Live-Blogging His Dark Materials, Part IV: Lyra's Oxford

Last night I read Lyra's Oxford, the short sequel to His Dark Materials and the prequel to The Book of Dust.

Pullman describes it as a story that, while it was being written, collected to it scraps of paper which "might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that haven’t appeared yet." He states that these papers floated through doors from world to world, blown by winds, until they collected here, in his book.

I suppose these papers did their floatings before the doors between the worlds were closed.

The story itself is short and not particularly memorable; it's kind of like a MOTW where Lyra is chased by a witch who is trying to kill her (because the witch's son died fighting for Lord Asriel and we know that witches kinda get venegancy when people they love disappear), and meets an alchemist who isn't actually an alchemist -- he's using it as a cover so that people will think he's crazy and ignore the actual scientific work he's doing in his basement. We don't find out what that work is, although my money's on "meth lab." *__^

One of the most interesting things in the book, however, comes in one of Pullman's "scraps of paper" (these are actual pieces of paper kept separately within the book's pages, Jolly Postman-style). It's a list of books written by Jordan Scholars, one of which is titled With Gun and Rod in the Hindu Bush, by Captain R. T. G. Collins.

So. Let's theorize here. Was the Authority also the Hindu Authority? (And would that be Vishnu, Brahma, or Shiva?) If the Authority wasn't the Hindu Authority, then did their faith remain unchanged? Do the Angels hang around the Hindu Bush, or do they leave those crazy people alone? Do they try to convert them?

I guess I was assuming that Lyra's world was an entirely Christian world, as that was what Pullman had set up for us previously. Even Will, who comes from our world, doesn't mention anything about people from other religions. It would have been interesting if he had said something to Lyra along the lines of "in my world, not everyone believes in Adam and Eve and the Church's God." But... Pullman seemed to want to limit his book to a critique on the Christian church only.

So, to my readers: does knowing that Lyra's world contains people who don't belong to the Church or the Authority change Pullman's atheist message and philosophies? If so, how?

Oh. My. Ceiling Cat.

When I was in undergrad, the coolest website going around was... well, okay, it was Homestar Runner, but the second coolest was the Brick Testament.


The Gospel according to Lego.

Now those zany Bible-interpreters have taken it a step further -- a revised Revised Standard Version, if you will.

May I present to you: The Bible, As Written By Lolcats.

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!1

I'm working my way through this highly entertaining translation, which has the added benefit of reminding me of a few Bible stories I've long forgotten. Favorite quote thus far?

Dey wuz gonna naem him Zechariah,60 but Elizabeth wuz all "STFU we iz callin him John."

I can totally see Elizabeth doing that. She was one righteous d00d. Or d00dette. Or... um... cat.

The Lolcat Bible also has illustrations, so if you want to compare and contrast with the Lego annunciation scene pictured above...

I may have to start praying to Ceiling Cat from now on.

A Child's Christmas in [Blue's Hometown]

In honor of Christmas, I'm giving you a section from a (much longer) performance piece I wrote a few years ago. It's a response, of sorts, to Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales.

It sounds better when read aloud, so you'll have to imagine me reading it. Conversely, you could read it aloud yourself.

Preemptive Editor's Note: When Blue writes "literary non-fiction" about her hometown, she calls it "Kirkland." When spoken aloud, please swallow the last syllable so that it becomes "Kirklnd," because that's how us Midwesterners would say it.

**********************

At 5 p.m. Christmas Eve the church bells start to ring. Families park their cars the length of a city block, though few people live far enough away that they actually have to drive. The air smells quiet, sharp, a little cold. There is an enveloping sensation; a strange combination of peaceful and exciting which I still feel, even though I am no longer a child. It is the sudden collision of the holy night with the celebration; the witnessing of the Savior with the parties and gifts and sweets and wine and presents to follow. We all hope that the sermon will not be too long.

Everyone is dressed in their best clothes; little girls running around in red velvet and petticoats, young couples in chinos and turtlenecks, old women in stumpy heels against thick, tan stockings. The narthex is dark, and the sanctuary is dark, and we are each given a candle when we go inside.

