Simhachalam

Tuesday we went to visit Simhachalam. On Monday night, Krishnayya gave us some background on the place. The idol enshrined in Simhachalam is unusual partially because it has aspects of both the gods Shiva and Vishnu. An image with indistinct features is covered in sandal paste, which once a year is removed and the idol is shown to the public, although no one really gets a very good look at it. The rest of the year it is kept in the innermost recesses of the temple, and very few, even Hindus, get to see it. Those who do see it generally have to pay very heavy fees.

The hereditary trustee of the temple is the king of this area. There is a picture of his father inside the temple, P. V. G. Raju, who Krishnayya informed me was one of the first Indian socialist kings and donated huge portions of his land and wealth to the people. The current king is a friend of Dr. Nuckolls, and through this connection we were able to go into the innermost shrine and see the idol.

Our friend Krishna Prasad, whom we call K. P., told us that people like to come to Simhachalam because it has very good vibrations, and that only Indians can come there. Since we are there, it means that we were Indians and were somehow connected to it in our past lives. I don't think it could have been a happy connection in my case, though, because the vibrations I got from the place were not that great, especially from the idol. It was all very interesting nonetheless. (K. P. is the guy behind Becky's shoulder in the first picture.)

Dr. Nuckolls and Krishnayya believe that the god inside the paste is actually a very old tribal god who has had a Hindu mythology overlaid on it. The confusion between Vishnu and Shiva is one of the reasons for this, but there are also unusual connections between low caste groups, more original inhabitants of this area, and the necessary ceremonies connected with the idol. The folk legends connected with it and the different name given it by some of these low caste groups are other indicators, among other things.

This is a stone chariot inside the temple grounds. The folk legend with the origin of the idol involves a flying chariot.



These columns are made of stone, but they sound like metal when you tap those hanging teethlike things.



Elephants, I like elephants.






This picture, the one underneath the one of the elephant drain, is not actually evidence of ancient Hindu child sacrifice or anything like that. It references an old story about a king who was granted a boon from the gods. He asked to not be killed on land or sea, by man, beast, or god, by arrow, sickness, spear, etc., intending to make it so that he could live forever. This displeased the gods, so they created a man-lion who took him up between the heavens and the earth and disembowelled him with his hands. It's supposed to remind you not to be prideful. There were several erotic images on this temple, most of them mutilated supposedly by the invading Muslims, but some temporary blockades obstructed our access to that section of the temple walls that had most of those, thankfully.

Arriving in India

I'm in India right now!

Wednesday Cindy came down and picked up Becky and me and all of our stuff. She is storing our things during our trip. Russell and Jen are are also storing some things for a week or two. Cindy made us a delicious dinner and strawberry waffles for breakfast and took us to the airport. She also packed us a really good lunch, which lasted us until we arrived. Thanks so much guys! Thanks also to Celeste for the amazing chocolate cookies.

Our travel went well. Several of our flights were slightly delayed, but it didn't seem to matter very much. We got to the airport at 8:30 am on Thursday, and arrived in Vizag at 1:00 pm on Saturday. Five other members of our group also traveled with us. I think Becky was a bit worried about our twelve hour layover in Mumbai, but it ended up being only ten hours there, four of which were taken up by security and baggage checks. It was cleaner and nicer than we expected, too. We even found some nice reclining chairs to sleep on. No one lost any luggage, except for the water bottles that the Belgians confiscated in Brussels.

Vizag is very hot and humid, but if you're under a fan it isn't bad at all. We were met at the airport by our program director, Dr. Nuckolls, and by Krishnayya, who is our site director and professor. They took us to our apartments and the program house and got us some food there. They were worried that we would be totally exhausted and kept telling us that we could go crash anytime we wanted, but everything was so interesting that we stayed up. Sudha, Krishnayya's sister-in-law, and Rajulakshmi took us to a store in an autorickshaw, where we each bought a ready-made salwar kameez. We'll get some more soon. We had dinner and went to bed after that. I had been worried that it would be too hot and humid to sleep well, but it was very cool and comfortable under the fan, and I slept excellently. We're both feeling very well.

Becky and I are in an apartment with one other girl, Jain, that is down the street from the program house and between the program house and the other house people are staying in. It is at the top of a building, and is bigger than I expected, much bigger than my apartment in Provo. The toilet is just a hole, and we're not permitted to use toilet paper, because it blocks the drains. I'm still struggling to figure out exactly how to use the bucket and dipper to wash. The shower room has two buckets and a dipper, and I'm not sure exactly how to use that either. Hopefully sometime soon I'll post a few pictures.

Everything is different and interesting. I think the weirdest thing, however, is getting stared at. I've never been something that people looked at before--I could easily blend into the woodwork--but here we create traffic jams. It's a little embarrassing and a little flattering and a little scary.

The food is really good. The people here are really nice, and I like my group, too. I hope to write again something soon.

