. After adorning the idol, Aai lit a small, waxed wick on the tip of a metal dish. Every member of the family circled the large flame towards the idol clockwise, kind of as if every family member lit a Hanukah candle. Everyone said their prayers which included raising their hands together to their bowed nose and their eyes closed. One or two slow spins accompanied and we each waved our hands over the candle. Hearing the happy music, smelling the incense, feeling the bindi and the candle’s heat, seeing the beautiful idol, and finally, eating the special Ganpati treat, Moduk (a sweet dumpling treat that Ganesh apparently loves), revealed the wholeness of the ritual. Every part of me sensed the celebration.

But once the song was finished, my brother turned the cricket match back on.

The modern Hindu, right Oma?

They family came over for dinner that night when we repeated, and again the next day.

Part of the Ganpati ceremony is to submerge your individual idol on either the 3^rd, 5^th, or 7^th day of the festival (many go any day during the festival, depends upon individual tradition). The immersion is to give Ganpati a proper farewell and for good luck in the coming year. I did not get to go to my family’s submersion, as their idol is metal. My Aai went to some with her friends.

There are celebrations every night in and around the city that get progressively crazier each night. Pune is supposed to have the biggest and best Ganpati celebrations. People come here from Mumbai, not the other way around, and others come from all over India. Preston, friend Sam, friend Kacie, and I went to downtown Pune the last and craziest night.

The three main East-West streets in Pune were closed to vehicles, and it was alive with a vibrant and humongous crowd.

We walked to the river on a broad street comfortably filled with families, groups of men, street artists chalking elaborate Ganesha’s on the street, and floats. The average float had about twenty people dancing in front of it to what I call religious techno. Red powder, gulal, was flung into the air, seeping into everybody’s sweaty hair, skin, and clothing. Atop the float were usually three or four kids, sometimes blowing bubbles, sometimes dancing, and sometimes just sitting around, and then the idol itself. The Ganpati’s were made of plastic porcelain, painted elaborately. They were surrounded by a hodgepodge of colorful decorations, with streamers and painted scenes and flowers and so much more (can you say strobe light?). Ganpati usually looked jolly, though sometimes a bit elusive and a few even looking menacing.

We made it to the river and saw rows of lights and people surrounding the river. The bridge was crowded. People immersed their idol into the river by one chosen representative dunking it once, allowing the bubbles from the bottom to come out, finally watching it sink like a divine bath toy. In all, the newspaper reported 40,000 idols were immersed into the river in Pune. Also, six died in Mumbai trying to immerse their idol into the intemperate ocean! Now I understand why people say religion is dangerous.

(Was that in poor taste or just a regular bad joke?)

We crossed the unsteady bridge I remembered crossing my first day in India, this time at night and with many people watching others swim with a sinking idol of a deity.

On the other side, the pace picked up. We ran into a family that invited us four whities to dance with them. They banged drums, one snare, one bass, and we all danced to it. This was the last time that we danced with a female, and the three were under 15. The rest were men whom we danced with us, presumably fathers and uncles, while gulal rained on our emancipated, celebratory demeanor. We danced unapologetically, busting out moves such as “the Point-and-Shake,” “The Conga/Eyebrow-Rise ‘n’ Smile,” and the Man-Shimmy, or the Mimmy.

After twenty or so minutes of continuous dancing, they had to move and so did we. We went to the thick of it, Laxmi Road.

The rest of the night became blurrier, not from traditional forms of intoxication, but from the rigorous combination of all-out-balls-to-the-wall dancing your face off surrounded by a bunch of random men and trekking through the insanity—what I imagine Mardi Gras or Carnival or a peaceful riot to be like—sometimes being forcibly moved by the saturated crowd. Eventually we had to stop dancing because friend Kacie was getting her butt pinched too many times, and then we understood why were only dancing with men at the floats. I had many variations of “What country?” screamed into my earlobe. The jovial men were all excited to see us and to dance with us, though they challenged us with many show-me-what-you-got and bring-it-white-boy looks. I thought of my friend Chet from the nightclub.

