Soon after arriving, I learned that Namaste means “I bow and recognize the place within you where the entire universe dwells. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are one.” This weekend, I felt it.
The practice of Gudi-Sevas is an ancient tradition in the Hindu religion where select young girls are dedicated to a temple—a sacred privilege—and act as intermediaries, acting out the Sanskrit recitations of the priests and pleasing the gods with their dances. Every move was written in the scriptures. As the British gained power and support diminished in the temples, the dancers began to be horribly exploited, prostituted and treated as slaves. Consequentially, temple dances and the entire concept of Kalaavanthulu (or women in the arts) was banned all over India, until 1995.
The Sri Ranganatha Swamy temple in Hyderabad has been under the care of S. Pitti’s family for over 150 years, and in 1995, Pitti decided that the ancient rituals of the Kalaavanthulu needed to be revived and carried on. So he managed to change legislation in Andhra Pradesh and reinstate the ancient tradition in Sri Ranganatha Swamy temple. Currently, the temple is the only one in the world to still have its original temple dances performed—the oldest record of dance, and Andhra Pradesh is the only state in India where the rituals are legal.
Annually, the temple holds an 8-day festival called Brahmotsavam where Vishnavas (priests who worship Vishnu) from all over come to recite the entire text of Sanskrit scripture and perform all different types of rituals. On the seventh day of the festivities (which was Saturday), Rathotsavam is held, where the deity is carted in an enormous wooden chariot (I’ll get pictures up soon!) to a fireworks display. After the fireworks, an effigy is burned to symbolize the victory of virtue over vice. Hindus come dressed in their most beautiful saris and suits; women have gold and silver dangling from their noses and ears and foreheads, draped in the most vibrant colors with jewels and metallic stitching that glitters in the sun. There was a mini-bazaar selling food, toys, bangles, etc., and all day Saturday everyone was flying kites.
We were spotted by a friend of Pitti’s at the fireworks show, and he immediately took us under his wing. We were invited to come back to their tent behind the temple and eat dinner with them so we could meet all of their other friends. Throughout the weekend, we got to take more meals with them and were escorted to the front for every ritual and cultural performance. We were even given the privilege of serving prashad (a blessing of lemon-coconut rice, dried chickpeas and a sweet, sticky white rice) to the worshipers. Although after they noticed I was a lefty, I was politely asked to hand my serving spoon on to someone else…in fact I get lots of funny looks when I write and forget to eat with my right hand. (In general, Indians don’t use toilet paper—they use their left hand. So traditionally, the left hand is considered unclean.)
Anyway, Pitti and his friend Kumi, whom we spent most of our time with, were the most gracious hosts I have ever met. We got to take tea in the gardens of the temple and hear about the history of its revival and examine all of the different carvings while Kumi told us their stories. The temple is painted in carved stories of Krishna and other deities, with strings of flowers and gold and silver adornment everywhere—especially on the deities, Shri Ranganatha Swamy and his wife, Lakshmi.
Kumi himself was fascinating—a captain of a merchant ship in the Indian navy, he travels all around the world and insisted his devotion to our experience was simply him “paying it forward” because of the kindness he had encountered on his trips to the US. Pitti’s other friends were wonderful to talk with as well—several of them were freelance motivational speakers in a sense, each specializing in a different sort of theory or doctrine (i.e. Art of Living or Symmetry of Thought and Action) One friend was also a freelance photographer and videographer who had just won some sort of national competition.
We were completely overwhelmed by their generosity and weren’t informed until the last afternoon as to why all of our thank-you’s were so unnecessary. In the Hindu culture, the guest is to be treated as a God. They explained that if a Hindu fails to treat a guest with the highest honor and respect, he may never be able to forgive himself. This is related to the underlying belief that the same consciousness that is in you is that which is in me. Christians refer to it as having Christ in your heart; Hindus refer to it as sharing the same consciousness that is God—that is everywhere and a part of everything. So in that sense, to disrespect a guest is to disrespect God and oneself. On Sunday, we ended up staying 8 hours later than we had firmly intended.
This relates to something I spent a lot of time thinking about yesterday. I’ve always had a hard time accepting compliments, gifts or allowing people to do things for me. But while I was discussing this with my friend Michele over breakfast yesterday, she had a very beautiful and “hindu” approach. When we allow people to do things for us or give us gifts of time, money, whatever, we’re giving them a gift as well; we’re recognizing the fact that we do indeed share the same consciousness and that we need each other as humans. Giving ourselves to other people is what makes humans feel most alive. We’re allowing each other to act according to a beautiful nature of selflessness that we have the potential to develop—and should be encouraging in each other constantly. That’s one thing in particular I really appreciate about the group of friends I’ve made here—we tend to bring out very beautiful parts of each other. More on that later.
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