Day 33: Ayodhya

Photos (and there are plenty!) can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=100495&id=641210317&l=750b94f79f We decided to do something touristy, visiting the nearest place where I could find lots of monkeys. Destination: Faizerbad. Here are some notes about the Faizerbad day. Had street food again, aloo tikka, a little potato cake with very yummy daal sauce, really good While eating there I noticed some poor girls standing outside, so I took pictures of them. Then they noticed me, first were too shy and then they started extending their hands and pointing at their stomachs. I then realized what they were doing and why they didn't come in. They were beggars. So I did something weird and probably dumb. I had a package of cookies I didn't like so while waiting for others to finish I went out there and gave it to one of the girls, thinking that she would share with others. She had one of the biggest smiles I've seen here as she took it and ran away with it (I never saw her again!). Then other kids started gathering around me. And even more when we all were leaving. It was sad that I couldn't give them any food. I mean, I could have bought some aloo tikka for them, but that's the sort of charity I find very demeaning and not entirely helpful. Or maybe I just didn't want to upset the locals who would never do that for them. Saw lots of mosques as we entered Faizerbad. Arrived in Ayodhya, birth place of Ram, one of the most important deities in Hinduism. Visited Hanuman's temple. Supposedly there's thousands of Hanuman's temple. Filthy floor, really disgusting, and you can't walk with shoes on. Almost slipped on wet pavement that felt very gooey. No photos. Crowds waiting for Hanuman, chanting, then shouting before giving offerings of sweets you find sold in abundance outside all temples; after giving the offering they also received food back from Hanuman, all sorts of sweets. It's really just mixing everyone's sweeets together. Not particularly sanitary, but the fate of the sweets was sealed, as you will see later. Outside temples in India are full of shops selling religious paraphernalia (including these sweets) as well as bangles, vermillion powder for married women (they stuff that stuff in the hair part of their heads to show off they are stuck in a marriage). The religious stuff is hilarious. There's plenty of the same DVDs of the ramayan, Hanuman (the monkey dude), and other characters in the Hindu religion. There's a scene of Ram or Krishna or somebody while he was a toddler, and you could see his little penis in all god's glory. Weird! I had my fortune told by a bird! The way it works is that the little bird is released from the cage (it doesn't fly) and then it hops from one end of the laid out envelops of cards. It pecks on one envelop and the bird owner opens the envelop to see if the bird wants to pull out the card inside. It didn't, so the owner puts the envelop away and waits for the bird to peck another one. The iteration continues until the bird pulls a card out of the envelop it had pecked on. The owner than offers other cards to make sure the birdie really meant that card. In my case the birdie went over like a dozen iterations before pulling out a card that really didn't say anything interesting. It said I would be seeing new places and making offerings to gods to get what I wanted. I guess that's what I did that day (minus that what-I-wanted-part) but isn't that what everyone in that city was doing that day? Religious Conflict The visit to this controversial site where in 1992 Hindu extremists came and tore down a 500 year old mosque because, supposedly, the mosque sat on where Ram was born. There are claims that some Mogul ruler who hated the Hindus tore down an original temple dedicated to Ram. (Muslims, like many Christians, don't believe in idolatry. Anyway, lots of hate and now the Hindus want to build or rebuild a new temple for Ram. There're even pictures of the proposed new temple we got to see in some little dinky hole a Hindu guy showed us and tried to get us to contribute money. I didn't want to get political. Though I am slightly biased for the Muslims. Anyway, the biggest deal is to enter the site. Wow, it's like going through a checkpoint in Palestine, all these high barricades and I got frisked at least three times. We had our passports taken away for who knows what reason until we exited. It was really creepy for me because of what needed to be done to contain all this religious fervor. It made me appreciate more how religious people can get, and how it can get out of hand. We had to go through a labyrinth and then it was quite a let-down in the end because all we saw was a bunch of devotees of Ram looking through barricades where on the other side is a tent with something shiny inside that marks the spot where Ram was born. I realized something about the Hindu religion. They actually believe these folks were born here and were gods. I am not used that idea. Anyway, another funny thing happened. Although we were surrounded by barricades and armed men (and women!) with tough faces and muscles and machine guns and hiding behind sand bags, there was plenty of of freedom for the monkeys. They were very very naughty. They were watching every step we made, waiting for an opportunity to strike. So it happened. I was at one of the security checkpoints being frisked. We could only bring our wallets with us; everything else (including sim cards, explosive and non explosive versions!) had to be left outside. So as with other checkpoints, I had to show the contents of my wallet. Suddenly, a shout. I turned around and I saw the shadow of a monkey disappearing. I didn't know what happened until Jennifer told me that my wallet narrowly escaped kidnapping because a monkey dashed towards my wallet and was only stymied when a guard shouted at him. Bad bad monkey! I would have lost my ATM card and, well, a few dollars, I suppose. But what irony; all this to keep angry human beings from killing each other, but then the monkeys rule. Happily, I saw monkeys swimming in a pool of undoubtedly extremely filthy water. They were like kids playing a pool, dunking themselves or others into the water. There's a mixed feeling in me about these rascals. More about them in a later incident. One good thing about this whole adventure in the barricaded site is we managed to actually do it. A gentleman helped us all the way through; he apparently is some authority figure and didn't want us to go through some 1.5 hour of investigation before allowing us, foreigners, to come into this sensitive site. I