Since we are Methodists, the minister changes regularly, and so the service itself varies – the sublime is all too easily interspersed with the ridiculous, as it was the year when a well-meaning minister baked blueberry and chocolate chip muffins for Communion, in an attempt to make it special for the children. There are usually several performances by my mother’s piano students, all tripping to the piano in shiny shoes and curled hair, getting at least three out of every four notes correct. There was a debate, for many years, over including the secular carols alongside the hymns; but our congregation is an open-minded one, and so we now hear “Jingle Bells” in church, along with “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” (To be fair, “Jingle Bells” is a lot easier for a six-year-old to play.)

The services all end the same way, though – with Communion in the semi-darkness, and then complete darkness as the first candle is lit from the Christ Candle and the light is allowed to spread throughout the sanctuary. We sing “Silent Night,” a capella, and process with our lit candles until we are outside. Then it is a bustle of coats and saying hello to people we haven’t seen since last Christmas, and then off to our across-the-street neighbors for eggnog and chocolate-covered pretzels and red-and-green Hershey’s kisses stacked on top of marshmallow snowmen.

Then back home for the presents – we open ours Christmas Eve because we are a family of late sleepers, and up until two a.m. admiring (or mocking) the gifts and all are asleep until at least eleven the next morning, although Santa always conspires to leave some kind of trinket (a Pez dispenser or a bag of Vitamin C candy) in our stockings for us to find when we wake.

Christmas Day dinner is around three p.m., the first proper meal of the day, and at our house it is lasagna because my sister loves lasagna (and, really, we all do). Then back to naps or playing with the presents or reading the books or writing the letters to the people who are not with us… writing to say my dear one, Merry Christmas, and wouldn’t I love for you to see it with me, here in Kirkland, where you could walk down to the river or sit in the hushed and expectant church or chase the toddlers around a marshmallow-fudge-eggnog dining room table or unwrap the Chia Heads or go up and stand in a room lit by electric candlelight, looking out the window at the dome of Kirkland College’s administrative building, the dome on which perches a giant, glowing, electric star to shine its light over our tiny town, to pierce through Dylan Thomas’ close and holy darkness, as if to say “wise men – kings from more important lands – on your way through your life’s journey, on the way to find your own purpose and salvation – stop here.”

Thoughts on the Golden Temple

Back when it was Ganesha Chaturthi, I had wanted to write a post tentatively titled "Why do all these white people want to see pujas?" (This I overheard one desi visiting fac say to another while three of us pasty-style visiting fac were getting ready to go pandal-visiting.)

When I told people I was going to Amritsar, the most common follow-up was "why?"

Of course they knew there was this famous temple in Amritsar. "Then go for a day," they told me. "You can walk through the Golden Temple in an hour and then leave."

Keeping in mind that I did become sick -- very sick -- in Amritsar, and that the last half of my stay there was spent in a hotel room watching the entire "Ross and Emily" arc on Friends, perhaps the people who told me I shouldn't have gone to the city had a point.

But I wouldn't give the three days I spent at the Golden Temple back for anything. You don't "walk through" a place like that in an hour.

I grew up in a very small, very white Midwestern town. We had church. We had plenty of church. One of my high school jobs was church organist/choral accompanist. I was an "every-Sunday" kind of gal.

And yet I couldn't help but notice what I felt to be an absence of spirituality at these churches -- or, at least, the kind of spirituality I felt like I needed in my own life. At my Midwestern church, there was plenty of warmth, plenty of friendship and kind words and smiling. But there wasn't a sense of the divine presence among us. "When two or three gather in My name, I am there," as the quotation goes. Perhaps, and certainly a force may have been watching us and loving us and cracking a wry smile, but for me it was Sunday after Sunday of sermons punctuated with jokes and flickering PowerPoint images featuring clip art a decade old.

To wit: I came from a church where on Christmas, our minister distributed blueberry mini-muffins for Communion and, in lieu of a sermon, told a story about an angel who wanted to learn how to tap-dance.

And so I got on a train bound for Amritsar and one of the holiest, most sacred places in the world.

Why Amritsar and not, say, Tirupathi? In part because I knew the Golden Temple would take me in. One of the tenets of Sikhism is that their sacred centers are open to people of all faiths. And, when I was there, not only was I "taken in," but I was also taken care of. I was welcomed, invited to eat in the langar hall, allowed to sit for hours and listen to the kirtan, even allowed to sleep. (And, when the time came for the temple's thrice-daily cleaning, I was, along with everyone else, handed a bucket and shown what to do.)

