Visuality

Photos!

Click:
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e197/jedbickman/100_0351.jpg
(my tabla teacher and my favorite sitar player playing music in Banaras)
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e197/jedbickman/100_0354.jpg
(shuklaji and wife)
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e197/jedbickman/100_0483.jpg
http://i39.photobucket.com/albums/e197/jedbickman/100_0451.jpg

as I wait for more photos to upload, I have time to write. Trying so hard to get these uploaded makes me think about how important visuality has become to me over my time in India. It's a visually spactacular place, and meaning often lies right on the surface. You look at something, and you know it's as old as time, you know it's a deeply spiritual place, something people have been worshipping for as long as humans have built places to worship. My camera is my best travel buddy; whenever I see something and have the impulse to share it with someone, I photograph it. Really that means that you all are my best travel buddy because I'm photographing it to share with you when I get home. India has the most vivid colors, and they never clash in this part of the world.

The important thing about India, and probably the whole world, is that whatever is there is there, and nothing else. Each place is only what it is, and can offer only so much. This is what I mean by meaning lying on the surface; if you try to dig deeper, often you'll just end up making things up. Nowhere is this seen better than in the traditional narratives of this place; in each hindu myth, one can understand the meaning or the lesson of each sentance within the actual story. There's pleanty of room for interpretation, but not for analysis, it is only what it is. This teaches me to see the world as it is as a transcendantly beautiful place, to see the divine energy of reality in reality, and not in some far away fanciful place, not in heaven, earth is heaven.

This is also true of the people; they survive, work, and worship and that is their body and mind, and that is why they are beautiful. Work has been so deeply engraned in the entire structure of society for so long that it appears on people's faces, in their genetic make up. The caste system is as old as time, and it is going strong. Brahmins often have soft faces, doughy hands. Their teeth are stained bright red with pan. some of them are a little heavy, though few indians are actually fat. Workers are hard, dark, have high cheekbones, are hardened and beautiful, the men and the women. They are often in traditional dress, dhotis on the men and saris on the women. Those who make their living praying on tourists, mostly brahmins, actually look slimy. I make a million instintaneous judgements about people every day, which ones to stop and talk to, which ones to ignore. i don't mean to brag about it, but my intuition has become pretty good, if a little too suspicious. But the point is, people are what they are here.

I still beleive in the fundamental injustice of the caste system, and it makes me angry when brahmins use their status as holy men as a reason why I (and everyone else) am obligated to give them money. As a large generalization, i notice that lower caste people tend to be more genuinely spiritual. The bramhmins might sit in temples because it's their job, but the people who are really getting meaning out of worshipping are lower caste. This is obviously an unfair generalization, there are many genuine brahmins who are scholars, who spend their lives devoted to the holy texts of hinduism, and who condemn the commercialism that has taken over the religion. Most significant of these genuine brahmins to me is my guruji Shukla-ji, who although he was a brahmin, taught me to be suspicious of brahmins, and not assume they are spiritual just because of their caste. I'm going to try to post a picture of him.

I noticed this in Pushkar, when I walked up the four hundred steps to the Savatri temple. Pushkar is holy because it is the only temple to brahma in the world--the temple is large and gorgeous and right on the lake. It is teeming with tourists and brahmins who show you around the temple in exchange for twenty ruppees. It's a nice temple, and I liked it. Outside of town, on the top of a big hill rising out of the desert is the temple to his wife, Savitri. The place really fits her personality--she is lonely and sad because her husband Brahma has insulted her, and she sits on the mountain alone looking over him, and looking over all creation as her child. She is the primordial mother goddess. As one walks up the four hundred steps, you are supposed to meditate on your own mother, to think of all she has done for you and her tolerance and generousity. I did so, and by the top I was profoundly moved; if all of my water wasn't already leaving my body in the form of sweat, maybe I would have cried. The place has such genuine spiritual energy; no one is asking for money, everyone is making the journey as a way to worship their mother and the Cosmic Mother, it is devotion. I saw no one on the way up, but at the top just before the temple, there was a man sitting there. He was one of the nicest people I've met in India; he patiently and beautifully told me the story of Savitri and Brahma, and talked about his own mother who had died. Then he said, "I don't know the real story, I'm not brahmin, you understand" and so we talked about Pushkar, and how the brahmins treat the tourists. He revealed he was from the goldsmithing caste, and he makes the jewelry sold to tourists like me. He said "there's a lot of bullshit down there. (the first time I have heard a swearword in India). They do no work, they sit there and wait for the tourists to give them money." On the way down, I bent to touch his feet. He said no, and forcefully stopped me, I am worker only, you can't touch my feet, I am not pure. And I tried to tell him that he was the most pure of any man I had met in pushkar, and I wanted to touch his feet. he eventually sheepishly let me, and it was good.

Ok pictures are up.