wake up! its 4am!

local color

Thu, 8 Sep 2005

Pranams,
Grammar...getting.... sloppier by the minute... the mental stretch of attempting to speak Tamil/Indian English (don't forget to add the head bobble or nobody will understand a word you say!), the noon-day sun, the mosquitoes and the disabled spell checkers on these Indian computers make for quite a quezzie communiqué.... please to be excusing me.

The field notes from Chennai on this Thursday afternoon begin with the 4 am wake up call. The lime green house next door to Shyamala's has been celebrating a marriage so our room is lit up with soft glow of no less than 10,000 X-mass lights that have been strung all over their palm trees...its really quite nice. At 4am each morning I am awaked by the sound of ...yes! ...You guessed it! AUM.... AUM.... AUM.... there is a temple near-by that has just the right acoustics to make those ruckus priestly mantras permeate everything for a 10 kilometer radius. The priests begin quite early and go on for several hours...the crows chime in (LOUD) around 6am...I'm not complaining or anything...I rather like having my kaleidoscopic Indian techni-color dreams fade into the X-mass light glow via waves of A...U...M...

ganapati dreams

Last night we visited several temples to bask in the ocean of Ganesha that is swirling all around for the Ganesha Chaturti Festival. I just love how when the arati (ceremonial fires) are all lit up everyone gets all frenzied. In a couple days all of the murtis (statues) that everyone has been puja-ing and parading about will be cast into the ocean. Everywhere we go the temples are ROCK'IN! The doors are flung wide open, the priests are covered in sweat, the women are 'dolled up' like nobodie's bizness, 40 ft. tall neon Ganeshas stand on each corner, flowers everywhere and traffic is brought to a stand still when the huge Ganeshas are brought into the streets on temple chariots...I just love these mobile pujas.Oh yes- one last note: after attending a kauravangi dance drama (bharata natyam done gypsy style) we headed over to the famous Grand Sweets where we partook in the sugary goodness of 'mysore pauk' (a dense alchemical mishmash of ghee, sugar and besan flour), there's just nothing else like it.

The mosquitoes are telling me that's enough for now...Running away now!
Aum Shakti!