Field Trip of Irrational Spirit

Today is Cary's and my 3rd year wedding anniversary. In preparationof being a good husband i went looking for a good present (i'veresigned to myself that the prefect present would be impossible tofind). And this is my story...

Cary has class everyday 9-1 and lunch is 1-2 (which we eat together).This 4-hour time slot is surprisingly short given all the possiblethings that can go wrong while trying to go downtown Madurai. So ipatiently waited. Recognisance reported that Cary would have a "fieldtrip" Saturday July 10th and would be gone all day... this is when iwould make my move. [field trip is a euphemism for 'waist a perfectlygood day do things no one cares about or has already done'; exampleField Trip #2, Visit Bookstores, why? no one knows] After kissing thewife good-bye i ran upstairs to have my guest-mom boil water for adehydrated camping-food pouch i brought. Move, soldier, move.Brunch, check. Felt pockets, money check. Confirmed with guest-momthat city bus would arrive at bus stand ~300meters down the road.Left house 20min behind Cary with nearly full compliment of survivalsupplies (hat, bag, 1L water, lip balm, [no sunscreen, ouch]). So iwalked out to the major road then toward town. I walked, and walked.It must have been 105F that day. After way more than 300meters thebus stand appears on the horizon. I sit on the curb and wait for theSimakkal bus (a stop near the temple downtown). 30minutes, nobuses... the bus has been intercepted by anniversary hating spies.Plan B: I feel rested after some valuable curb sittin' so i walk downto the next bus stand. Wait 20minutes, buses not going my way. Fhaa. The Powers-that-Be, they're good i'll give em that. So, i decided tostay with Plan B code name "Irrational Spirit" and decide to walk allthe way downtown. Distance by my reckoning: 8km (~5miles) , timetaken: ? (don't have a watch) but i didn't get home until dark.The experience was one that, i think, most people tend to value inIndia. I met several wonderful people and saw things that gounnoticed from the autorickshaw. I stopped at a Western-type sandwichshop for a Marinda (like orange Fanta but more carbonated) and made aplan. Beardcut (if possible), Meenashe Temple, and anniv present.Immediately after i left Tornados, barber on my right. the tempo hasshifted, i feel it. Nice fellow; lots of hand motions. He tried tospeak but didn't, i think he was a mute... which is a little oddbecause growing up my barber was mute (in Bessemer). Freaky. Next irounded a corner and saw a little shop hidden off in an unmaintainedcourtyard. They (Gandi Sevi) sold only recycled paper products andhired people with rather sever disabilities to make handicrafts. Theowner and the resident artist sat me down and they served me tea; 2workers working on mats. The owner was a mechanical engineer who quitengineering, started working for call centers teaching accents (alsospeaks Japanese fluently). Ohh, and he had Polio when he was 2, so hehas to walk on his hands. His upper body was quite impressive. Theartist (speciality in bronze casting and nontraditional materialsculpture) helped the disabled create "something they were happywith". There are mostly handmade cards for sale. I went to buy anotebook and card, but the guys would not take any money. They said"we enjoyed talking with you, take these home, then come visit againand buy something that time." We talked for about 2hours.I pushed on. Walked across a bridge and watched women (and 1man)washing clothes from natural ponds in a huge vale which should havebeen a river. They would slap the clothes on slabs of rock untilexhaustion then re-wet clothes in pond (repeat process). In aclearing boys (and 1man) were playing Cricket. I stopped and watched. The batsman, once seeing me, started hitting the ball much harder.The children went crazy with my approach and yelled for me to come andplay. I was behind schedule and could not comply. Saw the templefrom the bridge and never noticed that the temple was west of thebridge, not east as i had previously thought. hummm. Went west. Gotlost. Asked. Overwhelming response. I asked a guard/policeman whowas sitting in an ice cream parlor if i should go straight or left. 2families stood up, as well as the cop, to walk me in the correctdirection. Woooh, excitement at whitey going to Hindu temple.Neighborhoods around (and in) the temple is a capitalist dream, or atleast Adam Smith's dream. Shop after shop, of everything you couldimagine. All competing with each other to get you inside their shop.A free-for-all that's overwhelming. So far, Cary and i have beengetting each other 'Traditional Anniversary' presents. For year 3 itis leather. So, you can imaging how, in a country whose majorreligion consider cows to be sacred, this was a problem. {if only icould have found some Italians and stole their leather, dang!}.Though i did look, nothing other than belts, wallets, and jackets;none of them said "I love you, Cary". So, ingenuity took over and theanswer was art. I found a wonderful sandalwood carving of a cow, andthough this is it. Cary laughed at its presentation and said it washer favorite.Two thirds mission complete. The daylight was waning. Temple, hoe!Not the best view of the grandeur but a good explanation be found at:http://www.indiaprofile.com/monuments-temples/meenakshitemple.htmThere are 4 walls, 4 gated entrance ways which are through the pillarseen on the website (although pillar is not the correct word, someonehelp me out here).Off go the shoes and in goes the ashley. There are several amazingarchitectural wonders inside, but the one most people tend to rememberis the "Hall of 1000 Pillars" (pillar IS the correct word here). Allcarved stone and each one is different (i think) from the others.Apparently if you bang on the pillars some of them resonate atdifferent frequencies and make different thuds. I did not know thisat the time, but was told later. I shall return to bang. Everyonecan go inside Meenakshi, only Hindus can go inside the temple insidethe gate/walls. So i sat at the entrance to the temple proper andwatched. A trained elephant was stationed there. Its skill was touse its trunk and take a Rupee coin from your hand and then tap you onthe forehead (then give the coin to the priest, of course). Everyoneloves the elephant. There is religious significance since one of thegods has an elephant head (Ganesh/Ganesha)http://www.hindunet.org/god/Gods/ganesh/. I left at dusk and found aautorickshaw home, exhausted.

