In India

For those of you who don't appreciate all the architecturalo beauty of ancient caves, here's some more can't make it up, slapstick Indian comedy....

04/08/06...

Shock
I drank too much last night.
Actually I didn't drink alot, but I had been up since 6 AM and then had a few beers.
Point is on Saturday at 1 PM I was still in bed. But nothing will rise you from your sleep faster than a soft knocking at your beedroom door when you live alone.

"haallo?" said the door.

I opened my eyes a crack...realized i was not dreaming.
Realized that someone was kocking at the door...Had I locked the door?
...Yes I ALWAYS lock the door.Maybe security?

Holy crap if the lights and water malfunctioninghad never promted this kind of action, what the hell was wrong now?

The door started to open...
"hallo?"

It was a small blur about 5 feet tall and thin. Still not quite over my fear now, I sat up in bed in my boxers and said

>>"Who the hell are you?"

A quick: "Sureeee, Surreee"

....the blur scurried away, the door snapped closed.

I promptly put my lenses in, threw on a t-shirt, and got up.

>>"kya....you....kaha..."( what you how)
was all I could compose in my groginess...this yielded a curious tilting of the head from the small Indian man.

God...Dammit.....light a cigarette.......so I had to fall back on the first hindi converstaion
burned into my brain.... robotically, in a sing-song school tone I sang the incantation:

>> "Mera nam Pat hei, aur apka?"
(My name is Pat, and you?)

Oh great...something unpronounceable and starting with a D.
I found my keys on the counter held them up and said:
>>"tumhara" ( yours?), He produced another set and smiled.

Then he said the another name, repeatedly until I got it....
Oh...that's the guy in HR....okay you're the house boy ( I know that make me sound like a dude from 'Gone with the wind', but that's what everyone calls them). We now understood eachother...he was here to clean.

The nakedness of man faced with the absurd
(No one's naked....it's a quote....READ A BOOK!)

>> "I can't believe we have'nt met for nearly 2 months..."

See this story for the full host of OTHER people who came to my house.
No comprehension.

>>"Is there a schedule you follow?"
Again nothing.

I looked up schedule in the hindi dictionary and pointed at the hindi word...he shepishly grinned, great...you can't read it and it'll take me 20 minutes to figure out if that's an Y or an S.

Okay Sesame Street time...
I start singing again, going to the lowest common denominator, pantomime...

"Monday,Tuesday,
YOU! Wens, Thurs ,
YOU! , Friday Saturday,
Sunday YOU!".

Exclaiming "YOU" and pointing to him on Saturday.Tues, and Turs (as far as I could make out from my laundry reapearing...that's how it worked).

He thought I'd gone mad, I repeated the cycle several times with hand gestures... an ash fell off the cigarette and he immediatley stopped paying attention to sweep it up.

Take a second to appreciate this I'm in my boxers pantomining the days of the week to another grown man who is barefoot ,semi-literate and holding a rag in his hand.


He finally said 'Tuedsay, Thursday...ME!"

Achaa....communication, bravo....

Then he started cleaning. I sat down and typed this.

Ajanta

The next morning we found the driver ( I have no idea where he slept, but judging from the state of the jeep , I had a good idea), and headed out to Ajanta, another 2 hour ride fromAurangabad.
It's build on a hairpin turn in the river. What it is 26 Buddhist caves of fantastic sculptures, and unlike Ellora.... paintings.

A bushell full of Buddhas

There are 20 foot Buddhas everywher.
In cave 1 surounded by murals of Bodhishatvas.
A Bodhishatva is like someone who's destined to be a buddha.

In cave 4 surrounded by giant pillars :

In another cave (I lost count), surounded by 20 foot bodhishatvas
Bodhishatvas also have super powers in Indian mythologies.

Light tickets.

OR

Why the pictures are blurry.

You can't use your flash in the caves becasue it'll damage the paintings.

Thanks to beuracrcy , you can buy a light ticket. This entitles the guard to turn on the lights in certain caves. They stay on for about 30 minutes, so if someone before you bought a light ticket your're in luck. Othrewise you can save a whole 50 whole rupees and look at pitch dark caves....

This will turn any amature photograher into a digital artist. You find yourslef talking about apature, saturation , focus settings and the like. Trying to capture the paintings and statues.

Thanks to my ManFriday...Here's the boshishatva on the left in cave one:He's much more patient with the settings and actually reads the manual, thankfully he got some decent pics of the paintings. Me, if the flash doesnt work, the autofocus does'nt work....and then there are about a billion little things you have to figure out. I don't have the patience.

Here's the whole valley, it's quite striking, and deathly hot. Imagine being a monk here, hanging out with about 1000 other monks, just chanting and carving, chanting and carving, trying to get enlightend...but mostly carving.

....your whole life goes by and you just made one buddha statue. Of course you probably think about death a little differently as well...