The main corner, where the Ganesh temple actually is year-round on Laxmi, was inaccessible two ways, so we had to walk around it to get in front of it.

Covered in blinking white Christmas lights, the interior was gold and silver plated with a happy Ganesh sitting in front. Nobody was really inside, that would have been 50,000 too many outside voices inside that one-room temple.

We left friend Sam and friend Kacie to try to find Preston’s host-sister, Preeti. It took us an hour and a half of text messaging her, her telling us to go to various places in the area that we didn’t know. I asked dozens of people, one being a drunken cop who kissed my hand in farewell, and most gave contradictory directions.

(God-appaloosa Part Two: Twenty Eight Days Later and) Bhimashankar

The truth is, I did not get to celebrate Eid al-Fitr much, the celebration of the first day after Ramadan. God-appaloosa Part Two: Twenty Eight Days Later was not very exciting.
Last Saturday I went to a professor's apartment for my Independent Study Project, which is on Muslims in India. He is a self-proclaimed secular Muslim. He works in a non-profit focusing on literacy and education for Muslims. Professor Tamboli lives in an apartment similar to the one I live in, and when I got there, they were eating biscuits with tea. His wife was a lawyer but now works at home. He served me a hot, milky, and sweet soup with small rice noodles and nuts. We talked about Islam in India and the Muslim community. He was a very informative and great person to talk to, but because of his secular nature, offered only a scholarly perspective on Muslims in India. His wife offered me food, and I should have said no. Unfortunately, I did not want to offend and said yes. I ended up being the only person eating and I could only eat about half because I knew that I would eat with my family for Ganpati, the ten-day festival for Ganesh that began on that same day. So I awkwardly ate some lamb and rice while some of his friends showed up to visit. I stayed for about ten more minutes and then realized it was my time to go.

But that was last weekend. This weekend began on Friday (as most do) when the literature students (about 13 of us) went to a book release for our professor, R. Raj Rao. His publisher is Penguin, and the book is called "Hostel Room 131." I have not read it, but it is about a romance story between two male students at Engineering College. Along with Raj was a prince from Gujarat and a friend of his. The prince became famous when he came out of the closet several years ago. He was on Oprah in 2007 and now works as a gay rights activist. Afterwards, we ran into him at dinner with a friend of his.

Saturday morning began with Yom Kippur services. I met my friend Alayna there and the first thing I noticed when I got there was that everybody was wearing white. I, of course, was wearing my red and white striped button-down, not my all-white. Alayna was wearing a blue shirt. Oops. There were very nice and colorful rugs on the marble floor, apparently for a sitting service later in the afternoon, but they honestly should stay.
They really tied the room together.

We went straight to the bus station and sat for two hours and questioned every person we could where the bus to Bhimashankar was. Finally, our mostly-yellow bus, adorned with many other colors as most buses here are, arrived. Three hours passed slowly as we drove through the lush, verdant Maharastran countryside. Around dusk we finally arrived at Bhimashankar. But we could not tell what time of day it was because of the fog. For some reason, the town seemed eerie. A one-road town with shops and restaurants, Bhimashankar is a local religious and eco-tourist site. It has a large temple for Shiva, which we visited that night. Walking down the some two-hundred dark foggy stairs, most of it not lit up, we passed by more shops. The temple is mostly black on the outside, with rounded stair-like stone pedals escalating into a pinnacle. The layout was similar to the temple I went to in Ellora, but because it was not a festival, it was not very crowded. We went inside and looked at others saying prayers to the statue of the many-headed Shiva without removing their shirts or wetting their hands with milk. We received kumku (bindi in Hindi, "marks between the eyes" in English) and walked a bit more, and then left. Temples seems more familiar now and I am beginning to understand why some call Hinduism a way of life. They are everywhere and everywhere they are majestic in their own way. They cannot be equated to churches or synagogues because anywhere there is an idol can be a temple. In a backyard, in a bedroom, right next to the supermarket, in the biggest intersection in Pune, in the middle of a forest, in a bookstore, temples are omnipresent; depending on who the god is and who owns the temple and how big the temple is, different people worship in it.

