Power and Powerless, Part II

Khajuraho Temple

Khajuraho — August 20th – 21st, 2010

While we found having cows wandering the streets of Delhi slightly disarming, here in Khajuraho it more normal than not. In fact a variety of livestock roam the streets here – and it seems they generally have the right of way when dealing cars, autorickshaws and pedestrians. In fact, there are animals everywhere here; goats on the roof of the supermarket, herds of cows laying in the road, peacocks on the terrace of a nearby restaurant. There are wild pigs basking in the monsoon mud and water buffalo pretty much anywhere you turn. But it doesn’t stop with what we would consider “domesticated animals”. Today, while walking (once again disappointing rickshaw drivers everywhere) the 6 kms to and from Reneh Falls we also sighted a jackal (or maybe a hyena or wild dog – it’s hard to tell, you know), a male peacock with perfect tail feathers and what we believed to be a gharial, which is an endangered species of crocodile they have here. It was all very exciting and definitely wouldn’t have been possible if we’d been in a deafeningly loud tuk-tuk.

Although the local fauna has been keeping us quite happy, the real drawing point of Khajuraho is the four groupings of Jain and Hindu temples, many decorated with tantric sculptures and carvings, which despite all odds have managed to survive the last 1000 or so years. Yesterday we spent the morning wandering the most famous and well preserved group, and the afternoon enjoying the peace of the Jain temples complete with large and beautiful Buddha statues. The temples were for us, as well as their creators, sanctuaries from the crazy world outside. Just as in Delhi and Agra, Khajuraho is overwhelmingly full of people in need and they are not afraid to ask you to part with your Rupees, waterbottles, pens, umbrellas, earrings, watches, or anything else they deem to be of value. Sadly, the majority of these are children, and saying no is a difficult task. Of course we would be happy to part with any of these things if we felt that the corresponding value would actually be helpful to the kids, but more and more we are feeling that there is something or someone much more sinister who is reaping the benefits. Instead, I’ve decided that once I get to Mysore I’m going to try to find somewhere to volunteer once I complete my practice for the day, thereby hoping to make a more lasting difference.

I’m sorry that it’s been a few days since my last post. Internet, and particularly wi-fi, is not quite so accessible here, and I wanted to be able to upload photos with my posts. Also, due to the fairly regular loss of power (not including the mandatory shut-off in Khajuraho from 9-10 a.m. and 4-5 p.m.) and subsequent loss of everything you’ve typed that’s not saved and still have to pay for the internet time you “use” during a failure, there’s a definite possibility that if I had tried to type this directly into the blog without saving it as a word document first…you’d be getting a much less descriptive, far more succinct accounting of what’s been going on – I rather think it would resemble this:

Love you. Miss you. Wish you were here with the pigs, goats, cows, peacocks, water buffalo.

Side note about food: So today we had the best food we’ve found so far in India. In most of the restaurants the food has been good, but neither as spicy nor as flavourful as either of us had expected. And we realized we’ve been eating in the places where a lot of the tourists eat because the food is “safe”. FORGET THAT IDEA! This afternoon we walked into a restaurant down the street and the first thing we noticed was that all the tables were occupied by Indian men and women enjoying their lunches…a ha! The resulting food was spicy (once we could convince the waiter that we wanted full force curries), steaming hot and made from fresh ingredients, rather than frozen veggies, which we’ve been getting in many places. The chappatis that accompanied the meal were so hot from the stove we couldn’t even rip them without burning our fingertips. We’re going to bed on our train tonight with very full and happy bellies.