was thankful for that. But then I wondered, why discriminate us foreigners. Our friends look exactly like any Muslim, any Pakistani, actually. They were not asked to present any IDs, just like no one else was asked. I didn't quite understand that. But still, the positive side is this gentleman not only helped us but also got us to pass all the lines and we quickly got to that famous site with the tent. I still have a lot of confusing feelings about this whole issue. I am always fascinated by how religion makes people do such strange things. Obviously there are no photos from inside the labyrinth, but I hope you can have a sense of how moving being in there was for me. Break for Chai We stopped at a chai stall and it was quite an experience. The stall and the adjacent henna shop were owned by the chai making lady, who is a widow with three girls and a son. (I was told she's a widow because she had children and no longer had the vermillion painted in her hair, though I wondered why she couldn't just have had those children out of wedlock! But no one would even consider that here!) She made probably the best chai we've had so far and although I got the name of the spice (Pragya), I have not been able to find it. Anyway, her three daughters were very fun and very energetic, all undoubtedly owed to something very positive about their mother. It's very difficult for any mother in the world to raise four children, and in India it's much harder than most other places. There's something very powerful in her face, very resilient, very admirable. She wasn't interested in squeezing as much money out of her customers as possible. She just wanted to enjoy what she was doing. She offered to give Jennifer a free henna tattoo, but in the end Jennifer insisted on paying. I had a really good time with them, and that experience renewed my admiration for the poor people in this country. The Naughty Monkeys As the day wound down we visited one more temple. The stone floors were still hot from the sun and nearly untouchable by our feet. There were monkeys all over the place. All seemed like they were just minding their own business. The experience with them in the barricades sobered me up a little about the truthfulness of their naughty reputation. I had been warned many times that they were clever, they were schemers, they had emotion, they could understand our emotions and expressions a lot more than we would give them credit for. They were quite like a bunch of street urchins except that they had a lot more freedom than we did (like not needing to go through the multiple metal detectors in the barricades or could climb on anyone's house, try doing that yourself!). I was just happy to see so many of them and not losing my wallet. We exited the temple, us, our friends, and the driver. Then I heard a shout and I saw a monkey dashing next to me with a very familiar bag of sweets. That's our bag of the sweets from the Hanuman temple. I turned around and saw the driver smiling in resignation. The little hooligans distracted him while one of them dashed towards him and ripped the bag of sweets out of his hand. There's really nothing you can do about it. That monkey just climbed the walls and all you can do is not get angry that this animal of a lower evolutionary scale had outsmarted and out-manoeuvered you. I was impressed. I also saw on the same wall that the robber scaled something just as impressive. A mother monkey (with a little guy clinging onto her abdomen) managed to open a faucet to try to get water. Not only did she know it was a source of water, but also how to turn it! What she didn't know was that it was just a valve on a pipe to control water flow through the pipe, not letting water out. I guess us humans can trick them too! Well, it's ironic that the monkeys stole our sweets; it was sweets given back to us by the monkey god, Hanuman. Ghat by the River The last thing we did before heading back was another unexpected adventure. Our friends took us to the river bank where there were lots of food stalls and religious paraphernalia stalls. And then there was the river. Actually, between us and the river is a huge beach. I have never seen such a big river beach before, fine sand, and lots of people gathering at dusk. I didn't know what the big deal was, besides the beach, until I saw the pyres in the distance. Like in the touristy Varanasi where the Ganges flows through, here another religious river flows through and people practice the Hindu tradition of burning their dead here, like the Romans did (except here it has to be on a river). We didn't go to the pyre, but I could smell a strange smell of barbeque. I know, it's disrespectful, probably, to think like that, but it was a very disturbing smell of burning meat. And just after I saw the pyres our friends pointed out something in the sand to us: a skull. I guess the river surges at other times to cover the beach. The river is already very wide, and to cover the beach it would probably be the largest river I would have ever seen. Usually a pyre would burn everything up and the ashes, according to our friends, would be removed and thrown into the Ganges. So the only explanation for the skull, and at the end other bones we had stepped on, would be the result of an outlawed practice poor people did if they couldn't afford the pyre. They would at night (since it was illegal) float their dead in the river. We walked to the river and saw a lot of people swimming to cool down from the heat, and every now and then I am sure swimmers in this and other holy rivers would find themselves next to a decaying corpse. One last interesting note about the river is that one of the swimmers was a woman (just one) and she was in her sari! So funny! I have read about Muslim women going in the water all covered up (an Iranian female swimmer for the last Olympics made it to the news by competing with her body all covered). Now I saw something similar from the Hindus. It's all too weird. Over all I was very impressed by Ayodhya (so we were not really in Faizerbad). It is what Varanasi would look like without the imbecilic and numerous tourists who think they could find spirituality in their jeans among poor people most of whose true intention was to trick them into giving them money or something. We didn't see a single Westerner, and all the visitors were very devout people whose views I may not share or understand but who impressed me very much with their devotion and fascinated me with their practices. Here in Ayodhya things were genuine, not a show, at least not tainted by a desire to attract foreigners.