I broke the fast that night with whatever we could read on the Marathi menu, which as usual was delicious. We awoke the next morning in our rented out room (I wouldn't call where we stayed a hostel but rather, a room that some guy rents out to tourists) to people talking over the TV early in the morning, and it sounded like they were in our room. People fought and we fought the urge to wake up until nine. We got some deep fried lentils and potatoes for breakfast (breakfast total: under 50 cents), and then went off to find a guide, which one of the ACM program coordinators said was necessary. We found the guy in the blue shirt who spoke English and we asked him about a guide. His friend, Vilas became our guide and friend.

Vilas was a tall skinny man who walked fast and climbed with agility. While trekking, he wore a black rain jacket the whole time and never drank water, except once. We first went to a waterfall. On the way there, right outside the town, the garbage took over the walking path. Gradually, as we got further into the woods, the garbage waned and the forest got thicker. The waterfall was nice and there was a Hindu statue and a carving in the rock of the harmony of man and woman right next to the falls. Another temple.

Then we trekked "height" as Vilas put it. You must understand, Vilas' English was about as strong as our Marathi. Sentences throughout the day were usually one verb in English and then the rest in Marathi, which I usually just repeated back to him and nodded, pretending to understand. As we got higher, a stream that probably became the waterfall passed us by. Vilas called it "original" and "fresh" and made the gesture for drinking. I drank some after he did and it was crisp and clean and certainly better than the plastic flavor of bottled water. We trekked further up and saw some Shekroo climbing in the trees. They had yellow-ish bodies and black faces and long tails and generally were more skittish than the monkeys at Daulatabad. But they had a great place to call home. The lush rolling hills of the valley in the Western Ghats smelled wet and sweet but sometimes like cow poop. The height was apparently 5,000 feet up, and when we got to the top, it was all fog. As if floating right outside an airplane window, the highest point in Bhimashankar was surreal. The cliff followed a standard plot of a novel and we were at the climax. There was not much falling action and we could faintly see the epilogue but I don't know how high up we were. What I do know is that I could make out the house but certainly not a person or an individual tree. After sitting on the highest point on the ridge for twenty quiet minutes, unable to see any view, we began our descent.

Eventually we figured out that Vilas invited us to his house for lunch, and we graciously accepted. After all, we had nothing else to do. His village was half an hour away by bus. On the way, I borrowed Jasper's iPod and we listened to some American music. First was the Band, which Vilas did not like. Next was the Beach Boys, which as Alayna put it: "How can you not like the Beach Boys?" Then a bit of the Boss, but I switched to Michael Jackson when he said his name. "He dead now," said Vilas.
"Ho ho, very sad." I don't think he knew what sad meant as we listened to Billie Jean.

He asked if we were "Veg/non-Veg?" and I said two of us were non-Veg, Jasper being Veg. At the bus stop/convenience store/hang out, Vilas got a live chicken from the owner and we paid for it (120 rupees, or like $2.50). I was really happy he let us pay for it, the least we could do. He carried the chicken by its bound feet upside-down a kilometer to his coral green house. We were not in a tourist town-- this was Grade-A, cream of the crop, bona fide rural India. I was just smiling and laughing the whole time.
His house did not have electricity or running water and the only thing that seemed to run on batteries was the sole clock in the living room/bedroom. One of the other rooms was the kitchen and the other was what seemed to be a storage/multi-purpose room. It was the middle room and had no outside doors to it so it was dark. He beheaded the chicken in a metal bucket, plucked the feathers, and cut it up in front of us while his one-year-old naked son watched us with big eyes and a straight face. He could walk but could not yet speak. His wife began preparations for dinner. Soon his two other boys came back from playing. One was ten and the other six. When finished with the chicken, Vilas showed us the water hole next to his house and his temple fifty feet from his house. The water hole came from a natural spring he showed us (no need for a well). They got water from that and cleaned clothes in the pond. That was the water we drank, straight from the horses' mouth. The temple was rainbow-colored straight out of Willy Wonka's factory and had a simply carved steeple. His idol was a red stone woman, but the inside was locked so we did not go in. Vilas and the three of us climbed the tree next to it and sat for a while, taking in everything. Soon it was just Jasper, Alayna, and I sitting in the tree wondering how we had gotten so lucky to be here.