Did I "find spirituality" at the Golden Temple? I think it was one of the sorts of things where a person goes to a place to remember what she already knows. That is to say, being there and being invited to meditate on the name of the Lord reminded me again of the necessity of connecting to the larger sense of faith, to what one might call the Divine, the Universal Connector, the Ultimate Source, which may or may not be our idealized human-faced God but is a definite something.

The Golden Temple was a place I was truly sad to leave. I don't know if I will ever be in that kind of presence again, in my lifetime. And -- despite the complications of the rest of Amritsar -- I am so glad I was able to make the journey.

Golden Temple Pictures

In lieu of a more substantial post, I'll share some pictures of the Golden Temple.

As I learned in Delhi, the Nishan Sahib is quite large. ^__^

The langar hall, a free kitchen that is open 24/7. It is a place where people of all faiths and classes are invited to share a meal together.

The Harmandir Sahib (that is, the Golden Temple itself), in the center of Amrit Sarovar.

Pilgrims and travelers circling the sarovar. I'm tucked away in a shady area. I spent nearly three days sitting in various places like this around the temple complex, sitting and watching and resting and listening.

Another image from my anterior/interior position. ^__^

Visiting the Gurdwara

In Chandni Chowk, there's a prominent gurdwara: the Gurdwara Sis Ganj. It honors the martyrdom of Guru Teg Bahadur, and was built on the location of his beheading. I had gone into the Sikh History Museum next to the gurdwara, and now stood in front of the building itself, wondering if I could go inside.

Theoretically gurdwaras are open to everyone, but I'm always a little nervous about crashing other peoples' services. However, this gurdwara had a large door labeled "Information for Visitors."

So that's where I went. Actually, I didn't quite go inside. I stuck my head through the door, in case this was one of the places where I was supposed to cover my head and remove my shoes, and tried to see what was going on.

In less than two seconds a cheerful, welcoming man had tied a saffron kerchief around my head.

"We cover our heads to show we are brave," he told me, smiling. Then he showed me where to put my shoes.

Once inside, I was introduced to another man who would turn out to be my tour guide. He took me into the main hall, which I expected, and we sat for a moment listening to the reading from the Guru Granth Sahib, but then he tapped me on the knee and I stood up and we were off on a whirlwind of exploration, into a network of hallways and rooms, kitchens and dormitories and balconies, and he was explaining to me exactly how the gurdwara worked.

On the way I was introduced to twenty-five-odd people; every time we passed someone my guide stopped and greeted them and introduced them to me, and there was smiling and hand-shaking all around.

The most interesting thing about the tour was that it was entirely in Hindi. My guide and I understood pretty quickly that neither of us spoke the other's language, and after a nod of apology to each other we decided that we would have to make do. I was able to understand the meaning of what he was telling me, if not the actual words. It was actually very fun to stand in front of a portrait or a giant chapati-making machine and talk back and forth with this man and then both start grinning as we realized we knew what the other was trying to say.

When the tour was over, I was returned to the visitors' room and given some pamphlets to take back with me. An English-speaking woman was found, who went over some of the details I didn't catch on my tour. She asked me if I had seen the Nishan Sahib. I said that I had.

"It's our symbol," she told me, "so that everyone who looks in this direction will know that there is a gurdwara here. It's like your cross in America. You put a cross in front of your churches, yes?"

"Yes," I said.

"And we put the Nishan Sahib at our gurdwaras. It's like the cross, but ours is much larger."

Wow. I thought. Did Christianity just get served?

Pictures of Mysore!

I'm not a synesthe, but I do attach colors to things. Hyderabad is kind of a dull orange, Bangalore is green.

When I rode the auto from the train station into Mysore, it felt pink, like Paris. But it soon became clear that Mysore is a very lovely yellow.

I don't have a lot of pictures of Mysore because every time I entered a place that looked like it wanted to be photographed, my camera was confiscated. So... no pictures of any palaces or anything interesting like that.

But I do have two pictures I took on Chamundi Hill. The first is of Chamundi Temple from a distance, before I had to put away my camera. Note the rows of stalls outside.

The second is the view of Mysore from the top of Chamundi Hill. When the auto driver noticed that I was trying to take a picture while he was driving, he kindly stopped the auto and let me get a better shot.


Then, however, my auto driver asked if I wanted to take a short trip to see "one more temple." He promised it would be short, and worth my while. It turned out to be a half-hour excursion which added Rs 100 to the meter and led to a tiny, nondescript temple in the middle of nowhere.

