Been busy doing nothing for the last while, sorry about the long stretch without e-mail.
Bubhanesuwar – Dr. Krishnayya, the site director for the program announced that he was planning on taking a trip to a philosophy conference at the university in Bubhanesuwar as a sly handed way of seeing one of the temples in the area and invited any of us students who were interested in spending a few days in the northern part of Orissa to go with him. Only one student was interested and since she was my friend (I’ve clearly built friendships and burned bridges at this point), I also chose to go so that she would have company and maybe a little safety. We traveled by train, and it was my first experience with train travel in any country. I’ve ridden the metro once or twice, but never a train that travels across the country.
Very kindly, and without us knowing, the chair of philosophy (the one who organized the conference) actually arranged for us to stay in the Guest House at the university (he didn’t have to do that for us students since we weren’t, strictly speaking, conference guests), but we arrived late at night and due to some mix ups we ended up staying in a subpar hotel anyway. It wasn’t really that much of a hassle, but it wasn’t great either.
Bubhanesuwar is the capitol city of Orissa and as such I had expectations that it would be a nicer and larger city and that if nothing really interesting materialized I could at least shop for gifts and whatnot. I was completely wrong. The city is smaller than Vizag both in terms of residents and in terms of access to shops, etc.. “Oh well,” I thought to myself, at least there were supposed to be orchids at the zoo.
The first day started as a hassle. We attended the first part of the philosophy conference, which consisted of an opening ceremony and key note speaker, which we weren’t supposed to need to attend. There are a couple of things to note about this though. First, philosophy in India is completely tied to religion; the two are entirely inseparable, and if one wishes to study philosophy one must also learn Hinduism. I asked Dr. Krishnayya if this deterred non-Hindus form joining the philosophy conversation in India and he said that it did not, but I’m a little bit skeptical of that answer. Second, The meeting started very late. The opening day for the conference just happened to be on the same day as Mohammad’s birthday, and the parade/celebration held up traffic. Third, the conference went late.
However, there were good things about the conference. The first is that the Key Note speaker said something that I think was interesting and not something that I had ever thought about philosophy. See if you agree. He said, “the purpose of philosophy is not to discover facts, that is the purpose of science. The purpose of philosophy is to clarify meanings.” I would add to that by saying that philosophy is also used to clarify relationships between meanings. Besides for that wee got free lunch and it was DELICIOUS! I love the food here in India. It really is the best cuisine in the world. I have yet to try anything, not one single thing, that I have not enjoyed.
After the conference a car took us to a set of caves carved by religious ascetics in the 2nd century BC. They were a real kick. I think that I’ve already told you, but there’s no real protection for treasures like these. You pay money to get in to see them (we paid 20 times the price that an Indian does...20 TIMES), but after that people are free to roam about as they wish. Play on the rocks, destroy whatever they want (although I didn’t see much evidence of this) throw trash wherever, urinate and defecate wherever...you get the idea. But being carved directly out of a rock face has it’s advantages; it makes you resilient, and hopefully this place will continue to exist for a long time. The monkeys there were also pretty damn cute. A whole troop lives on the top of the one hill we went to. I grabbed some dried fruit from my friend (in an attempt to feed the monkeys actually) and before I could grab anything out of the bag a monkey came careening over and grabbed my belt and the bag in an effort to get the whole thing. I knew that the monkeys would get close, but I didn’t expect to be forcefully grabbed (I wasn’t hurt in any way)! At any rate I got a handful of pieces and gave them to the monkey and he was satisfied enough to walk away.
To find out more about this fantastic site, follow the link, http://www.orissatourism.org/udayagiri-khandagiri-caves.html
We only went to Udayagiri, because we were pressed for time and believed that both cave systems would be roughly similar (plus we didn’t want to pay the extremely high price tag for a second entrance).
Justin Tungate
No comments:
Post a Comment