After a busy day at sea, we arrived in India. Not only was this our first time to India,
but it was also the very first time that Holland America has stopped at the
port of Mangalore.
India is divided into states; each state is divided into
districts; each district is divided into talucks (sp?); talucks are divided
into cities. Mangalore is in the Indian
state of Karnataka, and is located about 220 miles from the capital of the
state, Bangalore. Mangalore is a city of
about 600,000 people and is one of the largest ports in India. It exports most of the country’s coffee. Since the processing of cashews is so
important to the area, the port handles the vast majority of the exportation of
cashews.
While our guide was excellent, we had quite a bit of
difficulty understanding some of his descriptions, especially since we are not
well-versed in the practices of the Hindu religion! We really appreciated what we did, but we
have a feeling that we won’t be able to do justice to what we saw.
Our tour was called Mangalore Highlights and included four
stops. The first stop was at a cashew
processing factory. We learned about the
many steps that they go through to prepare cashews for sale – most of which is
done by hand. About all that we saw done
by machine was a conveyor belt and an oven.
The cashew is a nut that is attached to the top of a kind of apple. The
cashew must be removed from the apple, the poor quality ones are removed, and
the rest are placed on the conveyor belt, and sent into the factory. Women are
hired to crack the cashews open by hand, one by one. For this tedious task, they make a whopping
wage of approximately $4 a day, based upon how many cashews they can crack open! One woman worked so fast that her hands
appeared to be a blur! After being
cracked open, the cashews are weighed, and then roasted for eight hours before
being sent to the grading room where they are separated according to the color,
size, and of the cashew. We decided that we now understand very well
why cashews are so expensive!
From the cashew factory it was a short drive to the Khadri Manjunath
Temple, a Hindu temple dating back to about 1068. As is always the case in Hindu temples, we
had to remove our shoes before entering the various separate building of the
temple. (Being in stocking feet was a
real challenge, especially since I don’t do well walking around without shoes
for long periods of time!) The chief deity
for this temple is Manjunath (or Lord Shiva).
Since Monday is the sacred day for Lord Shiva, our guide warned us that
it would be a very busy day as people would be coming to worship. That was certainly the case! Everywhere we looked there were people coming
in and worshiping – cleansing themselves in nearby pools, kneeling in prayer,
bowing to the priests or Brahmins. The
statues that adorned both the exteriors and interiors were very ornate and
often depicted various gods sacred to the Hindus – Lord Shiva with his many
arms, the elephant-headed “prince”, and others.
We had to move around each room in a clockwise pattern to bring
luck. It was very interesting, but we
have decided that we would not make very good Hindus because we didn’t seem to
understand a whole lot about what was happening! One thing is for sure: as Al commented, the
Hindu religion certainly is a noisy one with all the gongs and bells being rung
and the people chanting! Apparently “ohmmmm”
is a lucky sound!
Our third stop was much more understandable. As we arrived at the St. Aloysius Catholic
Church, uniformed students were flocking to the gates. Our guide said that it was exam time and they
had most likely finished up an exam and were heading home. The church itself was built at the end of the
19th Century; the interior was adorned with paintings that depicted
the life of Christ as well as the life of Aloysius Gonzaga, the wealthy young
man who did so much to help the poor and needy.
Here was a place where we could examine the artwork and actually know
what things meant!
Our final stop was the Gokarnanath Temple, a modern temple
dedicated to Lord Shiva. Its founder
wished to erect a temple where non-Brahmins could come and worship. Hence
people can worship here without concern for the caste they belong to. As a result they are far more tolerant
(though we still had to remove shoes to visit the temple grounds). We were allowed to take pictures inside as
tourists, though people who worship there regularly are not allowed to do
so. We got special permission thanks to
our guide, who is a member of this temple.
Each different temple on the grounds honored a different god. Lord Shiva’s was the most prominent and
important. His wife was Parvati (which I
found very interesting – couldn’t help but wonder if JK Rowling got the name
for one of her Gryffindor characters from Lord Shiva’s wife), and she was
pictured beside him. There was also the
monkey king, the bull, and many others. I
didn’t quite follow what the guide was saying, but apparently the planetary
positions of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the ascending and
descending moon are extremely important to the religion because there were icons
that represented each in two or three places.
Our guide told us that since he had been married in that
temple, he arranged for them to open the marriage hall so that we could see
it. There are three marriage halls,
based upon the wealth of the people being married. The wealthiest are married in an ornate, air
conditioned hall, while the poorest are married in an non-air conditioned hall,
though it was still very beautiful.
About 85% of all Indian marriages are arranged, including
his. Parents arrange marriages for their
children within their castes, and the children meet anywhere between one and
six months before they get married. The
father of the bride pays for the wedding. When they are married, the eldest son takes
over responsibility for his parents. The
wife goes to live with her husband and his family. When the woman gets pregnant, she spends the
last couple of months of pregnancy with her mother and remains there for about
the first three months of the baby’s life, returning to her husband and family at
that time.
Literacy was at about 85% on the 2001 Federal Census, but
they anticipate that it will be up over 90% when the results of the 2011 census
are published. To encourage parents to
send children to school, lunches are provided for free. Otherwise, our guide said that parents may
decide to have their children work instead of receiving an education.
As we drove throughout the city, we passed several
factories. The dust and grime brought
back memories of our trips back and forth to Buffalo through Lackawanna. (For
our friends who don’t know the Buffalo area, Lackawanna was a steel mill town,
and the homes were virtually all rust-colored.) I can’t say that Mangalore was a pretty
city, but despite this, the people exuded enthusiasm and friendliness to all
they met. No matter where we were,
people were waving to us on the bus, wearing broad smiles and happy faces. In the temples, many people nodded their
greetings and gave us delighted smiles. One
lady said that her tour guide told them that guests to their temples were seen
as gods and were treated as such. At one
of the temples, there was an elderly woman standing at the door who made eye
contact with every one of us and gave us a smile and a friendly nod, her hands
folded as if she was in prayer. We
smiled and nodded back.
While we can’t say that we were
taken with the scenic beauty of Mangalore, we found much beauty in the warmth
and friendliness of all those we encountered!
That was a lovely first impression of the vast nation of India!
BT
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