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.