Mahabalipuram

The first of the much-touted India posts!

On my first Saturday in India, I visited Mahabalipuram (now known as Mamallapuram), a coastal town located in the Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu. It was a 7th-century port city of the Pallava dynasty, and thus has zillions of amazing historical temples, carvings, and other marvels. It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. [note: I definitely stole some of the above information from Wikipedia.] I'd never been to this city before, and I love historical places, so it was a real treat seeing all of the amazing things depicted in the photos below:

The first thing we saw at Mahabalipuram was the above bas relief carving, known as The Descent of the Ganga or Arjuna's Penance [thanks Wikipedia]. Notice the incredible detail in the carving. If you look closely above the small shrine carving (to the left of the largest elephant), you'll see a carving of an emaciated man in tree pose. This is supposed to be Arjuna, doing penance in order to receive a boon from Lord Shiva to help him fight the war in the Mahabharata, or Bhagiratha, also doing penance so that the River Ganga would descend from heaven to Earth and wash over the ashes of his ancestors.

Amazingly, this sculpture is monolithic--it was carved out of ONE rock!

I really like cooing over goats and calves in India, and I thought these goats with their heads together in the shade of this boulder were kind of adorable.

More bas relief carvings in a cave temple. The one above depicts the reclining Lord Vishnu, or Seshashayanam. He reclines upon a snake bed in the ocean, and is surrounded by attendants.

In this carving, Shiva's vehicle the bull, known as Nandi, leads an army. I don't know what story this depicts, but wish I did.

I found this tree, growing out of the side of a rock face, was pretty incredible.

I took the three pictures below while standing at the top of the ancient lighthouse near the cave temples. The Tamil Nadu countryside is breathtaking.


If you squint in this photo, you can see the tower (gopuram) of the Shore Temple (which will be featured below) near the horizon, about one-fourth away from the left frame of the photo.

Below is a photo of three of the Five Rathas, monolothic, un-consecrated temples. Tickets must be purchased to visit these, and the price varies depending on whether you are Indian or a "foreigner." My cousin bought Indian-priced tickets for all of us, and told me to keep my mouth shut until we entered the compound, because had I spoken, I would have outed myself with my accent. Humorous anecdote aside, these five temples are pretty amazing.

This is a carving on the side of one of the temples, depicting Ardhanarishwara, a deity who is half-male (the left half) and half-female (the right half). Apparently it's a really great example of Pallava sculpture.

Next we visited Shore Temple, a Shiva temple located on, well, the shore. Legend has it that this is one of 3-5 shore temples in total, and all but this one are no submerged underwater. Legend also has it that before the tsunami hit this coast, when the tide was going unnaturally far out, one or two of the other shore temples were revealed. Pretty cool stuff.

Hello, gorgeous Bay of Bengal

Because this is a Shiva temple, small Nandi sculptures line the perimeter wall of the temple. In this gorgeous shot, I was able to capture the silhouettes of these Nandis.

Beloved

It took me weeks to finish reading Toni Morrison's Beloved. I began reading it right as I was leaving India, and only finished it up last week. Chalk the slow pace up to its being a bit impenetrable at times. The book was very good overall, but if I were to try to piece together the plot meticulously, I'd still be baffled. Since I've chosen instead to focus on the themes presented in the novel and the moments of breathtaking writing in it, I'm mostly just happy I finished it. As I am wont to do with nearly everything I read, I dog-eared the pages containing lines that made me swoon as I read. Unfortunately, since I never underline or highlight said lines, I have to search for them on the dog-eared pages after I read the book and blog about it. So the following are (hopefully) my absolute favorite quotations from this book:

"...but even when she said it she was thinking how much her eyes enjoyed looking in his face." (46)

"She shook her head from side to side, resigned to her rebellious brain. Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another bite?...But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day." (70)

"He sat down beside her. Sethe looked at him. In that unlit daylight his face, bronzed and reduced to its bones, smoothed her heart down." (71) I lovelove the cadences created by the first two short sentences, and then the concept of a face smoothing someone's heart down, the same way I love the concept of eyes enjoying looking at a face. The idea that beauty can be comprehended severally by your senses and not just in a lump experience by your brain.

"Sethe rubbed and rubbed, pressing the work cloth and the stony curves that made up his knee. She hoped it calmed him as it did her. Like kneading bread...Working dough. Working, working dough. Nothing better than that to start the day's serious work of beating back the past." (73) This excerpt ended a chapter. An ending like that--it just makes me go "mm."

"...she wanted Paul D. No matter what he told and knew, she wanted him in her life....Trust and rememory, yes, the way she believed it could be when he cradled her before the cooking stove. The weight and angle of him; the true-to-life beard hair on him; arched back, educated hands. His waiting eyes and awful human power. The mind of him that knew her own. Her story was bearable because it was his as well--to tell, to refine and tell again. The things neither knew about the other--the things neither had word-shapes for--well, it would come in time..." (99) What a fantastic description of the things one can love about a man, and the way lovers can begin to occupy spaces in one another's lives.

