Up the East Coast, Part III: The Sun Temple
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2005
1
199
353
Trip End
Ongoing
Puri and Konarak,
India
Saturday, June 9, 2007
India has a large number of people asking for something, ranging from Buddhist monks and sadhus to alcoholics or scam artists. Also are many polio victims and lepers, showing the world that some diseases have not been cured, despite easy solutions. Some need it, for others perhaps it perpetuates a vicious cycle, hard to tell. So who--if anyone--gets your spare change on the train--the singing girls, the boy who wipes the floor clean under your feet, the polio-inflicted man crawling on the floor, the blind woman, or the man without a hand?
Then the "she-males" came, taunting the shy engineers and demanding money. If you believe the superstition, not giving money could mean perhaps that your children will become "she-males." One touched an engineer on his thigh to taunt him and he brushed her/him away.
I slept on the upper berth as India passed in the dark. In the morning, we continued our conversations over breakfast, served hot by the train attendants, who bring the meals onto the train from station cafeterias. One thing we talked about was the number of alphabets and languages in India. India is not just Hindi, of course. It is also not just Hindi and then a couple of southern languages. It is home to a couple hundred languages, many with their own alphabets. Even within each language are local dialects. "Every fifty kilometers we ride, we pass another dialect," said one engineer.
One thing I noticed on this trip was something that wasn't present. Sometimes things that aren't there are just as important as things you can see. What wasn't there were the vultures that once were a common sight in the skies of India.
Their demise, it appears, was due to diclofenac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. The drug persisted in the carcass of cattle, accumulated in the vultures, then caused renal failure and death in millions of vultures. Now, instead of vultures scavenging carcasses, feral dogs and rats take their place.
The train ride continued with conversations about India, sometimes with Indian music played on an MP3 player from nearby. One common theme was India's rise in the global arena. "We will be number one," said one engineer. "I think we will lead the world," said a businessman.
Many Indians seem to agree with this, including especially the journalists for the Hindustan Times and other papers brought onto trains by newspaper boys, calling for people to buy the news with a well-developed high pitched projecting voice. Though India is on the rise economically, too often these papers use development figures manipulatively to suit their preconceived notions.
This goes hand-in-hand with a very real competition with China, in terms of the rising star of the East (who will win?) and with the West, in general. With the West, people seem most interested in competing academically and with jobs. One telling quote by the famous Indian Industrialist summmarizes the idea: Indian students "can not only hold their own against the best rivals in Europe on the latter's ground, but can beat them hollow."
The competition with China seems more related to its borders and 10%. The 10% is ten percent GNP growth, which China has enviously surpassed and India has been unable to reach so far, but yearns to achieve. One train passenger, a businessman, said that the Chinese did not report their GDP properly, so their percentage is probably below ten percent...and below India's.
At the same time, China and India share thousands of kilometers of border, a large percentage of which has been contested since the 1962 border war. The border skirmishes as well as China's nuclear weapons placed in Tibet along the contested area of Arunachal Pradesh were a large contributor towards India developing nuclear capability and perhaps a reason why American and India are being more friendly (oh the schoolyard games goverments will play). I sensed some distrust, perhaps fear (lingering memories of the 1962 invasion, perhaps?) of China from people on the train and the newspapers we read.
At the same time, they have opened one border crossing at Sikkim--a good change, especially considering the friendly ancient history between China and India and the hundreds of historical trade routes (note that China's invasion and militarization of Tibet is a large part of this).
Of course these topics could take many more pages to address, and this is not a foreign policy journal, but just travel notes from a long train trip.
After twenty-seven hours on the train, I arrived at Puri, home of the Jagganath Temple (No Hindus allowed), meaning the Temple of the Lord of the Universe. The temple, dedicated to Krishna of Bhagavad Gita fame loomed over the town. In front of the temple, craftsmen were building huge wheels for the up-and-coming Car Festival. Traditionally during the car festival, devotees would throw themselves under these huge wooden wheels as symbol of their faith. From these acts, the definition of the word juggernaut spread across the globe, meaning "something, such as a belief or institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion or to which people are ruthlessly sacrificed."
Nearby, I visited the final temple of my east coast temple tour, the Sun Temple of Konarak. The temple was designed in the form of a solar chariot pulled by seven male horses (four horses on the right side, showing a bias towards "right" and "male" when defining powerful.). While walking to the temple, I met an official guide, Surya, which coincidentally means sun, and hired him to explain some of the details of the temple.
