Village Life

Today was the “Day in the Life” day for this Overseas Adventure Travel tour. Every OAT trip has at least one of these days built in, including a home-cooked meal and an opportunity to get into people’s homes.

We drove only about 20 minutes from the hotel to a small village of about 400 people (56 families, we were told). Our first stop was a local private school where we met students in the pre-K room. It was pretty chaotic, but Mary tried teaching a few songs. There was also a Q & A with several of the teachers. This school was better off than some we’ve visited elsewhere in the world.

We next had opportunity to visit a woman living alone in a very traditional house. The walls were brick or cement block, and the roof was thatch. She explained, through our tour guide, how she used cow dung, mixed with mud, to create a very smooth and “very clean” floor. We prefer our hardwood back home, thanks.

Visiting several more houses, we saw that concrete floors were more common, as was a flat, concrete roof. However, having livestock (primarily goats) in close proximity was common.

At the home of the village head man we got the complete tour. He was raising birds on the front porch. The living room had no furniture other than some shelves containing nick-knacks and a TV set, but the floor was nicely painted. The house has only four rooms, and one of those is a shrine to the gods. We weren’t sure if someone might have slept there, too.

Masala tea and biscuits (cookies) were served, then we received symbols of Vishnu on our foreheads. There was opportunity to ride a cart pulled by two bulls for the short distance to the next house we were to visit. The cart was pretty much full, once the cart driver, his grandchildren, and all of the women of our group were on board, so the men of our group walked behind, along with the village elders.

Next stop was the home of the village shaman, a woman who inherited the healing gift from her late father. One woman in our group volunteered to “have the evil removed from her body.” This was done by waving a bunch of leaves from a certain tree around her, occasionally whacking her on the top of the head with them. Then the leaves were thrown out of the house and onto the trash heap with great ceremony. To celebrate the healing, we all had our foreheads marked once again. This time it was with white ash (and Ash Wednesday is still days away!). Later we learned that the ash is made from burned cow dung.

In another home, a woman was working on cooking part of our lunch while tending a toddler and listening to music videos of Indian pop tunes on the TV. The ceiling was quite low here, and the ceiling fan was running full-tilt, so those of us who are tall had to take some care.

We got to see the local priest do the daily washing of the idol in one of the town shrines. We watched a tower crew tightening bolts on the local cell phone tower (I was amused to see that they were all wearing safety harnesses, as required, but all three preferred to free-climb, without bothering to actually attach the harnesses to the tower). And we all contributed to the local economy by buying a few snacks from the local convenience store.

Lunch was served on banana leaves under the shade of a huge tree. The village elders sat down and ate with us, but the women who had cooked the meal stood by, watching us eat. When I asked when the women would eat, I was told that in this culture it is customary to feed the guests first. Apparently the men are guests in their own village.

We had some Q & A, and the Indian women were eager to ask questions of us, as well. Unfortunately, they didn’t always get direct answers, and at several points, there were a lot of people talking at once.

We returned to the hotel for a swim and some time reading by the pool, making careful note of the “extreme cold” weather alert for tonight, issued by the National Weather Service in the Twin Cities.

Many of us wanted to return to the Mamallapuram park area that we had passed the day before yesterday. This area features more structures and bas-relief figures similar to those we saw before, all dating from the 7th century CE.

Although it was not scheduled, our tour leader was kind enough to organize an option at no cost to us. He had the bus take us the short distance, then he showed us around. Had we been on our own, we would have missed some of it completely.

He also explained some of the figures and briefly told some of the stories depicted. We can now, occasionally, tell Vishnu from Shiva. But only occasionally.

Some stayed in town to find a restaurant, but we took the bus back and only snacked for dinner