So ‘cited. And terrified. I have an appointment for a haircut in Thrissur tomorrow morning. It is badly needed; it’s extremely hot and humid here and I scare the bejesus out of myself each morning when I look in a mirror. Think about it though; the vast majority of Indian women don’t cut their hair. So how do the stylists get practice. On the tourists I suppose…
i arrived in Pallippuram two days ago. Verena and Suvarna, the two German volunteers, have been a godsend in terms of helping me to understand how things work. Swami T has a lot of rules… I’m starting to think that all swamis have control freak tendencies, but he is doing a good thing for these kids, so I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.
The girls are sweet. They are also sick. At least four of them have heavy colds, one also has fever, and I’m afraid to think of how this might impact me in the coming days. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to stay away from them. In the interests of their privacy (this is their home after all), I cannot post pictures. You’ll have to take my word for it.
There is (another) big religious festival going on in Kerala, and we went to one of the nearby temples yesterday to see the goings on. There was a huge sand mandala in the centre of the courtyard, and the four men who created it were getting ready to destroy it and construct another more elaborate one of Vishnumaya – the god being celebrated. They showed us pictures of him. He wouldn’t be easy to draw let alone create out of granules of sand. The temple was filled with flowers and offerings of rice, fruit, rupees, etc. which is why I can return time and time again to these sites. They are happy, living places.
Interestingly, there are Hindu gods here in Kerala that don’t exist in other parts of India. So just when I was getting comfortable with the A list of deities, they’ve introduced a whole new cast of characters. I give up.