The temple also functions as a massive sun dial of sorts, Surya pointed out. Its sides faced the cardinal directions, its stone wheels recorded time with its axil and spokes. The sun was prominent, with large volcanic blue chlorite statues of Surya still surviving the centuries.
All around the temple were glimpses into the life of thirteenth century Orissa and the minds of the Buddhist craftsmen as they constructed the Hindu temple. Surya showed me many of these as we walked clockwise around the temple exterior.
A grandmother with her cane was leaving home, her grandchildren hugging her and wishing her well. A women was carrying mangoes back to her house.
A young women was waiting behind a half-closed door, as her suitor looked at her from near a tree.
The bas -relief also depicted kundalini, giraffes, tantricism, the planet gods, the king and queen, women with servants, ducks, peacocks, and dancing.
Another bas-relief of two men wrestling prompted Surya to say: "WWF".
At the entrance, on either side, a lion sat upon an elephant who was crushing a man, symbolism of the relative desires of the three creatures.
These carvings prompted Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore to say: "Here the language of stone surpasses the language of man."
When we reached one of the kama sutra images, Surya looked both ways and whispered, "is it ok if we talk about...sex?" Surya said that many people thought it was a good idea to have these images, so married couples could learn by visiting the temples, although those who were offended probably did not visit. We went from image to image and he'd whisper the name of each position as if he were selling the letter "E" on Sesame Street: "Pssst, wanna buy an 'E'?"
Back on the train, this time another 24 hour trip to Varanasi Junction in the AC sleeper class, where beggars were not present and mostly middle-aged businessmen and families were my fellow bunkers. Though I usually do without it, the AC was a pleasant relief after sweating buckets for weeks.
In this section, most people spoke Hinglish, a code-switching combination of Hindi and English heard in the northern parts of India, like Spanglish as heard in Adam Sandler's movie and elsewhere. To a native English speaker, the conversations sound a little like this:
"There's not any problem hindi hindi business proposal submission. Hindi hindi computer hardware hindi hindi."
or
"You won't believe it hindi hindi hindi! I had so much fun hindi hindi eight hindi."
It's great because I can at least follow along even if they don't fully know English and I don't know Hindi or the other 200 languages of India. In the code-switching Hinglish, any new technology occurring after English colonization typically uses an Engish word. One thing that confused me for a while: "Where are you going?" essentially means "How are you," in a rhetorical greeting way, much of the time.
Arriving at Varanasi in the morning, I quickly found a bus heading for Nepal, once again hitting the roads of India. After a half a year in India, I'd describe India's driving system as "offensive driving" as opposed to the "defensive driving" taught in America, for example.
Road Rule #1: Is someone is passing another car heading towards you in your lane at break-neck speed, turn your wheel towards them to let them know you mean business: you will win if there's a head-on collision.
Road Rule #2: Make sure your horn can be heard for at least one kilometer and use it all the time, even if it means everyone will lose their hearing. Honking is a language in India, sometimes for friendship, but mostly to say "get out of the way or I might run you over (it'll be your fault because I honked)." The same thing applies to using high beams at night--shine them and flash them when someone approaches. This is obviously counterintuitive for westerners.
Road Rule #3: Larger vehicles have the right of way. Trucks move buses out of the way. Buses move cars out of the way. Cars move motorcycles out of the way. Motorcycles move bicycles, pedestrians, and livestock out of the way. Bicycles, pedestrians, livestock, dogs, and cats are left to fend for themselves without a sidewalk (watch out for the crap while you're at it.) If you're young and have a motorcycle, violate this rule and weave in and out of traffic at high speeds.
Road Rule #4: Load your vehicle with as much as possible, whether bricks, chickens, or people. I saw one truck on the road that simply collapsed, its axels and wheels broken from too many rocks in its bed.
Throughout this chaos, all usually ends well, despite the average speed of 25 km/hour. It's better than a movie, especially from the front seat of a bus.
After ten hours, the ST bus, observing the Four Road Rules, reached the Nepali border at Sonauli, about 250 kilometers north of Varanasi. Another blackout darkened the border street, a defining theme now showing in India. The emigration office stamped my visa under candlelight as I walked out of India.