Soon our language barrier grew larger because our brains were not functioning at full capacity. The boys played with my America deck of cards (thank you Aunt Jenny!) and they wrote numbers in both English and Marathi with our pens on my pocket-sheets of paper. Conversation revolved around the boys who showed us their English books. We talked a bit about government and how he and his wife voted last year, a bit about family members' names, languages the children spoke, and of course, the occasional misunderstanding. The boys listened to the iPod and took pictures on Jasper's camera. The baby boy played with the camera, mostly just pressing buttons and enjoying the noises it made.

After two hours or so lunch was ready. We ate the chicken in a really spicy red broth with chapatis and onions. The very fresh chicken was quite bony and we had to pick at it to get the meat. Due to the lack of meat, we put the raw onions in the broth and grabbed at them with our piece of chapati to get the flavor. I was quite hungry and, from a combination of many factors, ate a bit quickly. He told me I could slow down, and I felt a bit embarrassed. Soon bhat was served after the chapatis were finished to soak up the broth. It was an amazing meal and for dessert we had a handful of sugar.

After we finished we went to the bus and we said goodbye to the family. We gave the little boys our pens and I gave them my notebook (after taking out the notes I had written). I think they still have about half of my deck of cards.

We waited at the bus stop/convenience store/hang out for a while, surrounded by men staring at us while we sat in plastic chairs and waited. We were tired and ready to go back. We gave Vilas the money for being our guide that day (at this point I had almost forgotten), and after missing one bus, we caught the next.

We stood for the first hour on the bus back because there were no open seats. When I did get to sit, I fell asleep, only to wake up in the outskirts of Pune.

God-appaloosa Part 1: Indians of the Lost Ark

Stepping into a synagogue on the morning of Rosh Hashanah, as I had done for the past twenty years of my life (except last year, sorry God!), I felt unsettlingly foreign. I was one of three whities, the services were all in Hebrew, and what’s more, they made me wear a tallis? This is no Classical Reform, and I don’t see a Brazilian man making off-color jokes to the congregation.

Three days later it felt very natural when my family turned off the TV to commence the ceremonies of Ganpati, only to turn it back on the instant they finished. Now this was more familiar.

Ever since coming here I have felt that India is not different but parallel, and that the things different would be surprisingly similar and the things similar would be surprisingly different. I am happy to have found this through religion and these past weeks were God-appaloosa.

Three holidays in two weeks, three religions in one religious clusterf#@% of a country, and one Religious Studies minor determined to experience them all.

Round one: Rosh Hashanah. This one should be a piece of Hamentashen. I went to the Red Temple, one of two synagogues in Pune and the largest in Asia outside Israel, the day before to find out when services were. The outside of the temple looks simple and imposing like an Anglican Church (steeple and all) and it is built entirely from brick-red brick. I waited for the go-ahead from the security guard who questioned me (Ever since 26/11, when Indian Jews in Mumbai were targeted by the terrorists, security is pretty high at the Red Temple and no goys are allowed in during the High Holidays). Should I bust out my last name to prove my Jew credentials (J-cred)? What about the Sh’mah or the Kiddush or perhaps something more covenant related?

Finally, the caretaker of the synagogue, who I later found out was named David ben Schlomo, motioned me in.

What’s that, David ben Schlomo, you only need to look at me to know I’m a Jew? That obvious, eh?

The first thing that I noticed about David was his white yarmulke and his dark skin. Call me what you want but I was surprised. I do not encounter Sephardim often, much less a man ethnically Indian wearing a similar little beanie to the one that I got from Sam Driks’ Bar Mitzvah seven years ago. The second thing I noticed about David ben Schlomo was the name David ben Schlomo. Enough said.

