Waterfall

The next state over from Tamil Nadu is Andra Pradesh. To get there you cross the Gahts, or the Western Gahts. They are full of forests and streams and pools an waterfalls.

My buddy Padu thought that we should hire a car, pack a lunch and go up country. The roads got smaller and rougher and 2 km after leaving the car we came to the boulder spill in the canyon. In the 2 or 3 km up the canyon there was only one short part where a rope came in handy.



At the end was a beautiful pool of crystal clear water, and around that curve was a waterfall. We had a terrific afternoon splashing and playing in the pool. I made them all be good campers and pick up and pack out the litter, much to the disappointment of the monkeys. Then a good hike back down, boulder jumping, and deep snooze in the car back to Chennai.

The Sisyphisian Cycle

Way back in Minnesota, before my engineering degree, or construction career, or heck - before I even tended bar, I was a philosophy major headed for Law School. I came upon a short work called The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. http://members.bellatlantic.net/~samg2/sysiphus.html

Sisyphus was this Greek guy who got the Gods angry by not submitting to fate. When they finally got him into the underworld he was destined forever to roll a rock up a mountain, and just before the rock reached the top it would slip from him and roll back down into the jungle below, and he would have to walk back down and try pushing it up again.

Camus saw the absurdity of the human condition in this story. Sisyphus is the proletarian hero destined to work and labor in futility. He is tragic only when he is concious of the futility. But if he is is concious then he will also appreciate the absurdity, especially when he turns to walk down the mountain, reflecting on how he himself manufactured his destiny.

In that walk he is free of his burden and free within the confines of his destiny to simple be. Camus says that we must imagine that Sisyphus, in this time, is happy.

When I was in college I had had a couple of jobs with some responsibility, but not a lot. At that time I didn't have a very deep appreciation for Camus' interpretation of an old saw about the visicitudes of arrogance.
In the years since I have found a very direct application of Mr. Camus' thoughts in the cycles of my career.

The beginning of the month I "put in my papers" as they say in India, or "gave notice" as we say in the states. With this act I entered into what I have come to think of as the Sisyphician state.

My boulder has slipped and getting it to the top of the mountain is no longer my concern. I must walk down the mountain, where there are other stones waiting for me. Soon I will be pushing another one up the mountain, but for now...I am free.
Or somewhat free. I still have to come to the office until the end of the month, but as people try to hand me their stones, I give them back with a smile and a shrug.

...and yes Albert, I am happy.

Yoga

I'm becoming a real devotee of this yoga stuff. I was able to hire a trainer who comes to the apartment 3 times a week and charges Rs 300 a visit - that's like $7.

The parctice is moving along and Monday night I actually held my lotus for over a minute, and was able to walk afterward. Now, I've been working toward that goal since April, so it's about time.

I'm also getting pretty good at my scorpion, though no where near as good as Sarvanan, my yogi (shown here)

Besides the sense of accomplishment, there really is a patience and peace and happiness that comes from the practice. Not to mention how much better my body feels and the deflating of the spare tire.

Garuda in Kancheepuram

This is Arvind. He works in one of the temple complexes in Kancheepuram. He's not a priest, and I certainly don't know all of his duties. He's a gang leader for the folks who carry the idols. He's a friend of a my friend Kausik, and he's a really nice guy. He was excited to have a New Yorker there for the festivities, especially one that knew enough to where a dohti (Thanks Kausik!)

I didn't count how many were in the team, or ask how heavy the platform is, but the timbers that they are carrying, by the size of them, are going to weigh a lot by themselves.

Apparently there are a number of idols who get taken around for veneration at this temple and Arvind and his teams are paid to do that.

A couple of Arvind's team members have sprouted specific muscles from their labors. They stand on alternating sides of the beam, and hold onto the guy in fron of them with their free hand.
Every so often they'll stop and set the float down on stands and duck under the beam to switch shoulders. It's a great bit of choreography!

