Renata in India: Hampi and Gadag

Friday marked the end of my first week in India. After a short day at the office, Liz and I went to the mall to buy some snacks for a long trip ahead. Our sleeper bus was leaving the station at 10:30 PM to Hospet, a small town near Hampi, the site of the ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire from the 14th-16th century. Song and Hyesang, two of our coworkers, joined us for the trip. The sleeper bus was actually surprisingly comfortable and I even woke up refreshed when we arrived to our destination. Immediately as we got off the bus, rickshaw drivers surrounded us, trying to ensure that we will pick them over the others. We made a deal with an honest-looking young man with green-blue eyes, Govin, who offered to drive us around Hampi for two days, take us wherever we wished to go, and to even serve as our tour guide. He spoke decent English and his refreshing honesty and helpfulness definitely made our trip more comfortable and enjoyable. After checking into Malligi Hotel, a really nice hotel, he took us to the Mango Tree restaurant, where we sat on the floor with comfortable cushions stacked behind us and ate a delicious breakfast. We spent the whole day visiting the ruins at Hampi. Among other things, we had the opportunity to see a Shiva linga, an underground Shiva temple, the Queen's Bath, beautiful vistas, a Ganesha statue, remains of a once-extravagant bazaar and a mosque, just to name a few. At one of the temples we saw holy men singing and making music. They placed red tikkas on our foreheads and gave us a little water and sugar, all without talking. As we sat down on the carpet before them, it started pouring outside. My sneakers were completely soaked through before I knew it, but I didn't mind walking barefoot. Many of the ruins reminded me of a mix of Ancient Roman architecture and maya temples. I felt very much at peace in Hampi, and at times it seemed to me that the hundreds of years of experience and wisdom emanating from the stone ruins filled me with a strange sort of reverence and drew me into contemplation. To our greatest surprise, there weren't very many tourists at all. Furthermore, the only couple of tourists we saw were westerners. We were able to enjoy Hampi in peace, without constantly being asked to take photos with Indians.

On Sunday we were much less alone. Liz even started to jokingly charge people money for a photo, which of course no one was willing to pay, so it was a very good strategy. Being pressed for time, we were not able to visit that many sights, but we still saw the famous stone chariot, musical pillars, elephant stables, and the Hanuman temple. We had very little time to cross a river and climb 570 steps to get to the Hanuman Temple, but I did not feel any exhaustion at all. No stairs can challenge my skater thighs. Unsurprisingly, the other girls had significantly less love for those steps. Monkeys, a beautiful view, and a nice, light breeze greeted us at the temple. Afterwards we bought a green coconut for 10 rupees and drank the coconutwater with a straw.

Village life in India is ten times as rough as I could have imagined. Seeing the impoverished, emaciated people-even small children!- carry water, firewood, and huge bags on their heads in the midst of destroyed, downtrodden buildings, pigs, cows, goats, and chicken on the streets made me incredibly thankful that I do not even have to imagine a life like theirs. Little children were squatting by the side of the road, they do not even know toilets. Their misery, the looks in their eyes, skinny, sickly shapes all seemed much more miserable than in movies and pictures. Along one road in Hospet, half of the houses on each side of the street were literally destroyed. I know they are trying to make the rods wider, but it was simply terrible to even imagine that those poor people lost their homes in front of their own eyes and couldn't do anything about it.

Liz and I planned to leave Hampi that very night and to catch a bus to Gadag, the village where Sunita's, our boss's daughter's, wedding would be conducted the next day. After 2.5 hours of waiting, it seemed that there would be no more buses going to Gadag that day. We were anxious to find out what to do, and it is with the greatest stroke of luck that we ran into a young man and his sister who spoke English well and were travelling in the same direction as us. We had no other choice but to tust them when they explained that the bus they were getting on was going to Hubli, from where we could catch another bus to Gadag. On the first bus, Liz and I had a very intellectual conversation about religion, which was doubly interesting when considering our drastically different points of views. The second bus was perhaps my most Indian experience to-date. Never mind the fact that it was around 9 PM already, the bus was so incredibly crowded that we were squeezed in the middle of the aisle and were forced to stand for the 2 hour duration of our trip. On this bus I did not feel American at all. It's quite strange how all my Indian experiences fall into one of two categories: being an American tourist or a resident working in Bangalore. Most of the time it's a blur of the two, but on that bus and in the wedding the next day I was distinctly Indian, but driving around Hampi and taking pictures of ruins I was very much an American college student. When we arrived to the station in Gadag, we had to walk about a mile to the Vishwa Lodge, the hotel where the Masagi family had booked accommodation for us. I'm starting to feel more and more comfortable on the streets at night, mostly because I have a more realistic danger-radar now.

The next morning we were taken to the site of the wedding as early as 7am, even though the ceremony itself wouldn't start until 12:30. There we ate breakfast off of a newspaper (very sanitary indeed), and waited until some lady guests arrived who would help the other girls with their saris. The little children were so excited about my different looks that they would not stop asking for my camera to take pictures of me. They were especially keen on trying to sneak into as many photos as possible. I'm afraid I must have been the most friendly to them out of the foreign girls present, so that's why I enjoyed their special treatment. Most of them didn't speak English, but they hardly bothered at all. They thought it quite odd that I only spoke English (only English!!??) and no hindi, no kannada, and not even telugu! Communication difficulties did not stop them from constantly talking to me though, and trying to explain things to me. They took me to the roof, gave me snacks, braided my hair, taught me Indian dances and songs, and asked me to teach them an "English dance." I ended up showing them how to waltz and salsa. I've never seen little kids more excited. One of my little favorites even slapped some of the yellow paste, meant for the bride, groom, and close relatives only, on my face. I hoped that no adult would see before I could wash it off. One of the boys looked at me and said: "you really like kids, don't you?" It wasn't in my heart to tell him no.

It wasn't only children who wanted photos with me, but I have no interest in keeping the photos I have with random Indian men whose names I dont even know. Some even started saying things like "you look like a goddess." I hope they didn't mind too much that I completely ignored them after a while.

The wedding ceremony was very elaborate and chaotic. I felt very bad for Sunita, because she seemed extremely nervous and my first impression of the groom wasn't great. She went through the entire ceremony and then the picture taking without a single smile on her face. She only smiled when other women poured buckets of water on her to wash off the Pithi (a yellow paste meant to purify her and give her beautiful looks). I was unable to take pictures during the ceremony because I was hiding my camera from the kids, but it was very colorful and elaborate. I'm sure other people have several pictures of me with the bride and groom, but unfortunately there are none on my camera. The parents and sisters of the bride were also heavily involved int he ceremonies. I got to throw rice at her, which reminded me of the Hungarian wedding tradition of showering the bride with rice, a custom that I never thought about as perhaps coming from India. The food after the ceremony was quite good, and the only downside to my enjoyment was a lack of drinking water and toilets. I still had a little water but I was afraid to drink too much, since I didn't want to use my water filter in front of everyone else and I didn't want to have to squat on the sidewalk either. This wedding was much less extravagant then what Bollywood movies show, but even for a poorer wedding it was really quite more exciting than christian weddings.

We took a seater bus home, so it wasn't as comfortable as the sleeper, but I still managed to sleep a little, even with an upset stomach (I'm still not sure which of the foods caused my discomfort). We arrived home in the early morning, only to find that some of the other interns haven't even gone to sleep the previous night and stayed up smoking and drinking instead. What a curious mix of American college life and Indian culture!