He gave me a little card with the times for all the services for the High Holidays and I knew I was stepping into some orthodox grounds and that I may be preparing myself for embarrassment. Can’t I be like the other secular Jews who go to India and take Jew-sabbatical (Please note the irony in that contraction. You see, sabbatical comes from the Hebrew word for…oh nevermind)?

The next evening I arrive a little late to services (family: think John and Jenny, not Steve and Louise) and I was one of the first. I sat down on a bench facing the center of the synagogue, not the Torah. The synagogue was simply decorated with white paint and floral decorations. The Ten Commandments were carved in English and Hebrew and in the same white marble that covered the floors, and there were several other framed signs in Hebrew. There were white columns holding up the balcony and had blue floral caps, with each column having a distinct blue floral adornment. In the center of the sanctuary was a raised island on which the rabbi (called something else here that I cannot remember) led services.

In the end about forty people showed up for the hour-long service. The Pune Jewish community is about one-fifty and shrinking. Most have left for Israel, and I will talk about that later. Everybody looked Indian to me and some of the women, who were all on the right side (guess where the men were), wore little fabric squares clipped to their hair to accompany their sari. The younger generation of girls wore jeans and blouses and one girl looked like she came straight from school, jeans and sneakers and all. Some of the men wore button downs and nice slacks (including me. [And you’re welcome, Dad.]), while some wore jeans and two my age wore t-shirts. But they all wore yarmulkes (including me).

“Shall we get started?” was the last thing I understood coming from the rabbis mouth. His all-Hebrew service was not only the orthodox version (thus the prayers unabridged) but sang in a totally different tune and away from the thinly spread congregation, toward the arc on what I presumed to be the East side of the temple. His echo and my faint Bar Mitzvah memories and the foreign pace of the service made me try very hard to follow and then give up and only pretend to do so. I had begun a conversation with a guy my exact age I found out and continued it intermittently throughout the service. And I didn’t feel weird because it seemed like about half of the people were in conversation as well. I guess half the people were paying attention just like at services back home, except here they didn’t pretend to be paying attention like we do.

The guy is named Ari Hyam (total J-cred) and after talking for a while and consulting his mother on the other side of the sanctuary after services, invited me to dinner. After a short rickshaw ride where Ari comforted me when saying that rickshaw drivers are all a-holes (something I had been wondering if Indians felt the same way), we arrived at his cozy apartment. He is studying engineering at the University of Pune. His dad, who was not at services, was watching TV when I arrived. He is Robin Hyam and he made Aliyah in 1975 but returned to India on a visit and never left. At the dinner we discussed many issues of common thread between Jews, and I enjoyed discovering the comparisons and contrasts they had to my American Jewish experience.

What I found most interesting was their connection to Israel and their relationship with the goyim in India. For them, India was a nice place to stay and Robin expressed thankfulness that Indians have let them worship freely all these years, yet his heart was in Israel. For such a small community, and for a family that was really attached to their Jewish identity, it made sense that they had such a fondness and closeness with Israel. He said that the Indian Jewish population was much larger before Israel, and that in a series of three major spurts Jews have made Aliyah. First right after creation, second in the seventies, and third around now-ish. The Hyams’ son was in Israel studying Hebrew and Robin served in the IDF. He is now head of a physical security company. They did not seem to mourn what was regarded to them as the inevitable end to the Indian Jewish community, but rather express excitement for Israel. And of course, we had the necessary Israeli politics talk. Indian Jews don’t eat beef (to respect Hindus), do henna on weddings, and intermarriage is not only common but necessary; however, they don’t celebrate Hindu holidays or traditions and can only marry a gentile if he or she converts.

The meal was kosher and goat and I think I ate its liver.

The next morning I thought I was Steve and Louise late (being an hour late [sorry if you are reading this Mr. and Mrs. Gruenembaum, not trying to draw attention to you.]) but I was an hour earlier this time than the majority of the congregants. About twice the attendance of the night before, the service was the similar but they blew eight rounds of the shofar, and there was no contest for longevity, a.k.a. my favorite part of the service.

