Mamallapuram III - Superman and Babies
So Brand has covered Mahabs pretty well by now, but there was a couple of things that I wanted to add, that were more notes about our interaction with the people there than about what we saw.
We get a lot of attention in India, which makes us both unlucky and lucky. On one hand, our touristy appearance: white skin, Tilley hats, sunglasses and cameras are beacons to the every tout and beggar in eyeshot. Women, with terrifyingly thin and small little babies come in death defying starts across four lanes (or what would be lanes if the drivers in Tamil Nadu cared about such things) of traffic to knock on your window, chant "money, money, money" and make gestures at the child's mouth, suggesting that money might buy the food that lets the child live. The babies are always girls, the women always very much too old to be their mothers. We've been advised that the babies are usually either bought or found... the most disposable of children in a country for whom the female infanticide rate has been raising steadily. Better that the child have a chance with a beggar woman than to put her to death; better the sale of the child feed her brothers than to have everyone slowly starve this season; better prosperity now than destitution later when her wedding must be paid for.
In Mahabs, which, as a world heritage site, attracts visitors from everywhere - we saw all manner of Europeans and North Americans in the time we walked around town. Here, as opposed to Chennai, the beggars are less and the touts are more. Young men come to chat with you on street and to make friends. They help you find a good hotel, and talk to the hotel owner for you. Once they leave, all in smiles, the hotel room you have purchased for the night is twice as expensive as it would have been if you had come on your own. The rest of the money goes to the helpful young man. Now, this is the difference between 15-20 dollars and 10 dollars a night in the hotel, so it's not horrific, but when you were planning to go to the hotel anyway, it's annoying.
It's the same near the big sites. When Brand and I went to the Five Rathas, a little boy about 10 or 11 found us sitting by the side of the road cooling in the shade, and tailed us for three hours as we went to explore the Rathas, just to convince him to come back to his "family's shop". It may well have been his family, but most likely not, he just got some cash if we bought anything. He was actually pretty fun to have around, except for the times when he would tell us "Friends, OK friends, it is time to go", whenever we thought it was taking too long to look at this temple or that. Once we started drawing crowds that wanted to take pictures with us, suddenly it became less important to go back to the shop and more important to tell the crowds that we were friends of his.
So... crowds. Brand posted a picture of one of the crowds that came a running to have their picture taken with me at Indra's Elephant. That was just one of the many groups that found us that weekend. I could even understand wanting people to take pictures of us, because, well, I keep wanting to take pictures of them. I find it funny that people just want us to take pictures of them on our own cameras. - pictures that they won't get to take away. Most of the people who want this, speak very little English, which is often a sign of less education or lower class or caste. In any case, it's hard to find out why having their picture taken by someone else is so fun. My running theory at the moment, is is in the knowing that their picture will travel all the way across to the other side of the world, where people in a strange and distant land will see them. I guess it's not dissimilar to wanting to wave to a television camera.
The thing that amuses me most, though are the babies. All over Mahabs, people in different locations, who did not know each other would approach me drop their babies into my lap so that they could take a picture of me and the baby together. Sometimes they wanted to be in the picture, sometimes not. It happened at least 5 times while we were there.
I thought at first it was just because I'm a western woman, but none of the other expat women have had even a single baby foisted on them. Then Brand posited that it was because I am round bodied like some of the Hindu pantheon's fertility goddesses, but one of the other expats has a similar body type and, nope, nada. So I really don't know. I don't mind at all, because even if the pictures of me turn out as terribly as the one above (because they only happen after a long day of activity and sweltering heat and sweat and sunscreen and bugspray) I got to hold their very cute babies, and even if I don't know why me, I have to think it's complementary. You have to trust a foreigner a lot to put your infant in her arms - especially when you can't communicate with her at all.
Brand has his own adventures with kids. Krish, a Hindi superhero, while not as big in Tamil Nadu as it is in the rest of the country, is a very popular movie. Apparently, so was Superman Returns. Brand, the second day that we were in Mahabs, was wearing his T-Shirt with the Superman emblem on it, and all day long kids would come running to him and call out: Superman! Superman! Superman! It became all the more the rage, when we went to Krishna's Butterball, a giant boulder that is actually an outgrowth of a hill looking like it is precariously balanced and may roll down at any time.
Now Brand and I had just been to see a cave temple to Krishna in which there was a huge carving of Krishna holding up the mountain to save his people from the torrents of Indra, the rain god, who was unleashing unholy terror down from the heavens. I wanted Brand to take the cheesiest kind of picture, but going up the hill, standing under Krishna's Butterball, and pretending to hold it up, saving all the people that were sitting under it to have their pictures taken.
Now I was telling him to do it because of Krishna and the mountain, forgetting all about the Superman on his shirt, but when he got up there and posed, the entire crowd decided that it was the best thing that they'd ever seen, and everybody started laughing and taking pictures and yelling Superman! It was terrific.
The other one that Brand has gotten a lot is "Dr Jones!" because the very cool Tilly Hat that my sisters bought him for his birthday resembles (a little) Indiana Jones's hat. Media Iconography is huge here. They call movie stars (not just the characters that they play) heroes and heroines. It's probably related to the cultural prominence of religious idolatry in Hinduism.