This was one of the days that Lord Vishnu is placed on his mount Garuda, and taken out of the temple into the world. The last time he flew out was my birthday, but there were issues at the office that kept me from attending. So I made sure not to miss this time.

When Vishnu travels he rides on Garuda. There's a blog on Garuda a few weeks back. I originally mistook him for an angle when I first saw him at the temples. I have come to learn that he is actually an eagle.

So Garuda is the brass faced one here with the big eyes, and he's holding out his hands to support the Lord's feet.

The priests put Lord Vishnu into some very cool purple pants and brought him out of the temple. He's sitting on Gaurda's head, and he's draped in a huge collar of flowers. You might make out his bejeweled right hand which he is holding up, palm out in blessing. He's wearing an enormous crown, and you can find his head in the middle of that orange line of flowers. (It took me a while to see that under all the flowers and wrappings, there really is an idol!)

Of course the Lord is going no where unattended and on the float are a couple three priests fanning him, and blessing him and holding the umbrella. (More weight Arvind?)
There are also musicians and drummers and the crowds!

Once around the temple, inside the perimeter walls, and then they head for the gopuram (big tall gate house) and out into the streets. Then once around the outside of the temple walls, before going inside. Don't know if they go around the park, it was Arthur who loved te park so much.

This was a particularly auspicious parade. It seems that there was an elephant in a pool in Kanchepuram. The elephant got attacked by a crocodile and fought desperately for 1000 years (don't ask). The elephant called out to all his relatives and friends for help, but none would dare to fight the fierce crocodile. Then he called out to the saints and gods and lords for salvation, but none came to help thinking that another would. Finally he beseeched the Lord of Lords and Vishnu, realizing that it was he being beseeched, mounted Garuda, defeated the crocodile and saved the elephant.

Kausik tells me that the follow up story about the elephant is too long, so it wil have to wait for another time.

Schedule?

Lest anyone think that I'm doing absolutely no work at all here, I include a shot of the building construction.

Now the original schedule had this particular building of four full flours (of which 3+ are shown here in superstructure)were to be occupied by the end of last month...

So it's not that we're idle: Just slow.

Large Reptile Warning

apparently somewhere along the line an Indian Bureaucrat, wanting to increase the traffic to the King's palace in Kerala, suggested an attraction for children. We all know that children love dinosaurs. So someone erected a dinosaur on the back grounds, on the path to the deer park.



I took the opportunity to demonstrate my ferocity.

Caught Up in Kerala's Net

Last weekend I finally got to Kerala.
On the first plane ride over last September I sat next to a woman who was from the Southwest of India and talked about the beauties of her home. Since I have been here everyone has raved about the beauty of Kerala.

Like much of India, there is a rich legacy from international trading. One such expression are the 'Chinese Fishing Nets' near the Fort in Kochin. The engineering is ostensibly brought from China and they are simply giant seives counterweighted on a tripod.

The area where they are located is a narrow passage between a couple of the islands that make up Cochin. There's a lot of boat traffic and foot traffic and lots of tourist hotels nearby. It doesn't have the feel of a commercial fishing area, despite the large number of fish mongers along the street.

Sure enough, the guys are not catching a lot of fish, though they catch a lot of tourists. They smiled and waved and we picked our way down. They suggested we hang around a few minutes and watch them raise the net. All the while they're chatting and asking where we were from and was it my first trip to Kerala and did I like it and all the rest. They set their lines with practiced and professional skill.

At the right time, of course, they asked if I wanted to help raise the net. I would be the paler guy grabbing the rope. The catch, no surprise, was a little disappointing: one fish in the net, much too small to keep. No mater they had hooked their big fish.
We laughed about the laws of chance and bemoaned the difficulty of caring for our loved ones. I dribbled some gold into their hands. When Sunil later proclaimed about the amount, I pointed out to him that he was now free to return anytime and all of his guests would be well cared for.

There was a cat in the fish market. It made me wonder if he was the luckiest guy in the world, surrounded by such delicacies, or the saddest, having to wait for scraps when surrounded by such wealth.