I spoke with the two other white folks during the snack break after services and the girl grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. Her uncle is from Overland Park (Jewish Geography at its finest). She seemed more familiar with the service and knew what was going on with the whole afternoon water prayer thing which I did not.

I think in the end the Jewish Diaspora experience is pretty varied and we all do things much more differently than we think. The Jewish experience is by no means concrete and clear. But in the end, even the Hyams had hooked noses and an inescapable feeling of being different from their neighbors. Like some I know, they take pride in it. A businessman and family man I met at morning services, who only goes to synagogue five or so times a year however, seemed to reject his religion but not his identity. And in the end, that is all we are, an identity, and it does not matter who you….

Blah blah blah ok, end of Round one. More to come.

The Non-Indian

With wet milk on my hands, I walked out of the temple buttoning my shirt and with an I-Come-In-Peace disposition, I rang the bell enough to observe the ritual but not loud enough to make more than a click. I am in another God’s home.

Thursday morning, we left for the Ajanta and Ellora Caves, a four-day trip to wrap up orientation. Six hours on a bus with no known shock absorbers. We placed our backpacks in the trunk and I placed myself near the back.

I didn’t eat breakfast because I thought they were going to provide it. Not breakfast but a smorgasbord of snacks, and when I say smorgasbord I mean boxes of fruit, countless bags of banana chips and paprika Funyan-like chips, regular potato chips and potato chips with ridges, chocolate cupcakes, fruit cupcakes, chocolate cookies of three varieties, and then lunch. Food, sleep, food, sleep.

We arrived at a fort that had to either be built by genius defenders or paranoid warlords, or a bit of both. Built by Jains and then conquered by Mughals in the twelfth century, psychological defense was the strategy to protecting their hill fort, and though most of it was made more accessible for tourists, our tour guide in a thick accent made the tricks and traps known. It had three huge walls, twenty-two feet at the largest base, and the entrances did not line up. Most attackers did not get past the walls because it had many dead ends. By that time the defenders could fend them off. If they did not, however, two moats, bat-infested tunnels winding through the rock like a labyrinth, a twelve-foot long brass cannon that only faces away from the fort, and a tripping stone might. It was a feat not only in architecture but in superb intellect as well.

Men so hungry for a sale tried to sell us knick-knacks from the bus window and did not cease until we got back on the bus again. Even after I told one man I already bought a booklet, he insisted that I buy his because it was better.

There were monkeys at the cave that had white hair and black manes and tails a yard long. They climbed trees and cars and their butts looked like hearts and I wanted one.

Before we left I saw a man sitting on a column while a monkey sat on the one next to his. The monkey put his elbows on his arms and sighed, looking aimlessly and probably thinking about either food or danger or nothing at all. Aren’t we all. Both primates seemed quite complacent and I realized that the non-homo sapiens primates are not photo opportunities as we foreigners (I emphasize the me in we, see photos to come!!!!) used them but instead are just neighbors trying to live.

Let’s just say the locals took more photos of us than of the ones with the tails.

The next morning Jason, Alayna, and I woke up decidedly tired, to say the least.

We went to Ajanta cave on Friday, and as I told my mother, they blew Petra out of the water. Monolithic caves carved out of a rock face a quarter mile long built as far back as sixteen hundred years ago encircle a creek and a lush hill. A waterfall carved the rock in layers so that before the big drop, large pools flow into one another like continuous flattened hourglasses. Twenty-six or so caves in all, they ranged in height (from two high-ceiling stories to ten feet) but most went about fifty yards deep and twenty yards wide. Buddhist temples with the man himself carved next to detailed murals and ornate columns depicting religious stories, beautiful patterns, and various gods filled these “caves” with a feeling of wonder, mostly why I had never heard of these before. Ajanta is particularly famous for its “cave paintings” whose figures resemble the works of Da Vinci rather than the works of Neanderthal. One painted woman wore simple white pearls but if you flashed a light from below them the all-natural paint glittered. We were asked to take off our shoes before entering each cave and I understand why.