Tonight we go to out in search of people celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi - the first night of Ganesh's special worship days. More on this in a bit.
We get a lot of attention in India, which makes us both unlucky and lucky. On one hand, our touristy appearance: white skin, Tilley hats, sunglasses and cameras are beacons to the every tout and beggar in eyeshot. Women, with terrifyingly thin and small little babies come in death defying starts across four lanes (or what would be lanes if the drivers in Tamil Nadu cared about such things) of traffic to knock on your window, chant "money, money, money" and make gestures at the child's mouth, suggesting that money might buy the food that lets the child live. The babies are always girls, the women always very much too old to be their mothers. We've been advised that the babies are usually either bought or found... the most disposable of children in a country for whom the female infanticide rate has been raising steadily. Better that the child have a chance with a beggar woman than to put her to death; better the sale of the child feed her brothers than to have everyone slowly starve this season; better prosperity now than destitution later when her wedding must be paid for.
In Mahabs, which, as a world heritage site, attracts visitors from everywhere - we saw all manner of Europeans and North Americans in the time we walked around town. Here, as opposed to Chennai, the beggars are less and the touts are more. Young men come to chat with you on street and to make friends. They help you find a good hotel, and talk to the hotel owner for you. Once they leave, all in smiles, the hotel room you have purchased for the night is twice as expensive as it would have been if you had come on your own. The rest of the money goes to the helpful young man. Now, this is the difference between 15-20 dollars and 10 dollars a night in the hotel, so it's not horrific, but when you were planning to go to the hotel anyway, it's annoying.
It's the same near the big sites. When Brand and I went to the Five Rathas, a little boy about 10 or 11 found us sitting by the side of the road cooling in the shade, and tailed us for three hours as we went to explore the Rathas, just to convince him to come back to his "family's shop". It may well have been his family, but most likely not, he just got some cash if we bought anything. He was actually pretty fun to have around, except for the times when he would tell us "Friends, OK friends, it is time to go", whenever we thought it was taking too long to look at this temple or that. Once we started drawing crowds that wanted to take pictures with us, suddenly it became less important to go back to the shop and more important to tell the crowds that we were friends of his.
So... crowds. Brand posted a picture of one of the crowds that came a running to have their picture taken with me at Indra's Elephant. That was just one of the many groups that found us that weekend. I could even understand wanting people to take pictures of us, because, well, I keep wanting to take pictures of them. I find it funny that people just want us to take pictures of them on our own cameras. - pictures that they won't get to take away. Most of the people who want this, speak very little English, which is often a sign of less education or lower class or caste. In any case, it's hard to find out why having their picture taken by someone else is so fun. My running theory at the moment, is is in the knowing that their picture will travel all the way across to the other side of the world, where people in a strange and distant land will see them. I guess it's not dissimilar to wanting to wave to a television camera.
The thing that amuses me most, though are the babies. All over Mahabs, people in different locations, who did not know each other would approach me drop their babies into my lap so that they could take a picture of me and the baby together. Sometimes they wanted to be in the picture, sometimes not. It happened at least 5 times while we were there.
I thought at first it was just because I'm a western woman, but none of the other expat women have had even a single baby foisted on them. Then Brand posited that it was because I am round bodied like some of the Hindu pantheon's fertility goddesses, but one of the other expats has a similar body type and, nope, nada. So I really don't know. I don't mind at all, because even if the pictures of me turn out as terribly as the one above (because they only happen after a long day of activity and sweltering heat and sweat and sunscreen and bugspray) I got to hold their very cute babies, and even if I don't know why me, I have to think it's complementary. You have to trust a foreigner a lot to put your infant in her arms - especially when you can't communicate with her at all.
Brand has his own adventures with kids. Krish, a Hindi superhero, while not as big in Tamil Nadu as it is in the rest of the country, is a very popular movie. Apparently, so was Superman Returns. Brand, the second day that we were in Mahabs, was wearing his T-Shirt with the Superman emblem on it, and all day long kids would come running to him and call out: Superman! Superman! Superman! It became all the more the rage, when we went to Krishna's Butterball, a giant boulder that is actually an outgrowth of a hill looking like it is precariously balanced and may roll down at any time.
Now Brand and I had just been to see a cave temple to Krishna in which there was a huge carving of Krishna holding up the mountain to save his people from the torrents of Indra, the rain god, who was unleashing unholy terror down from the heavens. I wanted Brand to take the cheesiest kind of picture, but going up the hill, standing under Krishna's Butterball, and pretending to hold it up, saving all the people that were sitting under it to have their pictures taken.
Now I was telling him to do it because of Krishna and the mountain, forgetting all about the Superman on his shirt, but when he got up there and posed, the entire crowd decided that it was the best thing that they'd ever seen, and everybody started laughing and taking pictures and yelling Superman! It was terrific.
The other one that Brand has gotten a lot is "Dr Jones!" because the very cool Tilly Hat that my sisters bought him for his birthday resembles (a little) Indiana Jones's hat. Media Iconography is huge here. They call movie stars (not just the characters that they play) heroes and heroines. It's probably related to the cultural prominence of religious idolatry in Hinduism.
Tonight we go to out in search of people celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi - the first night of Ganesh's special worship days. More on this in a bit.
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