Next we went to an 18th Century Vishnu temple at Nandwara. Evelyn
decided not to go inside. With her swollen foot, taking off her shoes was a
slow and painful process and she wasn't sure she could walk without the
support provided, so Mark went into temple without her. At the time Evelyn
was under the impression it was a Jain temple, so Mark took off his belt.
It impressed nobody, he bemoans. The rule is also take off your socks and
walk barefoot.
Mark describes it thusly: As I walked inside, an officer or something
told me I had to sit down. He had me fill out a form with my name to
register. Then he put a pinch of something in my hand and told me I had to
eat it. I thought it was a spice, but it was gritty like dust or sand.
(Can someone please tell me what this is all about? Are they just laughing
at the American they got to eat dust?) I walked a ways inside and got to
the inner sanctuary. One of the Yeshiva boys saw I was a gringo and showed
me parts of the inner sanctuary. There were women sitting on the floor with
purple flowers there. It looked like someone was pouring oil into a
candelabra. Others seemed to be sitting around two stone elephants. In
other rooms people were sitting around. Suddenly it became clear to me that
I had no idea what any of this was about. Still a little disgusted from the
grit in my mouth and totally confused, I left. When I went to put my socks
and shoes back on, I found a large brown stain and a large flat ant carcass
on the bottom of my big toe. I gagged a little.
We won't go over the hard time we had finding the bus, but we found it.
We got some sodas, and Evelyn got an expensive walking cane. In fact, the
owner of the shop was not anxious to pull it down until he was sure this
tourist was willing to pay Rs20 for a walking stick. She was.
We lent the Lonely Planet guide to two English women on the bus, then
to two Indian men. They asked Mark what he did. He told them he was a
mathematician. They thought that was very funny. Because he was taking
notes they had guessed he was a historian.
The final stop was Eklingi. This is a temple complex with 108 temples,
one for each of the 108 Hindu deities. Mark walked around it for a while,
walking into this temple and that. Some were as small as ten feet wide and
fifteen feet high; others were bigger. At least one had a big clock inside.
(Evelyn says, Mark was in there a long time; he must have wanted to make
sure he saw every one of them.) After he left, Mark bought pictures of
Hanuman, Ganesha, and Kali as souvenirs.
Evelyn writes, It probably sounds as though the tour was wasted on me
since I didn't go into the temples, but actually I enjoyed it a lot. I was
able to sit down on the bus for long periods of time (these places are an
hour's drive from Udaipur and an hour or so apart) and see a lot of the
countryside, some small towns, and so on. For example, there seems to be a
plant that looks a lot like walking-stick cholla from the American
Southwest--I assume it's an example of convergent evolution. And temples
here are like cathedrals in Europe--after a while, you can get tired of
seeing them. And while resting in the room in the morning was okay (when it
was uncharacteristically raining), lying around all day after the sun came
out is not my idea of how to spend time in India.
Mark dozed on the bus on the way back. Just outside the Tourist
Bungalow we saw some sort of parade with lights and decorated camels, but
weren't close enough to tell what it was about. We ate a good meal cheap at
the Tourist Bungalow, veggie thalis, then got an auto-rickshaw to take us
back to the Sai Niwas for Rs15.
Well, we thought we did. The first auto-rickshaw driver wanted Rs20.
Mark asked the rest if any would go to the Sai Niwas for Rs15. One said
yes. We got in and went to the Shiv Niwas. No, No, we said Sai Niwas.
Oh. Another Rs15. An argument ensued, in which we said we would pay
another Rs10, but not another Rs15. After all, it was his mistake. He
insisted on Rs15. We said Rs10 and pointed out that as long as we sat in
his auto-rickshaw waiting, he wasn't making anything. Finally he said, As
you like, and drove to the Sai Niwas, where we paid him Rs25. He tried to
insist that we owed him another Rs5, at which point we said that he had
said, As you like, and then we walked away. It is pointless to stand
around arguing after you've been taken somewhere and have paid the driver.
Normally quibbling over Rs5 isn't worth it, but this was the principle of
the thing.
We later heard it was common policy for auto-rickshaw drivers to hassle
people staying at the Sai Niwas. The owner, Wing Commander S. K. Singh,
refuses to bribe the auto-rickshaw drivers to bring him guests. We will say
more about Singh later.
Mark tried to write but fell asleep early. He woke up about 1:30 AM
with mosquito attacks. He had gotten them every night but had thought this
hotel would be different. This time, he admits, it was his fault. The room
has a little electronic device called a Good Knight that looks like a
combination ashtray and night light, and it holds what looks like a tiny
tablet of soap. Actually it is a very effective bug zapper. It is on the
same switch as a light so we'd turned it off.
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Mark writes, Something I started to say in my log
on the flight over I choked off because I thought it lacked tact.
Ironically, being in India has convinced me that it was not so tactless as I
thought, but let me explain first why it is *not* tactless. In the West we
have decided that there are certain characteristics of religions that we say
are virtues. Perhaps the best example is monotheism. Why do we say that?