The vendors were especially persistent there, and one man, whom I met as Aric (transliterated) at the bus stop eventually became my number one sales stalker. He told me not to buy from the vendors there because it was overpriced and I thought he was just being nice. Little did I know he had a shop at the market where our bus was located. He found me at the market drinking chuha and persuaded me to come to his shop. He had beautifully crafted stone carvings but his products were not unique. He gave me complimentary chuha as his salesman began to show me things. Eventually I had to tell him I had only one hundred fifty rupees and they still tried to sell me more expensive things. I bought something for a quarter of what he originally offered and I had to leave. But before I did, my man Aric noticed my American dollars in my wallet and continued to follow me with marked down prices for other goods. He persisted and persisted and persisted and again, persisted. A friend Katie finally rescued me with her ability to walk fast and be rude. I’m glad she did because I couldn’t to the man who was my friend before he was my desperate salesman.

The final day we did not need to bus to since the Ellora caves were right next to our hotel. The most famous and the largest was Cave No. 16, which upon first impression reminded me of…absolutely nothing I have ever seen. It’s a completely amazing and unique structure that only can be called a cave because it is all one piece of rock. Carved from the top down (After the queen of the time said she would starve herself until the dome was built, the clever sculptor started from the top.), the entire structure is two stories and more like a building. Stone elephant heads encircle the building and entire epics are carved onto the temple like wallpaper. Every inch has a detail and every detail has a purpose, even if that purpose is self-fulfilling. It took two hundred years to build and I’m surprised that the architectural plans did not disappear in that time. It was awe-some.

Upon all twenty-seven of us walking into the structure, the crowd seemed to go silent like in Cool Runnings when the Jamaicans first arrived in Calgary. There were three hundred sixty degrees of people staring at the massive group of white people, one of the white people was bearded and talking with an Indian girl. He only drew more attention and his guide told him I cannot make conversations with people otherwise I create too much attention. I blushed and felt like a monkey as the girl asked for a photo with me.

We got the afternoon to ourselves and I took a nap only to be woken up by hotel staff doing repairs to my wall while I was in the room asleep. Thanks for the hard work, sirs.

I walked toward No. 16 and I was bothered and tired. Restaurant owners and gift vendors offer themselves for my revenue. Three separate groups of curious Indians stop me and ask to take a picture with me and I’m beginning to realize I could never be famous. Finally, while walking above sixteen toward the summit a group of Indian men hail me down and tell me to stop. One spokesman comes to me:

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know. Up there.”

“You can’t, it’s dangerous.”

I had already had one encounter with overstepping my limits (I walked behind the waterfall the day before when the sign [that I didn’t see!] said not to) and was not prepared to have it again. A separate group of men, some fifty feet in front of us, began to descend the hill.

“Ok, you can go now.”

“What?”

“Wait, first, one picture. Please.”

“…Sure.” The men below seemed to find this whole situation of telling the foreigner what to do hilarious as they took pictures of their spokesman and I. I kept walking and could not tell what their intentions were in stopping me.

The summit was good and I wrote something down.

When I descended, for some reason, I was invisible as if I were back in the States. No stares, no photo requests, no persistent vendors, no restaurant owners, nothing of the sort.

When I got back, we prepared to go to a local temple before dinner. Gene, a program coordinator, told us we would split up in the madness and to just be back before dinner.

Now that’s what I’m talking about.

The temple is a regional religious attraction, a temple for Lord Shiva. That day was his birthday so it was crowded. We heard a microphoned voice from afar and walked toward it. It was coming from a teacher teaching Hindu songs to a gazebo filled with about four hundred boys. We took off our shoes and were allowed to walk around the red perimeter of the one-story building. Meanwhile the kids were expected to sing along with the teacher, reading their booklets as supervisors stood over them and kept them in line. However, a large group of whities encircling the building, staring at the boys distracted them from their studies. I can’t blame them but the songs were somewhere between Ayn Kelohaynu and the Muslim call to prayer. The singer had an electric keyboard to add the magical schmaltz while a little boy held a large wooden instrument similar to a less decorative cello and I forget its name. Behind the boys was a statue to Nandi, the bull god. Also, two walk-in shrines to several gods. They were adorned with idols, carnation-like flowers, and incense.

