When we (people in the West) think of India, or at least what we think of as the "real India," we often have in mind India's historic traditions and culture: perhaps the "many gods" of Hinduism, India as home to one of the world's great food cultures, temples, the Taj Mahal (Muslim and not Hindu in origin), perhaps other things like meditation or yoga, or village life.
New things also come to mind: Bollywood films, or the high-tech centers of places like Bangalore (where we are now), but we may think of these as very recent developments that are somehow, in our images, exceptions to the rule.
What we are experiencing is that there are many Indias. Some are very old, and some very new. For centuries (or millennias!) India has been a place of dozens of different languages (we began our time here in a Tamil-speaking city, and are now in one that counts Kannada as its "home" language, and the other night saw a film in Telugu). It's been a place of not only Hinduism, but also the birthplace of Buddhism (now found among just a remnant), a place where St. Thomas the apostle left behind Christian churches in the first century C.E., whose descendants we see even today, and Islam, as well as the Sikh and Jain faiths. There are a number of primary castes, and hundreds of sub-castes, as well as "tribal" peoples in various places, especially the northeast and east of India. It's a complex place.
We've had a chance to visit a number of Hindu temples, some in each place we've been. To the left is the outside of Nandi the Bull's temple here in Bangalore. Nandi is associated with Shiva in Hindu belief, among other things the massive bull which Lord Shiva rides. The image of Nandi, in the photo below, was carved out of a massive boulder centuries ago, and the temple was later built around it.
We take off our shoes before entering, and join others, including pilgrims, who are walking around the statue; at the rear, some drink some sacred water, and as we continue around to the front of the image a priest dips his fingertip into
vermillion (bright red) paste, and puts a mark on each of our foreheads.
Another day, we visit the ISKCON temple, a more recent one (while Nandi's is centuries old). It's the temple and movement from which a "missionary" left for the U.S. in the 1960's, and helped give rise to the Hare Krishna movement which older readers of this blog may recall. It's a huge temple, ornate inside; a priest greets us when we arrive, and guides us past images at which worshipers are praying; we are uncomfortable getting what seems like special treatment, especially if we are intruding on people's religious experience, one not our own. Still, we are impressed by the videos we are shown in a conference room of the temple's good works feeding over 1.5 million poor children each day. And we eat an excellent buffet lunch (pure veg, of course) in the temple's restaurant before we leave; we enjoy it, yet our students are beginning to ask more questions about their own privileges and affluence, and the contradictions of which we are a part.
In another instance, we visit a temple to watch a performance of traditional karnatic dance. It's moving and impressive, a single woman dancer, carefully costumed, stomping and twirling and moving in a way both athletic and graceful, with hand and facial and eye movements to help her tell the story about the gods which a small music group is accompanying, including a wonderful male violinist and a woman singer. Our students seem mesmerized, either by the dances, or by the young local girls who are moving their hands along with the dancers from their seats, perhaps aspiring to such grace themselves someday much as girls in our own may wish to become ballerinas.
We also had a yoga class from a woman psychology professor at the university which is hosting us here in Bangalore early in our time here. All 22 of us plopped down on mats in one of the classroom buildings, and she led us through a series of increasingly difficult poses or movements, though gently, warning that anything that hurt should be a sign we should sit that one out (was it my imagination she was looking right at me?). We also worked with our breath. I was in the front row; as good Muslim women might at a mosque, the women wanted "the boys" in front so they wouldn't peek at them while moving in yet-unknown positions. It felt good, even though there were several positions I could not do at all, even while our teacher seemed to do them with such grace, strength, and ease. It was clear that she is devoted to yoga as a spiritual practice rather than just another kind of exercise; some yoga teachers here seem to lament that yoga practices in the West have been stripped of their spiritual meaning and context.
I'll close with mention of another aspect of "traditional" India. An earlier posting talked about our long visit to a Dalit farming community for Pongal, the harvest festival. But we've also visited farming villages here in the state of Karnataka (where Bengalore is located). A view of the farmyard where the harvest is being processed is shown below.