Segregation

Now, i know that a born and raised Southern titling an email "Segregation" is trouble from the beginning. But hear me out,...The South of my parents and grandparents was a VERY different souththan the one of my memory; especially in Birmingham. Most of my understanding of the events of the 1960's is textual and not contextual. As a result, i have come to think of terms like Segregation and Separate but Equal as 4-letter words. This leads me to the present. Madurai (where we are living for the next 3months) is in southernIndia. Oddly, southern India has some of the same traditional and conservative feel that the Ol' South once had. A common example canbe seen in mass transit. The buses are gender segregated. The men sit on the right, the women on the left, and married couples sit on the right with the man sitting on the aisle. I rode such a busseveral times (maybe 5miles, cost 2Rs (~5cents). I noticed when thebus was not full, the common filling would occur; people sit in singles. At one stop several school girls boarded the bus. The menjumped up to pair with other men and to offer their seats to the ladies. No one said anything, it's just what a gentleman does. {wherehave i heard that before}. Women would eventually sit on the men side, space permitting, usually in pairs. Paired men would not get uponce paired with other men. Courtesy only goes so far when one hastired legs. Men never sit on the women's side {not if they aredecent, at least}.Now, i'm as much of a feminist as the next guy. So when i first sawthis, i reacted with a "why can't we all just sit together", but theni bathed in the thought of 'why'. Why do women need women space and why do men need men space. It was nice to see men jumping up to lendtheir seat to a lady. It was nice knowing, late at night when all decent people should be in bed, there was not some creepy guy sitting next to a woman for some vulgar means (which is all too common on the 1 in Austin). What has been the cost of equality on the [US] buses? It would be nice to solve problems on a topic by topic basis [gender segregation on buses...Good, gender segregation in corporateAmerica...Bad] ... but, alas, the world is more complicated than that. All i know is, on the surface, it's nice.

