The past few days have been great! I'm actually up on the Terrace at 10 pm writing this blog. The wind has picked up a bit and I'm actually sitting in a light drizzle, but it's not nearly as hot as it has been in the past few weeks. I also woke up this morning, just knowing it was going to be a great day and it has! But my story today begins a few days ago and will culminate in today.
On Friday morning, Rad and I left to go to Tirupati, which is a very sacred place about 3 hours away from Chennai. Tirupati is home to a temple dedicated to Sri Venkateshwara Swamy, a Hindu God. Well, actually, Tirupati is 3000 feet below the temple. The actual deity is in Tirumala, which is located 7 hills above Tirupati in a set of mountains. Lord Venkateshwara is a form of the Hindu God, Vishnu. One thing that people often don't know about Hinduism is that it is actually monotheistic, but has many reincarnations of the one God. I actually discovered that Tirupati is the most visited cultural pilgrimage sites in the world. On a weekend, like the one we visited, there are over 100,000 people there! Amazing!
The bus we took to Tirupati was relatively empty in the middle of the day. Other than losing my contacts on the trip, it was a smooth ride. My uncle, Madhu Uncle, met us at the bus stop. He is my grandfather's sister's son and was extremely hospitable the entire trip!
When we arrived, we met his family. His son, Pushkar, was awesome and very funny. He was only 5 years old, but he was already very smart and quite nice! We also met my grandfather's sister - Bharti Amama (means grandmother in Telugu) and I had never met her before. It was unfortunate that I couldn't understand her (so essentially I just smiled politely), but I could tell she was thrilled to see me. She was talking very fast and showing me a lot of old pictures. She was extremely nice and reminded me a lot of my grandfather (who we call Thatha).
The next morning, we climbed to Tirumala. Tirumala, remember, is at the top of the 7 hills and climbing to the top (as opposed to taking the bus) is supposed to be very spiritual (and difficult). It is over 3500 steps to the top and it takes some people more than six hours to complete, if they finish. It was amazing and felt really great to climb. I expected the rumors about its difficulty to be false, made up by old Indian folks who haven't really done any exercise... I was wrong. The first 1000 steps, in particular, are extremely challenging. After two breaks, I was still sweating up a storm!
On the way up, there are spots where animals will come up to you (you're essentially walking through a forest) and where you can stop to get food or water. We didn't try to go too fast and enjoyed all the people and camaraderie. We ended up getting up in 3 hours exactly, surprisingly fast, and then waiting for my uncle to come meet us at the top. I don't think he was expecting us to finish so fast!
Another thing that is very spiritual in Tirupati is giving up your hair and shaving your head. I decided I would do it because my dad did it when he was younger and because I figured it would be very spiritual thing to do, something I really liked about it. We got in this line to get your hair cut, but the line was way too long (apparently the wait was over five hours!).
Luckily, Madhu Uncle knew how to get a priest to come to you and I was able to get my hair cut that way. It was very nice, but rather scary. The priest does a little prayer and then puts a single blade into a cutter. Terrifying. Then he sprinkles some water on your head and goes at it. Surprisingly, it felt very relaxing.
So, yes, for now, I am bald and it feels great. Honestly, there are only two big changes. One is all the stares. I forget that I'm bald so when people stare, I keep wondering why. The second change is more odd. Normally, I just throw on my shirt, but now, the shirt rubs against my prickly short hair and hurts and won't go on. So, I have to gather the shirt, slip it carefully over my head, then let the rest go. It's not going to kill me, it's just odd.
After shaving my head, we napped for a bit, then got dinner and saw the temple at night, which was very pretty. We also saw the free Darshan (prayer) line... apparently, it's a more than 24 hour wait on the weekends. People essentially wait in small steal cages for that long. "Darshan" means going in front of the God and seeing the idol itself. People wait 24 hours or more for that.
The next morning, my uncle arranged for a VIP Darshan. We only had to wait two hours and then we saw the God, which was very powerful and very pleasant and relaxing all at the same time. No pictures were allowed unfortunately. They frisk you like six or seven times before you get to see the God. It was unbelievable how tight security was.
We came back to Chennai by 2pm in the afternoon and just relaxed for the rest of the day.
Today, as I was saying, was a great day. We got into work at 10:30 and worked until around 1, when people started eating lunch. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, most people eat in a circle in the office space, and today was Srinivasan Uncle's birthday! He brought in chicken pieces and asked us all to join. We had a great feast of a lunch and it was awesome to feel like one of the locals. Afterwards, there was the power cut, so we talked to Selva about going to another village. He was so efficient! He set it up so that we're actually leaving tmrw!! Unbelievably fast!
He also took a few of us out to ice cream and then I came back and played a few games of chess with a young nice guy named Laxmi. He kept calling us "Sir" or "Madam," which made us uncomfortable. It was interesting that even when we told him to stop, he had a difficult time stopping, because he was so used to it. The first two games were over in literally no more than 5 minutes. He was killing me and it was embarrassing. The last game was the only good one and it lasted a good 45 minutes. I ended up winning!
