Feb. 11th 1010

Today was a good day.
Hindi in the morning wasn’t too bad today. Its hard trying to learn a year of Hindi in just two months but it they do it every session I guess its possible.
Our lecture afterwards was about all the different gods in Hinduism which was so interesting. There are over one million of them! I’m pretty sure there’s a god for everything from driving to making love to eating. The god Ganesha is definitely my favorite. He’s the “remover of obstacles” and “god of beginnings.” He represents the perfect balance of human and animal nature, emotional yet logical. He’s such a powerful and strong deity and plus, he’s half elephant. What’s not to love?
We went to the National Craft Museum after lunch (which was incredible as always- fish, green chutney, a pumpkin squash mixture, rice, roti, paneer, and fruit custard) in north Delhi. There were all sorts of art work from ancient South Asia. Everything from sculptures to textiles to painting to jewelry was in the museum. And everything was so beautiful and detailed, even from thousands of years ago! It made me think about how important art is because it’s a form of expression, and outlet to show emotion that can otherwise be hard to express. And the art I was looking at from thousands of years ago was all done my people. People with families, worries, feelings, jobs, passions, favorites, and problems. I mean who knows who these people were when they were creating these masterful pieces of artwork. They could have been going through a break up, been falling in love, been going through the loss of a loved one. People are people, we’re all the same. We all have these worries, hopes, and problems no matter what time period we live in. Time may pass but people are still the same people even now. We all need to express ourselves in some shape or form. Life is truly impossible without art.
It was pretty cool, at the museum there was an ancient hookah from the 20th cent which was decorated beautifully. Even back then humans knew how to chill out and relax. There was also gorgeous Indian dress and jewelry from hundreds of years ago (not much of their style has changed I realized). They even had lace undergarments from soooo long ago! It’s going to be crazy to look back at the clothing styles from today fifty years from now and see how much it changes. I mean, even in a single century styles change dramatically.
There was a piece of architecture that was some sort of balcony with windows that had pierced screen coverings. It was used for women to be able to look out without them being seen. It makes me so mad that men have been forcing women to conceal themselves to the depths of blackness for centuries, shielding them from the outside. For hundreds if not thousands of years women have been forced to do this. Look at the burka- man’s attempt to hide woman from the world. And why? Who do men have such an urge to hide women? What are they so afraid of? And why do women take it? Why are we so scared to fight back? Being here in India had made me so much aware of “modesty.” Just showing your ankle is being improper and even slutty in some cases. When did this start to evolve? Who said that women must be modest? We are beautiful creatures, and individuals. Men should not have the power to dictate us. It just aggravates me to even think about. I guess you can’t understand everything about a culture just from being here for one month. Maybe one day I’ll understand their reasoning, maybe not. It’s not my culture so I shouldn’t judge.
On a lighter note, Ayshea and I did laundry out of the bucket today- quite a scene. We put our clothes in the bucket with machine laundry soap (we didn’t know what else to use) and kind of just mashed it around. Our clothes are drying on the line right now; it should be interesting to see how they come out. I think we might just end up hiring a dobhi-walla (washerman) by the time the programs over…
Tomorrow is Shiva’s birthday. Apparently he was known as a great ganja smoker so in order to celebrate it is customary to drink “baung” with is a milky drink infused with hemp oil. Basically an edible. Sounds like a party to me…
Friday tomorrow, yay. I need the weekend.