This blog is not chronological. I'm sorry.
We were befriended at the train station by these little boys and their mothers. We thought their mothers were asking for food, or money for food, but really they had food and wanted to make sure we had eaten lunch! They wanted us to take a picture of them so we put lauren's hat and my sunglasses on them. Soon the little boys and our laughter had drawn a crowd of about 100 and the police came with his stick to yell at us. When the train came, the mothers grabbed my hat and had it passed through the crowd through the window into the train and somehow that trick managed to reserve us seats. We ended up giving them both our straw hats and we had to get funny baseball hats in Mysore (no straw hats), and now everybody asks me if I play cricket.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Kannur, Kerala, India
I awake at five to the call to prayer blaring out of the loudspeaker of the mosque across the way. As static-riddled as it is it sounds so beautiful, I think, just loud enough to overcome the whirring of the ceiling fan in our too-hot hotel room. In only three days Kerala has convinced us of its magic. Karnataka was beautiful, fascinating and welcoming as well (that's where the photo was taken) but never have I been in a place where the people are as happy and proud of where they're from as Kerala. We came into Kerala on a bus ride that felt, for two out of the four hours, like a ride at an amusement park. It was down a one-lane, two-way road ("highway") down and out of the mountains that was so destroyed by the monsoons we were shocked they even run bus service on it. "At least it's not boring" we said to each other, as we held on to the seats in front of us. A little later, once we had gotten to reasonably flat ground, we were shaken out of our sleepiness to see a procession we were trying to drive through. It was a theyyam, we realized - a pre-hindu ritual with music and dance - and this one had giant cylindrical colored domes being carried on sticks in front of many women in white carrying candles. There was another around the next bend, except this one was headed by a man dressed as a giant peacock on stilts! It was so beautiful and in our sleepy dreamstate felt like we had fallen into another world. These theyyams happen every night between November and May, so we've made it to two more since then. The first one had a giant dancing cow, another peacock, and a monkey, and a lot of colorful dancers. It was more of a performance, not a procession, and there was a large audience. Last night we went to one in a village some 14 km outside of Kannur. It was a theyyam adapted to syrian christian faith. We were quickly given candles stuck through cardboard with a box of colored tissue paper around it and told to run up to the front of the procession. The procession went for miles, glowing colors winding through the jungle on a small path through a village. It was an amazing melding of the ancient and modern, of pagan and christian symbolism. It was headed by a group of men in dhotis drumming and dancing, and bringing up the rear was a giant virgin mary float covered with flashing lights and blasting bollywood music, all the while adolescent nuns in the middle chanted in malayalam (the local language in Kerala). A very different kind of Christ revering.
Yesterday, before the theyyam, we went to the beach in town. We wandered back from the beach through the shrubs towards what looked like might be a public bathroom to change into our sarongs (everybody was bathing in their saris). We realized we had walked into a funeral as we saw people building a fire on top of a body. Oops, sorry. Whoa. What an intense way to say bye to your loved one.
Other highlights:
- Gokarna, Karnataka - old man with no pants delivering milk in a reused soda bottle (raw, fresh, local?) to the restaurant we were eating at while the owner fed chapatis to a sacred cow (necklace, tikka marks).
- Bylakuppe, Karnataka - renting a motorcycle from the brother of the watch-seller and exploring the Tibetan refugee settlements scattered amidst dry rice paddies. 60 feet tall gold-plated buddha, monks emailing, monks riding motorcycles, and monks talking on their cell phones!
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