Well, most of the major religions we come in contact with are monotheistic.
And monotheism makes inter-religious diplomacy easier. Even in India, you
see signs up quoting Gandhi as saying the God of Christianity, the Allah of
Islam, and the Ram of Hinduism are the same god. This does not stop
religious rivalries, but it helps. Of course, you can always throw in a
little mystical glue to say all your deities are really just one in a way
you shouldn't think about, but just accept on faith. (Okay, maybe some will
consider that tactless, but that is really what is done with the Holy
Trinity, at least from my point of view.) But a belief that the common
characteristics of the different religions you have seen practiced where you
live are virtues is pomposity and self-congratulation. There is no
objective reason why monotheism is better than polytheism. There is
probably no objective reason why idol worship is a bad thing. And again I
will point out that there are Christians who pray to statues. Coming from a
society dominated by Christian-Jewish-Muslim thought (the thought of the
so-called 'People of the Book'), there are a lot of customs of early pagan
religions we say are just awful that you see in Hinduism. It has a lot in
common with the early pagan Mediterranean religions that Judaism reacted
against. This is really a pagan world in India, though I don't mean 'pagan'
in a judgmental sense. You see strange (to us) ceremonies worshiping idols
of the hundred and eight gods. Ganesha is an animal-headed god. Much of
what the 'other people' believed in Biblical films such as THE TEN
COMMANDMENTS is believed in Hinduism. This is a world more pagan and alien
than any we have seen to this point.
Mark also writes, It used to be said that India was a very depressing
country to visit because of all the poverty you see. I guess I was
expecting to see more poverty than I do. A moderately higher percentage of
the population are homeless than one would see in New York City, but that
just makes India marginally more downbeat than Manhattan. I think this idea
of poverty was spawned by people seeing the 90% of Indians in the lower
classes. These people don't have much by 'Western standards.' Fortunately,
these people do not have 'Western standards.' By their own standards they
would like to have more (who wouldn't?), but they appear to be no more happy
or unhappy than the people in Old Bridge, New Jersey. I wonder if this
concept of horrible poverty comes from a cultural narrowness on the part of
Westerners. True poverty is unhappiness and despair at your condition in
life. If there is really a lot of that here I do not see it.
He continues, Evelyn was reading that in the rural areas the
government drive for people to have smaller families is failing because
people know that more children working in the field means greater wealth.
Now the question I would ask is, 'Why don't people achieve this end by
partnering with a neighbor?' That is the equivalent of having twice as many
children and twice as much land. Both are measures of wealth in the rural
areas. My suspicion is that it is not done because it would mean sharing
power and each father wants complete control. I think people are too
competitive to make that work. Fathers want their own children to succeed
for biological reasons and they want to be in control.
One more random note: I was puzzled by the choice of the cow as a
venerated animal. I have never seen anything which suggested a human soul
was more likely to reincarnate as a cow than as a dog. At least one theory
is that it is economically convenient. Famines can get very bad, but you
always have a 'nest-egg' of dairy products, Mark concludes.
We woke to a beautiful dawn on Lake Pichola and its palaces and the
sound of temple bells. Unfortunately, we also got the sound of a dog fight
outside with more than just a couple of dogs. That's Udaipur, and perhaps
all of India. Our hotel is very nice, with colorful hand-painted shutters
and a nice central courtyard, yet in the alley (lane) outside is a pile of
burning garbage, and you have to watch out for cow dung wherever you walk.
Evelyn says her foot is better, though it had a big blue bruise. Mark
sat on the our balcony and wrote and looked at a view that looks like the
cover of a novel. A group of about eight monkeys migrated past. This is a
slow process because they stop every few feet and sit down and look around.
They adopt very human-looking poses, which I guess is not surprising. They
do not come into the rooms, but some sit as close as ten feet (three meters)
from our balcony. They sit, cross their legs, perhaps do some needed
scratching, then pick up and move another ten feet or so on their route.
Some mothers have babies hanging on to their chests.
Breakfast was in a pleasant cool atmosphere and Singh played music from
LA BOHEME. Puccini and fried eggs on buttered toast. Not very Indian but
surprisingly satisfying, writes Mark. We had to go to the train station to
book our rail ticket out to Delhi. Because Evelyn's ankle felt better,
first we just walked around the streets of Udaipur, looking in shops and
photographing the sights of the street, the Clock Tower and the markets.
One beggar just seemed to lie in a fetal position in the street and
roll. On a closer look, he seemed to be a leper who could not stand because
he was missing most of his arms and legs. Actually, there was a fair amount
of money in his collection pot, so it seems some Indians are charitable, at
least to those in evident need.
Everywhere are signs for the various candidates in the upcoming
elections, each with their own symbol (hand, flower, chair, camel, etc.).
This is not the same as our elephant and donkey symbols for the Republican
and Democrat parties. |
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