Christmas Day - BangaloreDec 24, 2004
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| Merry Christmas Everyone! We have had one of the nicest and most different Christmas holidays ever. Even though we are in a predominately Hindu area, there are Christmas lights and large paper lanterns in the shape of stars adorning the occasional home and hotel lobby. Although we spent Christmas Eve riding all night in an a three-tier sleeping compartment wearing our street clothes and arrived at 6:30 AM in the teaming city of Bangalore, as we sat together in a nearby hotel eating a breakfast of cornflakes and South Indian curried vegetables, we wished each other Christmas greetings and truly felt thankful and happy to be together. We extend our heartfelt wishes of joy and peace on earth to each one of you as well. The last several days we retraced our steps to show Kendall and Connor the tremendous runins of Hampi. Constructed during the period of 1300 - 1550 AD, the runins cover an area of over 100 square kilometers along a lovely sacred river which runs through countryside of irrigated banana, rice and sugarcane fields and breathtaking rock formations with huge boulders balanced atop each other. These ruins rival any of the archeological wonders we have seen in Europe, Asia, Central and South America and we are therefore amazed that we had never heard of them before! Palaces, temples and market bazars covered with thousands of beautiful and intricate stone carvings delight the eye. An irrigation system of raised stone aqueducts, open water storage tanks, bathing pools and cooling systems supported the city ingeniously with an easily accessible water supply. There is still a small population of village people that live in among the ruins, so there is the continual coming and going of oxen-drawn carts full of hay and stalks of green bananas, doorway scenes of women washing clothes and cooking untensils in stone basins, goats and water buffaloes being herded etc. - so different than life in the housing tracts of California!! There is also a minority community of gypsies with distinctive dress and hair ornaments that Kendall and I have been trying to capture on film... One of the pleasures of visiting any Indian monument or tourist center is the encounters of the inevitable bus loads of school children who are there on field trips. They love to say hello, ask where we are from and shake our hands, all the while grinning and giggling when we pay attention to them. We continue to be asked to be part of group photos with visiting Indian tourists as well. I am touched and impressed by the friendliness of the Indian people we have encountered and hope that visitors to our own country feel even half of the hospitable spirit that has been bestowed upon us here. Our reading material has been a selection of novels written by Indians that has enriched our knowledge of the cultural norms and religious attitudes. One humorous easy read, For Marital Purposes, describes the woes of a modern day young high caste girl who, despite her parents continual efforts to arrange a suitable marriage, is still unmarried in her late twenties. Even though she lives and works at an executive job in New York, she continues to fly back to Bombay once a year to check out potential marriage prospects that involve negotiations between the parents, an exchange of pictures and then a "date" where the families meet at a restaurant and the couple check each other out and give the thumbs up/down afterwards. I have to say that I like the part about the families having some kind of say in the matter. But I read several recent heartbreaking stories in the local newspapers here; one in which a couple eloped, came back to their local town, and were attacked and brutalized by elements organized by the bride's father because she had married below her caste; in today's paper, a young couple commited suicide in a hotel room because they believed their parents would not approve their match (they left notes thanking their parents for all they had done for them and explaining their actions!) India is an amazing place of ancient and modern ways in contrast. Love and peace to you all, Ellen |
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