"I'll plant carrots just so she can see them, and turnips. Have you ever seen one, baby? A prettier thing God never made. White and purple with a tender tail and a hard head. Feels good when you hold it in your hand and smells like the creek when it floods, bitter but happy." (201) Who else could write so evocatively about a turnip, for goodness' sake! This excerpt makes me want to hold one, see one, smell one, so much.

"There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts. Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the Thirty-Mile Woman. 'She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.'" (272-273) I so desperately want to be described this way one day, as a woman about whom there is too much to feel, a woman who can gather a man's (or anyone's, for that matter) pieces and give them back in the right order. Mm.

"He wants to put his story next to hers." (273) Again, an amazing way to conceptualize (ugh this is not the right term; where is all my language gone?) love and marriage--putting your stories together.

NOTE: Boldface and italics were added by me, and were not in the original text.

And There'll Be Sun Sun Sun...

I feel almost guilty [almost, but not quite] that I'm enjoying temperate, sunny weather in Chennai, India while my friends back home shiver in 40-degree weather. Then I remember that I'm covered in mosquito bites (and getting more by the minute) and I don't feel so guilty anymore. This, my friends, has been the [happy] refrain (happy refrain, that's from some song I think...anyone know which? "And we will sing this happy refrain..." something like that) of nearly all the postcards I've written so far--and I've only written ten out of the 28 or so I'm to write from India. Funny story: the postcards, which feature scenes only from South India (in fact, I think, only from Tamil Nadu--which makes me happy because yay South India!) cost 6 rupees each. Postage for each one to America costs 15 rupees each. To be expected, but it's still pretty funny.

Other news:

1. My cousin who picked me up at the airport is a pretty darn good driver, which is saying something because driving in India is insane.
2. I made enchiladas for my two cousins here in Chennai for tiffin yesterday. (I love the word tiffin. Tiffin tiffin tiffin.) They rather enjoyed them, but now I have lots of refried beans and tortillas and enchilada sauce left in the refrigerator. I'll have to get my aunt and uncle to eat an enchilada or two later today.
3. Yesterday I showed my cousins (Abhi and Akhil, so I can stop writing "my cousins" all the time) the video for "Down" by Jay Sean on my iPod Touch (yay iPod which has proven so useful on this journey so far!). It was rather an interesting moment, just because there I was, Indian by birth but thoroughly American, showing my Indian-Indian cousins an r&b song by a British-Indian guy. They didn't really say whether they liked the song.
4. I bought myself Indian shampoo on the first day I got here. I'm really fascinated by the concept of beauty products and cosmetics made solely for Indian women. Foundation that's actually brown? Yes, please! (Okay fine, you can get brown foundation in the States, too, but it's different here. It just is. Plus, cosmetics are a bit cheaper here.
5. I won't be leaving India for another five weeks, but when I do, I'm going to go crazy buying Indian packaged food. We've been to the grocery store twice already to buy enchilada supplies, and I've begun to scope out all the types of noodles and sauce mixes and soups I can buy to fill up my soon-to-be-emptied suitcases. Yay empty suitcases! Speaking of which, when I was unpacking the things my parents had bought for our extended family here in Chennai, I found that it brought me great joy to begin clearing out my suitcases. It generally bring me joy to throw things out or get rid of things: papers, old ticket stubs, and so on. This is not really a very good thing, I'm afraid, because it's nice to hold onto objects that carry sentimental value. But I've never been very good at that.
6. There's a store near my uncle's flat that sells fresh chips. Kind of like a donut or bagel shop, except with chips. There are chips made of all sorts of vegetables and tubers: plantains and potatoes and lots of other Indian vegetables that I don't know the English names for (or the Tamil names, come to think of it...). I need to hit that place up soon because chips in India (even regular potato chips) are FTW.
7. I'm planning to get my nose pierced this Saturday. I'm pretty nervous about it, not so much for the impending pain, but because I really don't know how I'll look with my nose pierced. Truth: it could turn out really terribly. Also truth: I don't really care that much. I've wanted to have my nose pierced ever since I was a little girl. My mother has her nose pierced, like my grandmothers and most of my aunts. It's just something Indian women do. So hopefully the next time I blog I'll be able to tell you what it's like to get one's nose pierced in India. Let's cross our fingers for a no-harrowing experience!

All in all: I haven't had coconut water or roasted corn or mangoes or palm fruit (my mom says it's probably out of season, which breaks my heart a little) yet, nor have I gone to any temples, but I'm having rather a good time here so far. It's nice to be here A) in February, when the weather doesn't have me sweating constantly; and B) alone. I'm not being dragged around by the whims of my parents (my dad is usually fun when we're in India, but my mom goes insane, talking incessantly about how there's not enough time to do all the things she needs to do). Being here alone makes me feel grown-up, in a good way, and truly participatory in my experience here. I get to suggest what I'd like to do or where I'd like to go. Accordingly, Abhi and Akhil are supposed to take me to a coffee shop today, which should be a trip.

Being here is nice. I just hate that I'm missing such a big chunk of my life back home (seven weeks is a long time!) while I'm away.

Note: Entry title comes from "5 Years Time" by Noah and the Whale, which is a fantastic and fun song.