Return to India - The Festival

My nemesis this morning was a Sports Art Fitness C53r recumbant exercise bike. The blasted thing tortured me for 30 minutes while I road 14.2 kilometers and burned of 354.3 calories worth of shrimp kebab. Bupati is provided by the hotel as a personal trainer and seems to know me by name, but familiarity didn't stop him from insisting on just a few more reps of weights and some crunches to flatten the tummy. I spent the better part of an hour and feel great but sore. Hopefully I will achieve my goal of returning to the U.S. no fatter than I was when I arrived in India on the 12th. Last year the food took its toll and I gained quite a bit of weight, this year I'm holding steady so far.

Today is the festival of Holi which is rooted in several Hindu legends. There are several versions of how the festival started and each contributes a piece of the whole. One version tells how Hiranyakashipu the king of demons was granted almost complete immunity to being killed and in his arrogance demanded exclusive worship from the people. His son Prahlad was a devotee of Lord Vishnu and refused to stop praying. After surviving multiple attempts on his life the son was ordered to sit on top of his sister Holika on a pyre. Prahlad prayed to his god for protection. His sister was expecting to be protected by a magic shawl but it miraculously flew from the sister to the son as the flames burned. Holika died but the son survived. Vishnu finally had enough of the king of demons and killed him. That's one of the reasons why Hindus light fires all over India to commemorate Holi. Another story has Lord Krishna complaining to his mother about his consort Radha's fair skin and the mother colored her face to improve the situation. Krishna of course is blue. That's why Hindus color their faces, hair, clothes and anything else that's exposed at this time of year. In some parts of the country they drink baang which is a canabis derivative. Younger people play firtatious games and often find their life partners during this festival. Its a very romantic time in the Hindu calendar. Holi can get dangerous for women and most seem to agree it's best to celebrate it with family and close friends. Just the same we saw many smiling faces in vivid colors on this day and watched a lot of people enjoying themselves tremendously.

We decided to take the day to do some shopping and site seeing but didn't get started till quite late. I didn't come down for breakfast till nearly 11:00 and the hotel staff was almost ready to pack up the buffet. Fortunately I was able to down a good breakfast before we hit the road around 11:30. Armed with a wallet full of rupees we headed for the Charminar which is a beautiful structure built by a Nizam ruler to ward off cholera. It is surrounded by massive markets dating back hundreds of years. This year we didn't tour the Charminar itself (see last year's post for that experience) but walked deep into the markets instead. A young man appointed himself as our guide and provided a lot of interesting information about the market. The Charminar is about 450 years old but the market is older, around 500 years old. For the most part its completely destroyed, to quote our guide, but there are a few of the original walls left standing enough to see the original architecture which must have been beautiful. The shops are built up against the old walls, many of which have been rebuilt or modified multiple times. It gives the market a sense of energy and timelessness. There was one shop selling herbal remedies, the Muslim equivalent of Ayurvedic remedies which are very much the same. In another shop there were many shelves of books and magazines, some very old like an MS-DOS manual. I expected that our guide would want payment for his services but surprisingly he excused himself when we got back to the car without asking for a dime. During the walk he asked me endless questions about getting a job in technology, the salary ranges in America, whether he could get in with only a bachelors in IT and other similar questions. Perhaps he thought my answers were payment enough, but it was nice to have someone local to talk to during our walk.

Across the street from the Charminar is Mecca Masjid, a large mosque dating back around 350 years. We removed our shoes and upon entering the mosque grounds were immediately adopted by a guide who gave us a very nice walk around the premises and explained it's main features. The mosque and courtyard are big and capable of containing 10,000 people during Friday prayers with 3,000 inside and 7,000 more outside. They have large canopies they can put up during prayers to keep the rain and sun off the worshippers. The inside of the mosque is carpeted in rows where worshippers kneel for prayer. The large chandaliers came from Belgium but are of a more recent vintage, around 100 years old. There are verses from the Koran inscribed into the front wall and an orphanage in a building to the side. Our guide told us numerous times that this building houses 500 children and asked repeatedly for donations. We gave him several rounds of rupees to assuage our conscience and he finally backed off. You enter the mosque through an area where quite a few kings and one Sufi holy man are buried. At the Sufi tomb I was offered the chance to place a flower at his grave and received a Muslim blessing which was delivered with a bundle of straw that looked very much like a broom. Of course I was also asked for a donation. Many of the people touring the mosque that day were visibly Hindu judging from the women's garb, life here is very multicultural despite a sad undertone of religious hostility. Last year, only a few weeks after we left Hyderabad, this building was bombed by extremists. Fortunately several of their bombs didn't go off and the building was unoccupied at the time or many people could have been killed. There is a black granite table from Iran on the grounds and it's said that if you sit on this table you will return to Hyderabad. We both sat down for a photo so I guess we'll both return some day.

After Charminar we went shopping at India Treasures, a well known shop carrying handcrafts including rugs, statuary and textiles. We were stunned to recognize two of the sales guys from last year and even more surprised when they remembered us. At the time they worked for Kashmir Emporium but had moved over to this shop. I finished most of my shopping for the trip and returned to the car minus many more rupees. But I'm getting better at haggling and got them down to a price I thought I could afford after long discussions and multiple attempts to leave. My Indian collegue did a little better for me last year but being a foreigner I think I aquitted myself pretty well. I even got a free package of sandalwood incense. During my negotiations the power went out and they had emergency backup in this shop, I found that interesting and wondered if it was a security measure. Some of their merchandise was very nice, particularly the carpets which were too expensive for me this trip. During the power failure my sales guy laughed and said "That's life in India". Life indeed.

Thanks for listening