In this photo we see women winnowing the grain by hand, primarily millet, as well as the tall piles of by-product which can be sold later for animal feed. We see farm animals wandering about, and a cow peeking into the left side of the photo. Blue barrels of water are there as well; there's no running water (modern plumbing system) in the village that we saw, though there is some irrigation. Much of the work is done by hand, though there are other signs that things are changing--there is electricity, and some homes have television, and there's a paved road that meanders through the village along which a bus rolls by several times a day, past the small school. There are several health and education programs which are sponsored by the social justice folks at the university where we are living while in Bangalore, which is how we happen to be there--once again hosted by some local activists. We visit the classroom, and spend time with the children, a high point of each day we have a chance to visit schools. Below is a photo of the side of the service program workplace, illustrating healthy baby issues.
The panel on the left shows a baby in a sling on which a baby is weighed to make sure it's within the parameters (shown in the green band) for healthy development. Bring your baby in for weighing! And while you're there, panel to the right, it's good to make sure your baby has its vaccinations (India just celebrated three years as a polio-free country, in spite of reservoirs of the virus in next-door Pakistan). Another panel, not shown, encouraged mothers to breast-feed.
We visit the home of one family, an extended family of 11 people, who by village standards seem "middle class." They have a three room home, plus one for the cattle (also part of the house), and a small but tidy kitchen. The women cook over propane gas, but also have a fire pit for cooking over, in the kitchen. And the woman of the house has an admirably-organized collection of cooking utensils and dishes (photo below, through a turquoise-painted doorframe), including some pots large enough for Serious Rice Cooking. Note the orange plastic "pot" for water, as running water inside doesn't seem available, nor an indoor toilet.
Our host cooks "ragi," or balls of cooked millet, and offers them with some green curry; the curry is a good addition, as to our tastebuds the ragi is rather plain, though a nutritious grain. We are served on the floor, as in the other village we visited; people don't eat on tables. Yet, we find, the household does own a car. "Tradition," at least in these times, is a changing and complex thing, hard to define.
And there are paradoxes in efforts to bring better health and education to the village. Electricity brings new visions of life from the cities on television (Bangalore has grown by several million people in recent years, mostly rural migrants). More education and literacy for the children, especially girls, may lead to the possibility of more education that the village cannot offer, and once in the city the young people may not return to the life of a farmer. Girls may have more choices, and both education and lower infant mortality may make choices about children more plausible. Will the villages die out one day? Who will raise the food for 1.2 billion people, especially when imported food is becoming too expensive? Will the virtues of rural traditions and small-town life be enough to keep enough young people at home, or will the changes that have made village life better in some ways undermine its future in others?
In a future posting: life at InfoSys, and the rise of the malls.
New things also come to mind: Bollywood films, or the high-tech centers of places like Bangalore (where we are now), but we may think of these as very recent developments that are somehow, in our images, exceptions to the rule.
What we are experiencing is that there are many Indias. Some are very old, and some very new. For centuries (or millennias!) India has been a place of dozens of different languages (we began our time here in a Tamil-speaking city, and are now in one that counts Kannada as its "home" language, and the other night saw a film in Telugu). It's been a place of not only Hinduism, but also the birthplace of Buddhism (now found among just a remnant), a place where St. Thomas the apostle left behind Christian churches in the first century C.E., whose descendants we see even today, and Islam, as well as the Sikh and Jain faiths. There are a number of primary castes, and hundreds of sub-castes, as well as "tribal" peoples in various places, especially the northeast and east of India. It's a complex place.
We take off our shoes before entering, and join others, including pilgrims, who are walking around the statue; at the rear, some drink some sacred water, and as we continue around to the front of the image a priest dips his fingertip into
vermillion (bright red) paste, and puts a mark on each of our foreheads. Another day, we visit the ISKCON temple, a more recent one (while Nandi's is centuries old). It's the temple and movement from which a "missionary" left for the U.S. in the 1960's, and helped give rise to the Hare Krishna movement which older readers of this blog may recall. It's a huge temple, ornate inside; a priest greets us when we arrive, and guides us past images at which worshipers are praying; we are uncomfortable getting what seems like special treatment, especially if we are intruding on people's religious experience, one not our own. Still, we are impressed by the videos we are shown in a conference room of the temple's good works feeding over 1.5 million poor children each day. And we eat an excellent buffet lunch (pure veg, of course) in the temple's restaurant before we leave; we enjoy it, yet our students are beginning to ask more questions about their own privileges and affluence, and the contradictions of which we are a part.