"Really, it's important!" he said, seeing my irritated face. "Inside is a very important god!"

Yeah, I thought. The God of Raising Auto Drivers' Meters.

Oh, well.

ISKCON: Welcome to Krishnaland!

So. ISKCON. I'm going to stay out of the politics and describe only the temple itself.

What struck me about the ISKCON structure, in both its appearance and its operation, was how much it resembled a theme-park ride. It wasn't the kind of place one went to for a quiet devotion or puja. It was, in every aspect, intended to be an experience.

After all, where else would one find a sign proclaiming that ISKCON followers were "saintly people" next to a sign warning "beware of pickpocketers?"

As I progressed through the experience, I noticed that it felt vaguely familiar. All too soon, I placed it. Disneyland.

Here's why:

1. The accordion queue. I know there's a real name for this, but someone nerdier than I will have to provide it. But you know what I'm talking about -- the deal where you walk through the front gate and into the hutch and then you see that the line is about ten times longer than you thought it would be because the queue is folded back and forth.

Luckily, when we went, there were very few people there. Unluckily, it meant we still had to walk through all of the queue turns.

2. The first pre-show, and then the second pre-show. Like Disney, ISKCON has plenty of entertainment to keep you occupied while you're queuing. First, you get Krishna's life story, on placards, spread over the twists and turns "Burma Shave"-style. As the queue gets closer to the main temple, it passes by three mini-temples (all with their own donation boxes, of course). All, of course, intended to keep you entertained and psych you up for the Main Event.

3. The ever-repeating soundtrack. Loudspeakers along the route piped us full of "Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare," etc. It's a small world after all. Remember, we're not even inside the temple yet.

4. Gilt-edged murals in every corner. Okay, now we're inside the temple. And like, say, the Haunted Mansion (yes, I know, I just compared a temple to Disney's Haunted Mansion -- to be fair, Disney also uses this portrait scheme on its carousel and in Cinderella's Palace), there are gilt-edged paintings shoved into every available wall space. The portraits are even in the same style; contemporary romantic/pastoral arrangements of iconic scenes and characters.

5. An immediate exit into a shopping arena. Like Disney, you exit the event and find yourself immediately in a store which sells smaller versions of the event. In ISKCON's case, there were several floors of shopping available, all which we had to pass through before we got back to the parking lot. As well as an "all-prasadam" food court.

Did I enjoy the ISKCON experience? Absolutely. But the sense of building anticipation + brief, exciting encounter + instant urge to memorialize the experience felt a little too... manipulative (not to mention canned, or -- as one of my friends described an earlier temple -- "synthetic"). Krishna, after all, is not Mickey Mouse; and visiting a temple should not be like riding on Splash Mountain.

But, then again, I am the outsider, putting my own value judgments on things I know I don't really understand. So... well, these are my thoughts only.

What are yours?

Watching People Eat

I’m not in the university guest house, at the moment. My room has been taken over by a gigantic physics convention. The person in charge of this convention wanted to rent more rooms than the university currently had available; and so the people furthest down the hierarchy were asked (no, told) to move out of the guest house for a week and make other arrangements.

So I’m in a backpackers’ hostel, in the city. And thrilled to be here. The university campus is peaceful and beautiful, but isolated. So I jumped at the chance to get away from the university… and, for that matter, away from the mess hall and its three rotating curries (bhindi, aloo and capsicum, and brinjal).

Anyway. I arrived at about 5:30 p.m. on the first sunny day in over a week. I put my things in the hotel room and took a moment to freshen up from the bus ride, and then flew down the stairs to start my evening’s adventure. Strangely, it looked as if the front desk clerk had “freshened up” as well. In the five minutes (okay, ten) it had taken me to re-braid my hair and reapply lipstick, he had combed his hair and put on a white embroidered cap. It almost looked as if he had put on a different shirt as well, but I couldn’t be sure.

I went out into a street that was on the cusp of twilight. The first thing I noticed was that nearly every man was wearing this same white cap (I know it's got a real name, but I can't find it on Google... I'll let one of you educate me ^__^). The second was that everyone – men, women, and children alike – were dressed in these gorgeous, sparkling things. The third, which I realized as I stepped into a group of people as they crossed a street and followed the group through to safety on the other side, was that everyone was congregating around a set of sweet-stalls set up at a prominent intersection.