Exceptions to the "rules" The buses get massively over crowded. Which is a bit of an understatement. What i mean to say is, the buses get so full that inside people stand pushed up against their fellow 8 Indians. I neverunderstood how crowds crush people at rock concerts until i rode anIndian bus at rush hour. Outside the bus, people (usually men) hangfrom the doorways (since there are no doors). The entire bus tilts,as if about to tip over, and the undercarriage (shocks & struts alike)moan in pain. Yet again, the sight and sound of India seems unreal.The first time i saw this, i thought the bus was broken, but when hordes of people exited the bus and the bus righted itself from its15degree tilt, i thought...oh. For these situations courtesy,politeness, and segregation do not apply.
Just git' on the bus,
there's no need to discuss much,
just git' yourself free

Yesteryear

I sent a vast amout of emails to "the people back home" while i was in India this summer, these are some of the excerpts.

I've sent some emails to workpeople in Austin, which Cary though yall might think are funny/entertaining/etc. Give it a read... and if itsnot good... well i'm on malaria meds which make me have strangethoughts. ;)

***The following is in response to an email where my coworkers"jokingly" said they would blame me for everything that could go inthe next few months...Sorry 'coworkers' for sending this twice***

Hopefully the BAC (Blame Ashley Clause) is working to its fullpotential, i'm sure it will be better utilities next week when Ronnie[our boss] comes back [from Israel].A little foray into my 'vacation'. excerpts from Ashley journal:Words alone can not prepare one for all India has to offer. Gettingoff the plane and going though customs was life as usual. We had thebenefit of a driver coming from Cary's program to take us to the guesthouse. It was just outside the airport where India, the one everyoneknows and loves, begins. Traffic lanes are better paved and markedthan Austin streets. Huge bike lanes line the side of the road, anenvironmental accomplishment unparalleled. These amenities arecoupled with a complete disregard for the spirit for which they exist. 2 words: Controlled Chaos. You could not say that cars were weavingin and out of traffic, because that implies that there was somethingfor them to weave into and out-of. Instead, the entire paved surface(bike lanes included) is a free-4-all of getting ahead of the people(or cows) around you. Horns continually blaring, not to expressoffence at fellow driver's actions, but rather as a type of advancedSONAR system that we Westerns have yet to discover. The horn soundalerts fellow drives of the relative position of themselves to otherdrivers, so in swiftmoving traffic one must continually blow ones horn as to know where you are.Hang on, I got more in a second...

***I got kick off the computer by another guest then resumed with thefollowing****

Don't believe the hype. It's hot, hot enough to kill the weak, but
it's not that hot. I grantee you the air pollution is going to get yaway before the heat will. There are 3 basic rules to get by here: 1.Drink water 2. Drink lots of water 3. While you are drinking lots ofwater, drink water. I realize after being here a day and a half, thattour/travel books should not publish "how to travel on 500 Rupees aday" instead they should publish "India, how to survive on 5Liters ofwater a day". FYI the high is usually around 42+/- 0.8 and the low isusually 35+/-1oCThe current exchange rate is 42.50 Rupees (Rs.) for $1.00 usd. I have not eaten a meal yet for over 100 Rs, and the food is so much betterthan I though possible. I've eaten a fair amount of Indian food inthe states, but this stuff here is off the hook. (did I say thatright?)Almost everything is built from a red sandstone, which looksbeautiful, but makes me feel hotter just looking at it. The architectwho build the Taj Mahal has a mosque he built here in Delhi (OldDelhi). The archways are a most impressive sight, especially if youcan line up a view of several in a row. Old Delhi is narrow streets,street vendors, crumbling buildings, poo on the street (some of whichis dog) a cornucopia of colors and smells.Most land is dirt. The areas that are green usually have a 1inchdiameter hose with the water running at half max. If anyone wanted togo in on a sprinkler company, I'm there. Efficiency is not the nameof the game (or anything else for that matter).After being in London for 4 day, I can understand why the people wouldwant to colonize India… and after being in India for 4 day I canunderstand why the Brits would give the country back to the Indians.

Crazy Cow!!!

Haiku?

I am hot, Real hot
I am sweating and smelling
India, god damn