Then I walked down the late evening streets of the town and it smelled like a food market and it looked like an Indian state fair (sans roller coasters) and it sounded like a different continent. For one of the first times I felt timeless in India and in an age so transient for this emerging nation, those times seem waning. Well, at least in Pune.

I took off my shoes as I prepared to enter what I thought everybody in my group was entering, the temple of Shiva. I had taken my time so I didn’t see anybody else from ACM in the massive line but I wasn’t worried about it, or anything for that matter. A woman at the shoe drop-off shack splashed water on the ground when I tried to put mine on a shelf, so I added mine to the pile on the floor. I stood silently between metal railings and walked slowly forward so as to not get yelled at by the others behind me. About halfway through waiting, the family behind me noticed me swipe away a spider web and said something in Marathi. My listening comprehension was and still is poor. We started up a conversation and pretty soon I exhausted all of the Marathi I could think of. They received me warmly and they giggled with happiness when I called the dog meandering the yard kutra. I learned that the daughter was learning English and I asked her what her name was and she responded. I did not want to push her English, for she looked twelve and probably did not know much. We wanted to continue talking since both parties seemed happy with the interaction but eventually the language barrier hit and we could not talk. Instead we smiled, I partially turned forward again, and the father called the kutra dog. I said khoop chhan and we all laughed. After twenty minutes we reached the temple entrance.

The temple was red and tall, but only had one story open with low ceilings. Upon entering, I noticed men taking off their shirts and I gestured to another man if I should. Eventually I noticed the sign that asked all men to do so. I obliged and revealed my pasty stomach. I followed the thick crowd down three steps into a room with black walls and a black ceiling. The ground was black and covered in chanting topless men praying towards and groping over a railing a statue in the middle. This statue, however, was not complex. I had seen it in Ellora before. It was a two-foot tall cylinder with a circle around it. That was all, and a man in the corner closest was pouring milk onto it from a small hole in a plastic bag. Men touched the statue and kissed it and left multi-colored flowers and aromatic leaves upon it. The cylinder is a phallus and the circle it penetrates represents a vagina. This symbolizes the harmony of life and without the two the next generation cannot exist. I too rubbed the phallus and put my head to the ground.

The room filled with bona fide religion and pure devotion. It was real because I saw Hindus pulling air for a touch of the statue and because I heard the chants and prayers of a people with a confluent spirit. It was real because I smelled the sweat and incense and because I felt the milk wet stone on my hands and the warm bedrock under my feet.

I was a lot of things.

First, it was the first religious experience I had ever had outside a synagogue (I had been to a few Christian services before but those were witnessing religion, not feeling it). Not just spiritual, but religious. It was also my first encounter with an unfamiliar divine, and secondly I felt, in the words of the Ten Commandments (not mine), idolatrous. As palpably surreal as I felt in that black basement of the tall cone temple, I could not help but thirdly feel uncomfortable being in a place so holy to all and only incredibly fascinating to me. I felt like an anthropologist, in an isolating way, and again I rubbed the milky stone phallus timidly while others kissed it with passion and prayed with their soul.

I left fairly soon so that others waiting in that long line could get a chance.

I never realized to whom I had been talking all this time until I heard other people talking to somebody else and I think I have always believed in God, even if I still agree with Vonnegut when he said God is a pack of foma.

I stepped out of the basement and meandered a bit more in the small temple before I put my shirt on again. Another statue of Nandi, another shrine behind a glass window and a wooden screen. Walking out I find American friends and then lose them again in the hustle to find my shoes. I walk with a man from Hyderabad around my age who approached me. He told me it was Shivas birthday and that this temple was famous. I think he wanted to know why I was there but did not ask.

I later found out that we Americans weren’t supposed to go into the temple and I understand why.

In the end, today is Monday and Aai tapped my cheek and called me “my son” after I told her I was excited for what she was making for breakfast tomorrow. She knew it was my favorite.