CHICKEN ON THE WEEKENDS! YESS!

My first weekend here was great and using the Internet was glorious; it definitely mitigated my Internet withdrawals. Hosur which is the near by town is not a place that would appear on a Rick Steves book or on a Lonely Planet but it had internet and good food, which is just what we were looking for. We took the bumpy Shanti-Bhavan jeep with Ragu (the driver), with Ms. Beena (the vice-principle), a couple of the teachers and the volunteers. We used the internet for a while and then we ate at a great restaurant. I had “chicken 65”…don’t ask what was in it …I have stopped asking what kind of things I’m eating here, its much better that way...but it was actually amazing

The second day, Sunday, was an adventure. We went back to Hosur to watch a Tamil movie in the movie theaters. We took the local bus from the street just in front of Shanti-Bhavan. The bus was pretty run down but luckily the stop was the first one and we got to sit down. As we stopped in all the villages we picked up tons and tons of people, eventually there were people hanging out the doors. It’s the way buses work in Managua too, but it certainly is a different experience when you are INSIDE the bus rather than observing from a distance while you are in a comfortable car, with A/C. I loved it though. It is not customary to give your seat to the elderly or mothers with children, since the bus is usually packed; there is barely any room to move. I ended up holding a baby that some women was trying to carry in the middle passage way as she struggled to hold on to the metal railing above her head; I appreciated how she trusted to hand her baby over to a foreigner past the language barrier. I felt comfortable among a group of people that at first sight seem to be from a different world unrecognizable from mine.

The Tamil (one of 16 official Indian Languages) movie was insane. There are really no words to describe it. I doubt anyone would consider it a “good movie” but it certainly triggered all sorts of feelings and reactions. It was 3 hours long and there were two intermissions during the movie. The one thing I did get from it is that people here are more or as obsessed with movie stars as people who look forward to their daily searches in the Perez Hilton website.

On the way back from the movie we witnessed a procession of people who were piercing their mouths and cheeks with foot long steel bars. They had a person holding the steel bar on each side for it not to move too much. One of the teachers we were with, Nirmala, explained that it is a Hindu tradition practiced once a year. People, who are suffering from a particular malady at home or are living through difficult times, pierce their mouths as they pray to the Gods that they mitigate their suffering. There might have been about 100 people in the procession and it was in one of the villages near to Shanti-Bhavan. The women were carrying clay pots with fire coming out of them and they were adorned with beautiful white and red flowers. Others held the metal bars on each side of the person of those who were sacrificing their comfort and offering their pain; these seamed fearless, confident, and in complete devotional prayer as if no other human were around them. It was a very powerful sight.