Great few days!
On Friday morning, Rad and I left to go to Tirupati, which is a very sacred place about 3 hours away from Chennai. Tirupati is home to a temple dedicated to Sri Venkateshwara Swamy, a Hindu God. Well, actually, Tirupati is 3000 feet below the temple. The actual deity is in Tirumala, which is located 7 hills above Tirupati in a set of mountains. Lord Venkateshwara is a form of the Hindu God, Vishnu. One thing that people often don't know about Hinduism is that it is actually monotheistic, but has many reincarnations of the one God. I actually discovered that Tirupati is the most visited cultural pilgrimage sites in the world. On a weekend, like the one we visited, there are over 100,000 people there! Amazing!
The bus we took to Tirupati was relatively empty in the middle of the day. Other than losing my contacts on the trip, it was a smooth ride. My uncle, Madhu Uncle, met us at the bus stop. He is my grandfather's sister's son and was extremely hospitable the entire trip!
When we arrived, we met his family. His son, Pushkar, was awesome and very funny. He was only 5 years old, but he was already very smart and quite nice! We also met my grandfather's sister - Bharti Amama (means grandmother in Telugu) and I had never met her before. It was unfortunate that I couldn't understand her (so essentially I just smiled politely), but I could tell she was thrilled to see me. She was talking very fast and showing me a lot of old pictures. She was extremely nice and reminded me a lot of my grandfather (who we call Thatha).
The next morning, we climbed to Tirumala. Tirumala, remember, is at the top of the 7 hills and climbing to the top (as opposed to taking the bus) is supposed to be very spiritual (and difficult). It is over 3500 steps to the top and it takes some people more than six hours to complete, if they finish. It was amazing and felt really great to climb. I expected the rumors about its difficulty to be false, made up by old Indian folks who haven't really done any exercise... I was wrong. The first 1000 steps, in particular, are extremely challenging. After two breaks, I was still sweating up a storm!
On the way up, there are spots where animals will come up to you (you're essentially walking through a forest) and where you can stop to get food or water. We didn't try to go too fast and enjoyed all the people and camaraderie. We ended up getting up in 3 hours exactly, surprisingly fast, and then waiting for my uncle to come meet us at the top. I don't think he was expecting us to finish so fast!
Another thing that is very spiritual in Tirupati is giving up your hair and shaving your head. I decided I would do it because my dad did it when he was younger and because I figured it would be very spiritual thing to do, something I really liked about it. We got in this line to get your hair cut, but the line was way too long (apparently the wait was over five hours!).
Luckily, Madhu Uncle knew how to get a priest to come to you and I was able to get my hair cut that way. It was very nice, but rather scary. The priest does a little prayer and then puts a single blade into a cutter. Terrifying. Then he sprinkles some water on your head and goes at it. Surprisingly, it felt very relaxing.
So, yes, for now, I am bald and it feels great. Honestly, there are only two big changes. One is all the stares. I forget that I'm bald so when people stare, I keep wondering why. The second change is more odd. Normally, I just throw on my shirt, but now, the shirt rubs against my prickly short hair and hurts and won't go on. So, I have to gather the shirt, slip it carefully over my head, then let the rest go. It's not going to kill me, it's just odd.
After shaving my head, we napped for a bit, then got dinner and saw the temple at night, which was very pretty. We also saw the free Darshan (prayer) line... apparently, it's a more than 24 hour wait on the weekends. People essentially wait in small steal cages for that long. "Darshan" means going in front of the God and seeing the idol itself. People wait 24 hours or more for that.
The next morning, my uncle arranged for a VIP Darshan. We only had to wait two hours and then we saw the God, which was very powerful and very pleasant and relaxing all at the same time. No pictures were allowed unfortunately. They frisk you like six or seven times before you get to see the God. It was unbelievable how tight security was.
We came back to Chennai by 2pm in the afternoon and just relaxed for the rest of the day.
Today, as I was saying, was a great day. We got into work at 10:30 and worked until around 1, when people started eating lunch. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, most people eat in a circle in the office space, and today was Srinivasan Uncle's birthday! He brought in chicken pieces and asked us all to join. We had a great feast of a lunch and it was awesome to feel like one of the locals. Afterwards, there was the power cut, so we talked to Selva about going to another village. He was so efficient! He set it up so that we're actually leaving tmrw!! Unbelievably fast!
He also took a few of us out to ice cream and then I came back and played a few games of chess with a young nice guy named Laxmi. He kept calling us "Sir" or "Madam," which made us uncomfortable. It was interesting that even when we told him to stop, he had a difficult time stopping, because he was so used to it. The first two games were over in literally no more than 5 minutes. He was killing me and it was embarrassing. The last game was the only good one and it lasted a good 45 minutes. I ended up winning!
Great few days!
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