In another instance, we visit a temple to watch a performance of traditional karnatic dance. It's moving and impressive, a single woman dancer, carefully costumed, stomping and twirling and moving in a way both athletic and graceful, with hand and facial and eye movements to help her tell the story about the gods which a small music group is accompanying, including a wonderful male violinist and a woman singer. Our students seem mesmerized, either by the dances, or by the young local girls who are moving their hands along with the dancers from their seats, perhaps aspiring to such grace themselves someday much as girls in our own may wish to become ballerinas.
We also had a yoga class from a woman psychology professor at the university which is hosting us here in Bangalore early in our time here. All 22 of us plopped down on mats in one of the classroom buildings, and she led us through a series of increasingly difficult poses or movements, though gently, warning that anything that hurt should be a sign we should sit that one out (was it my imagination she was looking right at me?). We also worked with our breath. I was in the front row; as good Muslim women might at a mosque, the women wanted "the boys" in front so they wouldn't peek at them while moving in yet-unknown positions. It felt good, even though there were several positions I could not do at all, even while our teacher seemed to do them with such grace, strength, and ease. It was clear that she is devoted to yoga as a spiritual practice rather than just another kind of exercise; some yoga teachers here seem to lament that yoga practices in the West have been stripped of their spiritual meaning and context.
I'll close with mention of another aspect of "traditional" India. An earlier posting talked about our long visit to a Dalit farming community for Pongal, the harvest festival. But we've also visited farming villages here in the state of Karnataka (where Bengalore is located). A view of the farmyard where the harvest is being processed is shown below.
In this photo we see women winnowing the grain by hand, primarily millet, as well as the tall piles of by-product which can be sold later for animal feed. We see farm animals wandering about, and a cow peeking into the left side of the photo. Blue barrels of water are there as well; there's no running water (modern plumbing system) in the village that we saw, though there is some irrigation. Much of the work is done by hand, though there are other signs that things are changing--there is electricity, and some homes have television, and there's a paved road that meanders through the village along which a bus rolls by several times a day, past the small school. There are several health and education programs which are sponsored by the social justice folks at the university where we are living while in Bangalore, which is how we happen to be there--once again hosted by some local activists. We visit the classroom, and spend time with the children, a high point of each day we have a chance to visit schools. Below is a photo of the side of the service program workplace, illustrating healthy baby issues.
The panel on the left shows a baby in a sling on which a baby is weighed to make sure it's within the parameters (shown in the green band) for healthy development. Bring your baby in for weighing! And while you're there, panel to the right, it's good to make sure your baby has its vaccinations (India just celebrated three years as a polio-free country, in spite of reservoirs of the virus in next-door Pakistan). Another panel, not shown, encouraged mothers to breast-feed.
We visit the home of one family, an extended family of 11 people, who by village standards seem "middle class." They have a three room home, plus one for the cattle (also part of the house), and a small but tidy kitchen. The women cook over propane gas, but also have a fire pit for cooking over, in the kitchen. And the woman of the house has an admirably-organized collection of cooking utensils and dishes (photo below, through a turquoise-painted doorframe), including some pots large enough for Serious Rice Cooking. Note the orange plastic "pot" for water, as running water inside doesn't seem available, nor an indoor toilet.
Our host cooks "ragi," or balls of cooked millet, and offers them with some green curry; the curry is a good addition, as to our tastebuds the ragi is rather plain, though a nutritious grain. We are served on the floor, as in the other village we visited; people don't eat on tables. Yet, we find, the household does own a car. "Tradition," at least in these times, is a changing and complex thing, hard to define.
And there are paradoxes in efforts to bring better health and education to the village. Electricity brings new visions of life from the cities on television (Bangalore has grown by several million people in recent years, mostly rural migrants). More education and literacy for the children, especially girls, may lead to the possibility of more education that the village cannot offer, and once in the city the young people may not return to the life of a farmer. Girls may have more choices, and both education and lower infant mortality may make choices about children more plausible. Will the villages die out one day? Who will raise the food for 1.2 billion people, especially when imported food is becoming too expensive? Will the virtues of rural traditions and small-town life be enough to keep enough young people at home, or will the changes that have made village life better in some ways undermine its future in others?
In a future posting: life at InfoSys, and the rise of the malls.
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