moving on
It's overcast, which feels almost exotic after the weeks of blue skies that have blessed us. There's time for a walk around the temple before the bus leaves at 10. Bing's back is still not good, and I'm sipping my coffee, so we walk slowly through narrow alleys, dodging the long witches brooms and the morning activities of stall construction. I buy two little flat breads with red dots in the middle.
Mist is rising off the hills, incense puffs out of the burning mouths of white bulbous...ovens? (what do you call them?) where our alleyway connects with the main path. It's 8am and people are walking and rotating prayer wheels at a brisk pace. We merge into them. It seems fitting that this last morning is shown in muted colours.
When we get to the temple entrance we instinctively move to a empty area and stand apart from the activity:- the rows of people prostrating before the entrance, the moving tide still on their round, the buyers and sellers of pungent fuel for the fires.
And then something very small happens, which now when I think about it, reminds me of my last hours in Mumbai in 2002. Then, it had been a spring evening just before the monsoons. I’d said goodbye to the two friends I’d made in the previous week. The three of us had drunk chai at a rooftop restaurant which shared the same views as the sumptuous Taj Mahal Hotel a few doors down. And now I was down by the water, wandering aimlessly past the boats. The sun, a vague pink, blurred by the haze of pollution and humidity, was almost gone.
There were the usual Sadhus around The Gateway to India arch, hassling people to pay for a ritual blessing. And for once, softened by the awareness of imminent departure, I stopped and looked directly into the eyes of one of these holy charlatans. We smiled and before I knew it, had bargained a price. He said 150 rupies, I said 5, he said O.K, tied a red string round my wrist which I held out meekly, dropped some chalky white sweets into my palm, which I tipped into my mouth and swallowed, then marked my forehead with his dusted thumb.
The last strand of the string fell from my wrist a little over a year later. I’d been hoping to get back before that happened…another incident of sentimentality, where I secretly fashion a hybridised personal significance out of an ordinary moment - giving some definition to my typically western life, devoid of its own native culture of rituals and beliefs.
And now, there’s a young girl standing in front of me, looking determinedly up into my eyes and holding out a plastic bag of leafy branches for 1 kuai. I’m half way though saying ’no’ when I pull out a kuai and we make the exchange. For a few seconds I’m no longer an onlooker; I walk over to one of the smouldering fires and clumsily up-end my bag into it.
Mist is rising off the hills, incense puffs out of the burning mouths of white bulbous...ovens? (what do you call them?) where our alleyway connects with the main path. It's 8am and people are walking and rotating prayer wheels at a brisk pace. We merge into them. It seems fitting that this last morning is shown in muted colours.
When we get to the temple entrance we instinctively move to a empty area and stand apart from the activity:- the rows of people prostrating before the entrance, the moving tide still on their round, the buyers and sellers of pungent fuel for the fires.
And then something very small happens, which now when I think about it, reminds me of my last hours in Mumbai in 2002. Then, it had been a spring evening just before the monsoons. I’d said goodbye to the two friends I’d made in the previous week. The three of us had drunk chai at a rooftop restaurant which shared the same views as the sumptuous Taj Mahal Hotel a few doors down. And now I was down by the water, wandering aimlessly past the boats. The sun, a vague pink, blurred by the haze of pollution and humidity, was almost gone.
There were the usual Sadhus around The Gateway to India arch, hassling people to pay for a ritual blessing. And for once, softened by the awareness of imminent departure, I stopped and looked directly into the eyes of one of these holy charlatans. We smiled and before I knew it, had bargained a price. He said 150 rupies, I said 5, he said O.K, tied a red string round my wrist which I held out meekly, dropped some chalky white sweets into my palm, which I tipped into my mouth and swallowed, then marked my forehead with his dusted thumb.
The last strand of the string fell from my wrist a little over a year later. I’d been hoping to get back before that happened…another incident of sentimentality, where I secretly fashion a hybridised personal significance out of an ordinary moment - giving some definition to my typically western life, devoid of its own native culture of rituals and beliefs.
And now, there’s a young girl standing in front of me, looking determinedly up into my eyes and holding out a plastic bag of leafy branches for 1 kuai. I’m half way though saying ’no’ when I pull out a kuai and we make the exchange. For a few seconds I’m no longer an onlooker; I walk over to one of the smouldering fires and clumsily up-end my bag into it.
posted by jacqueline b at 8:14 AM
4 Comments:
Another wonderful post, Jacq. I particularly like the way you mix observation and personal reflection.
Rituals are important. I'm not sure why, but the thought of a life without ritual, even if seemingly insignificant, seems nearly impossible to imagine — and impossible to achieve. I suspect our own rituals, like our own cultures, are mostly invisible to us.
Thanks! its so hard to know if anyone else would find this remotely interesting.
Your comment on ritual begs a discussion on the cross-over between ritual and habit, or routine...
well, that might be overstating it.
Hmmm... good point. How does ritual differ from habit, or routine? Sometimes those words are synonymised, but I do think they differ. But I'm not sure quite how; I have a sense of it, but pinning it down's elusive.
Hey, the postcard arrived (after a minor detour). Thanks Jacq; I look at it and get restless. I had to fill in a form yesterday, and in the field tagged "Occupation", I almost wrote "Vagrant".
;^D
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