Love you all!

Famous Last Words

I was looking through the last words list on Wikipedia the other day. There were a lot that really were not that interesting, but I thought these ones were quite funny.

Wait a minute . . . .
Who: Pope Alexander VI

Am I dying, or is this my birthday?
Who: Lady Nancy Astor
Note: In her final illness, she awoke on her deathbed to see her family at her bedside.

Die, I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
Who: John Barrymore

Je vais ou je vas mourir, l'un et l'autre se dit ou se disent. (French)
Translation : I am about to--or I am going to--die: either expression is correct.
Who: Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian

Now why did I do that?
Who: General William Erskine
Note: Said after he jumped from a window in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1813.

Das ist nicht wahr! Ich werde in der Montur sterben? (German)
Translation: That's not true! I'm gonna die in this dress?
Who: Frederik William I of Prussia

No! I didn't come here to make a speech. I came here to die.
Who: Crawford Goldsby, a.k.a. Cherokee Bill, when asked if he had anything to say before he was hanged.

I am dying. Please . . . bring me a toothpick.
Who: Alfred Jarry, absurdist writer and playwright

I wish I was skiing. [Nurse: "Oh, Mr. Laurel, do you ski?"] No, but I'd rather be skiing than doing what I'm doing.
Who: Stan Laurel, before dying of a heart attack

This isn't Hamlet, you know. It's not meant to go into the bloody ear.
Who: Actor Laurence Olivier supposedly said this when a nurse, attempting to moisten his lips, mis-aimed.
Note: In Shakespeare's play Hamlet, the title character's father is killed when poison is dripped into his ear while asleep.

All right then, I'll say it: Dante makes me sick.
Who: Lope de Vega, famous playwright, on being assured that the end was very near

My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.
Who: Oscar Wilde
Variation: These curtains are killing me, one of us has got to go.
Popular variation often found in "Famous Last Words"-lists: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do."
Notes: Mr. Wilde said this in the Left Bank hotel where he died on November 30, 1900, the wallpaper has since been removed and the room re-furnished in the style of one of Mr. Wilde's London flats.
Quibble: He actually said this a couple of weeks before his death…
He was also reported to have ordered a bottle of the hotel's most expensive champagne to later say: I am dying beyond my means.

Die, my dear? Why, that's the last thing I'll do!
Who: Groucho Marx

Happiness

Something that makes me happy is . . . hanging out with old friends.

Cindy's Message

Another message!

Hi Squoze! This is Cindy.
The outside is cold and windy.
I just wanted to tell you a story;
I will share it later in all its glory.

It's all about loving your parents

When we first watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, we did not get the logic of the movie's tagline: "It's all about loving your parents." While we thought this was a good moral, we hadn't become acquainted enough with Indian culture to understand how it applied to this movie. We thought the movie was more about parents making life difficult for no good reason than about them being lovable. While I now know more about Indian culture and can understand how in that context the tagline makes sense for that movie, I have also come to think of that tagline as a kind of tagline for all Indian movies. After all, there's hardly an Indian movie I watch where I don't finish it thinking to myself, "Wow, thank Heaven for my parents! I love my parents a lot!" Movie characters usually love their parents a lot, but theirs don't deserve it nearly as much as mine do.

Dad hands down beats every movie dad I've ever seen. The other night I watched a movie called Chhalia, and the dad in that movie refused to recognize the girl as his daughter because she'd been stranded in Pakistan for five years and who knows what might have happened to her there. He also refused to let his wife recognize her. It reminded me strongly of when I watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers with my family as a little girl. In that movie some girls get kidnapped by some brothers, and the brothers stop the girls' pursuing family members by causing an avalanche that cuts off the mountain pass, so that the families have to wait for several months before they can go rescue them. I remember Dad saying after we watched that movie that if it had been his daughter captured, he wouldn't have gone home because an avalanche had blocked the path--he would have not stopped until he'd found a way around it somehow. (The dad in Parugu also has this mentality of stopping at nothing to get his daughter back, but he's quite violent about it, and his daughter would not have eloped in the first place if he hadn't been so unapproachable. So Dad's still way more awesome.) In fact, the only movie dads I can think of who come close to Dad's awesomeness are the ones in Vivah, and Dad's still better because he has a better sense of humor.

The contrast isn't quite so great between Mom and the movie moms--movie moms tend to be pretty ideal--but I still think Mom is no less than any of them. She can cook with the best of them. She makes sacrifices for us, although she takes care of herself too doesn't overdo it like some of the martyr mothers, who invariably end up wearing themselves out so much that they become a burden. She avoided a lot of filmi problems by not marrying a rascal. She loves her family just as much as any movie mom, and she's achieved all these tasks with seven children rather than the typical filmi two or three.

Thanks, Mom and Dad! I love you guys!

Validation

This is definitely worth watching. Right now.



P.S. You guys are awesome.