After all this insipiring, the Buddha was himself exhausted....and laid down to sleep ( This statue is about 25 feet long).

Goodnight Buddha.

Buddhist caves
Not to be outdone, the buddhists have another batch of caves at Ellora.
Cave 10 is the greatest of the budhist caves, It has a carving of Vishwarkarma outside. He's the architect of heavean. In the Ramayana he builds everything.
Some of his greater acomplishments....

• the dome of the sky
• the demon city Lanka ( hey the demons have money too...and the people of Sri Lanka would like to report they are in no way in leauge with man-eating demons).
• the chariot that flies around the world, seats an army, and talks !
• an I-pod for Shiva.

Inside cave ten is a ribbed structure that looks earily like a church nave. And a man who will sing and chant, even if you don't want him to. He wants rupees.

In the middle is Bhudda. Throughout the insanity of India he remained calm....that's enlightened

Oh and how's this shot amatuer photographers?....boo-yah:

Unfortunatley we didn't make it to all 30 some odd caves at Ellora. But when the security guard with the silly beret , and the AK-47 ( which makes you not make fun of his silly beret) says it's time to go, it's time to go.

Interuption
So it's been a while since the last post, I apologize. A few reasons

• Things have been really busy here lately. (I'm learning unix adminry, though a real unix admin would laugh at what I've learned)
• The 100+ pictures from Ellora/Ajanta created a back log...i have been making entries every 3 days or so it's
• A power outage at the internet cafe caused me to lose a bit of finished entries.
• I don't like to break the chronology on the blog. I did it with the last post, it just doesn't flow.

Anway.....On with the story....

Kaliash

Every foot on the way up is covered with more carvings. Most of them are stories of Shiva. I got a copy of the Ramayana, I have to tell you there's something lost in translation on this. In English it comes across as highly repatative.
So... I got a book loosley based on the Ramayana, which has all the stories rearranged a bit and some parts made up. It's like the 'Jesus Christ Superstar' version. You get the basic driftof the story and it's far more entertaining.

Still, it was enought that I recognised this without the tour guide. It's about 20 feet tall. It's Ravana.

Ravana
Ravana is the villian in the Ramayana, he has ten heads, so he's easy to pick out in statues. (He also has 20 arms, but that's not eash becuase lots of gods get 6 or 8 armed statues).

This is a mural of Ravana shaking heavean. Here's the story....he spent 10,000 years in meditiation cutting off one head every thousand years. Finally Brahma ( the creator) could stand to see him sacrifice no longerhe granted him one wish"to never be killed by any god in heaven" he got his wish...and he got all his heads back.

Ravana procdeed to be a royal ass to everyone, he ran aroundgiving other gods wedgies, and taking their lunch money. Throwing Indra ( thunder god) in his jail for a while.
This mural depicts Ravana in his pride, shaking all the heaveans.

Have I mentioned that Shiva is bad-ass? Shiva is also called 'Mahadev' ( litterally big god).

To give you some idea of how bad-ass lord Shiva is, this shaking annoyed him sooooo much, he finally had to put his toe down on the mountain to preserve order and contain Ravana for another 1,000 years. Shiva only let him go when he got bored.

In the Ramayana, Vishnu (Narayana) becomes incarnate in Rama ( a man). Ravana kidnaps Sita (and that's just wrong you don't kidnap another man's wife...) So, Ram must rescue her. Ram leadsan army of monkeys and bears against Ravana (remember he can't be defeated by gods...),defeats him, reclaims his bride. Happily ever after . Right?....well, then in an odd twist he has to banish her becuase the people of the kingdom think she might have gotten it on with Ravana ( which she didn't and Ram knows it....). I'm not sure what the lesson here is.....

More temple this is the top.

You touch things that are 1000 years old. There are nandi statues ( nandi is Shiva's bull) where the nose has fallen off (Nandi is Shiva's bull that he rides). Because every devout Hindu for the past 1000 years have applieda gentle touch to it and said their prayer.

I went into the shrine, removed my shoes and said a silent prayer to the lingum, laugh all you want about praying to a phallic symbol ( so juvenile) ...you stay here a few months and you'll be praying to whoever runs things around here too.

You just silently say to your self and the lingum, this ancient mantra....

'Oh bad-ass lord Shiva, please don't let me die in India'

The Gora at Elorra

Amazingly amongst these ruins, these people found me an attraction.They wanted to know where I was from, how did I like india, howlong had I been here, where was my family?Could we take a picture with you?
are you serious?
the white dude is somehow more interesting than this??

So I live it up like a rock star...

That's actually a not-so great picture of me.....

• Oh and I was fatter a month ago too ( when we took these)....I spent one day putting more notches in my belt...no inuendo kids, I was trying to keep my pants from falling off...
• And the hair is different because of the Indian barber.....

...oh but why ruin it....that'll come later.