First real day in India

Today was simple and almost boring at times.

We started out the day with a walk down beach road (as an exercise on how to walk down the street), but that ended when some people at a local private school invited us to stop in. The children were excited to see us and as luck would have it the school was preparing the children for an upcoming festival by dressing them up and having them perform the rituals (that’s the wrong word, but I don’t know what else to use). The festival is Sankranti and I really don’t have any clue what it’s about, but the real festival starts on the 14th and lasts for three days, so I’m sure that I’ll learn more then. The children really love the most outgoing people. Like I said, I’ll have to work on it. In reality I think that I’ll be more likely to be outgoing when I’m not around everyone from the program.

We did some other things, like set up internet and whatnot, but the most interesting for me was stopping by the Krishna Temple. We went inside and performed puja or worship, which included clapping and walking around the shrine as the priests chanted and clapped together symbols (along with other people from the neighborhood). After that we stood in line for water that had camphor in it, drank some, wiped the rest on our heads, and were given a food substance of some sort. I’ll have to look into the meaning of all that went on, or at least as much as I can find and let you know. The Jalaris, the people I’ll be working with, don’t really worship Krishna and Dr. Nuckolls said that 90 percent of them wouldn’t have any clue what deity the temple was even dedicated too. Local village goddesses are vastly more important to the Jalari than Krishna, Vishnu and other deities in the regular pantheon that we associate with Hinduism. Those Gods are worshipped and recognized mainly by Brahmans (and only Brahmans can become priests).

The house doesn’t have any hot water and the shower head works only marginally well, so I prefer just to pour water into a bucket and scoop it out to bathe. It has the major advantage of not making you all cold all at once. Water shortages are common here in the summer so water use is somewhat limited, so I hope that I’m using the more water conscious way to bathe, but I don’t really know and I’m not sure that I really care to find out.

I am tired and need to get to sleep so that I can wake up early tomorrow.


Justin