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Lord Hanuman, Rama's friend and
servant
Here he is ripping apart his chest to show inside -
his love for Rama and Sita. |
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| Halloween in India: Oct. 31st |
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| Happy Halloween. Halloween isn’t celebrated here. We
do, however, get a daily dose of trick and treat. |
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| I woke up this morning, and had my daily "hot"
shower, and a shave. The shower consists of a shower head which you lean into, and if the
power is on, you get a drop of lukewarm water every few seconds from the hot-water geyser
(now, I know why it’s pronounced geezer). I put on my robe, and started to shave. It
was right out of a Stephen King movie — I’m shaving in front of the mirror, and
in the mirror I see a cockroach running over the top of my back, stopping in the middle to
say hi, and then running down the left side of my robe. I did the quickest strip tease
known, followed by Sue and I doing the hunting and killing ritual we now know so well. |
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| We have chairs this morning! From my new cane chair I can
leisurely view the world outside. There are the hawks circling; here in Bangalore there
are these small hawks, roughly about 15 to 18" in size, which look like small bald
eagles. They are lovely up close, with their white hoods, and iridescent brown bodies. I
suppose Indians don’t admire hawks they way that Americans do. Hawks being meat
eaters, they’re never mentioned in the literature or fables. We have chipmunks on
every tree. In the Ramayana there is a story about Hanuman and Rama trying to build a
bridge from the tip of India, across the ocean, to what is now called Sri Lanka. Rama is
trying to rescue Sita, his beloved, from the clutches of the demon Ravanna who has her
imprisoned Sita in his palace. Everyone helps Rama to build the bridge, bringing boulders
to fill up the ocean. The chipmunk can only bring pebbles, but he does his best, and for
his effort Shiva blesses him with three stripes of sacred ash down his back. Hence the
three striped chipmunk that we see today. Of course every now and then the illusion that
is India is broken, and a hawk swoops down and has a chipmunk for breakfast. |
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| Sue and I are grudgingly getting used to not accomplishing
our objectives for the day. In India, it is seldom possible to accomplish what you set out
to do. I believe this contributes to the fatalistic attitude of its citizens. Still, with
luck, today we might be able to get a bank account started (our 6th attempt). (We finally got a bank account one full year later - as a side
effect of finally obtaining all the red-tape required to set-up Apple's bank account). |
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