Then I got it. It’s Ramadan, seconds from sundown, and they’re all about to break the fast.

There was such a sense of excitement in the air, which surprised me, because we are about two weeks into Ramadan already. Is there this excitement every evening? Of course, if I had spent the day fasting, I think I would be more than a little excited myself.

I didn’t watch to see the moment when the sun set. I wanted to, but it seemed like it would be prying into something very personal. It was enough to see the anticipation of these penultimate moments. So I turned and went onto a different road.

On this road, rows of electric lights drew me towards a giant Ganesha pandal (voted one of the top five pandals in the city, as the sign announced). This one had a dancing Ganesh instead of a seated one; his fingertip touched a fountain, and water poured over lotus flowers. This pandal also had a crowd of people and more coming from every direction.

They were doing puja and taking prasadam, only it seemed like the prasadam was an entire meal; rice, dal, and pooris. Plate after plate went out. I went closer, to see if money was exchanging hands, but whatever funds enabled this pandal to have a working lotus fountain (and be rated “top five in the city!”) were also enabling the pandal to feed this huge crowd for free.

Thus on one street, Muslims were breaking the fast; and around the corner, Hindus were taking prasadam. Everyone was eating. Everyone was happy. The sun set, and all around the city these glorious colorful lights came on. It was a perfect moment.

Life Isn't Complete....

... until one has danced, in a raging monsoon, with thunder and fireworks crackling at the same time, in a parade leading a giant pink Ganesh to its pandal.

There was prasadam, of course, and -- for whatever reason -- red and pink and yellow powder. And I got covered in it. ^_^

Darshan'd!

Last night I paid my first visit to a temple. We hadn’t planned on going, but a few of the other visitors at the guest house were eager for a trip off-campus, so we all piled into an auto and went to a (terrible) Punjabi restaurant in Gachi Bowli.

Afterwards one of them wanted paan, so we began to wander around in search of a paan-wallah; we were wandering, of course, because we would stop to ask every third person where the nearest paan shop was located, and every person, naturally, would give a different answer.

And so we stumbled upon a temple. Almost literally. It was off the road, and in a bit of a ravine, so we didn’t see the lights until we were almost stumbling down a hill. But by then we had half-stumbled-down anyway, so we decided to move in for a closer look.

I’ve never been close to a Hindu temple before, so I had no basis of comparison; but my companions quickly informed me that this was a “synthetic” temple; the materials were all man-made (i.e. cement) and molded and gilded to look more expensive. It was very new; in fact, there was a man still on the scaffolding, applying lacquer to a statue.

One of the men wanted to go inside, and invited me to follow. And so we removed our shoes and entered the synthetic temple.

There were rows of people listening to a pandit, and of course they all turned to stare when we came in. My friend began to make the circle, praying before each statue and touching it, and I followed behind watching respectfully. I didn’t exactly want to copy his motions, because I didn’t know what they meant, and so I simply watched him until he was finished.

By then the owner of the temple had found us. After a few moments of bragging about his masterwork – “I had the vision for this temple in a dream! The entire design!” – he called the pandit over to us and said that he should do a special mumble-mumble-something-something for me.

The pandit led us up right onto the altar next to a large statue, just my friend and me, and then the rows of people who had been sitting and listening got up and started ringing the two large bells in front of us. The pandit had put a small oil lamp on a plate and was making small circles in front of the statue, and then he held the plate out to us and my friend put a 20-rupee bill on it. (He later complained bitterly about this “bright idea” to have the special something-something, because it meant that he had to make a donation and the 20 bill was the smallest thing he had.) I added all of the change in my pocket.

In return we both got red marks pressed onto our foreheads. And then we got coconut water poured into our palms. And then we each received half of a coconut. And then we had smaller chunks of coconut put into the coconut half. And, to finalize the ritual, the pandit removed the bananas that had been sitting at the feet of this central statue and gave them to us.

We returned to the rest of our group laden with fruit, which we quickly dispersed to begging children.

Now that I have described my adventure, would someone please tell me what this special something-something was? I could have asked afterwards, but I always feel a little awkward saying something like “what was that all about, now?” particularly to someone like my friend who was taking it very seriously, despite his disappointment at having to make the donation. (I never even found out which deity the temple was honoring, because it seemed disrespectful to stop my friend and ask “who’s that on the altar?”)

Just curious to know what kind of blessings I received. ^__^