Day to Day

On Thursday, we went to a festival in the Jalari Pet, which is a fishing village not far from us where Professor Nuckolls studies. It was a festival for a Goddess. Tradition holds that when a plague arrived it was usually because a Goddess had arrived. This particular goddess came back in the thirties with a smallpox epidemic. There are Godesses of cholera and other smallpox goddesses as well. The Jalaris take the image of the goddess out of the temple down on the beach and walk it through the village all day then return it at night. They shoot off fireworks, 'whip' themselves (they whip their legs and if done right it doesn't hurt), and try to call down possession from the goddess through dancing and singing. It was really interesting to see and we met Professor Nuckolls 'brother' in the village. He is a part of a family there and we were introduced to many of his relatives, whenever we were invited into a house they gave us sodas to drink. We felt bad for taking them but as it's part of the hospitality ritual we drank them anyhow. We will probably spend much more time in the Jalari Pet as some people's studies are there and mine might be as well.

Friday was a relatively lazy day, a few of us walked down to the beach through Jalari Pet. The beach we walked along was more of a public beach and therefore fairly dirty. But it was still pretty. Ocean's not too shocking to me I guess, it looks like an ocean. We also went over to the Krishna temple in our neighborhood. The colors in the temples (and everywhere to be honest) are really amazing. They love bright colors. The clothes the women are almost always in bright colors and so beautiful. The men wear western style dress for the most part.  We also got ice cream during our walk. The ice cream here is closer to the consistency of mousse, but it tastes alright. I must say none of the desserts here have really tickled my fancy. A lot of them have a ton of clarified butter in them, which isn’t particularly tasty.

We had a BYU professor visiting us. Dr. Ralph Brown is a sociology professor and runs development internship programs in Thailand, Jordan, and Vietnam. On Saturday we went to his lecture on rural women’s autonomy in South East Asia. He talked about how we define development and freedom. His research in particular was in how owning a motorcycle provides better advantages to a South East Asian woman in helping her to become involved in Primary Economic Activities (bringing in money versus Secondary Economic Activities which save money). The motorcycle provided mobility, development and autonomy for women over having no transportation and even having access to public transportation.

That evening we went shopping at this Exhibition, which was sort of like a fair. They had people doing Henna and selling all sorts of things. There were some booths showing of juicers, dicers, and such, which reminded me of the Del Mar Fair. I also talked with Dr. Nuckolls and Krishnayya-garu about my project; I might move my focus to the newly developed soap operas. I’m going to actually just talk directly with the translators and then with the household staff since they’re more middle class and fit the criteria for my project. We’ll see how it goes.

On Sunday we went to church which was mostly in Telugu. That evening we headed up the coast to see some ancient Buddhist ruins that Dr. Nuckolls wanted to show Dr. Brown. Not much is known about them. They date possibly back to the 14^th century and returning South East Asian Buddhists probably started them. There aren’t many Buddhists left in India even though the movement started here, especially not in Viskhapatnam. We also went to a Dutch Colonial graveyard. As usual for my trips to graveyards I tried to find the ones that said how they died. One guy fell into the hold of a ship, one died of heat apoplexy, and one of constriction (constipation). 

After that we walked along the waterfront where there were some colorful statutes of Buddha’s head, sea goddesses, Krishna, and Gandhi. There were street vendors selling corn cooked over coals, coconuts, and ice cream and there were lots and lots of cows. As Dr. Nuckolls says it is particularly auspicious to touch the hump of the cow or the neck cowl. It is even more suspicious to touch the urine and feces but none of us have needed that much luck yet. The ocean was really beautiful, although none of the beaches are particularly clean. 

After that we went to a restaurant in the city where we ate curry and rice off of a traditional banana leaf. We had pon for dessert, which is a leaf wrapped around cloves and honey and some other things. It was about how I’d imagine a leaf wrapped around potpourri would taste.

On Monday we actually had a language class because Krishanayya-garu wanted to get us started. This is the fourth alphabet I’ll have learned (English, Russian/Cyrillic, Arabic, Telugu). This reminds me of Arabic though they don’t read from right to left and the letters are more complicated than Arabic.  We also learned some kinship words and some religious stuff.

There are three main gods: Vishnu, Siva, and the goddess Devi. Almost all of the other gods are reincarnations or avatars of those gods. On Monday we went to the temple of Varaaha Nara Simha on Simhachalam. Varaaha means bull, Nara means man, and Simha means lion. There are ten reincarnations of Vishnu and one is a bull and one is a lion. The temple we went to worshiped the bull, lion and man reincarnations. Simhachalam means lion-hill. In his lion reincarnation Vishnu killed a demon that was able to live forever inside and outside, in the sky and on the ground, and during night and day. Vishnu used his lion-strength to disembowel the demon on the threshold of a house, on his knee, and as the sun was setting which was in between all of the requirements meaning the demon could be killed. The temple itself was on this hill.

We got to go into the inner sanctum of the temple. This is only usually allowed to certain special individuals or to those who pay a lot of money. But because Dr. Nuckolls is  friends with the King of the ancient kingdom of Vijayanagaram he called ahead and got us in for free. The inner sanctum has a statue of Varaaha Nara Simha but it is wrapped in plaster except for like 12 hours of the year in May. We were accompanied by the King’s court astrologer and doctor, Dr. Raama linga Swami. The temple was really beautiful. Outside, they were filming a Tollywood movie. There was a fight scene and they had flower petals that they threw in front a fan. There was a huge crowd and the cooks who’d come with us were excited to see the movie stars. Unfortunately the stars left before we did and we became the center of attention.

 

The cooks looking down at the movie shoot.

Everywhere we go people like to have pictures with us. They’ll take pictures of us with their cell phones and many will actually come up and ask to take a picture and then pose with us. Pretty much everywhere we go people stare openly and ask for pictures. On Tuesday we went to another temple of Vishnu, in all ten of his incarnations and this family was there with us. They had the little girl video taping and the dad would come stand next to us as we were talking in a group while she filmed. They must’ve got a good twenty minutes recording of us talking about our music preferences while the father lurked nearby. Fun! We joke about pulling weird faces or telling them we’re celebrities. So far it isn’t too annoying except when they keep wanting more pictures.