March 14, 2012 - Chennai, India Homestay and Temple

At 4:00, the four of us left for the train station to pick up their 18 year old daughter, Mohitha. Everyday Mohitha takes a bus then a train, for an hour, to and from her university. Her university encourages people to commute instead of live in the hostels (dorms) on campus because there is not enough housing for everyone. There is little opportunity for Mohitha to hang out with friends outside of school because of the distance and travel.

Mohitha is enrolled in an Engineering College where she attends classes from 8- 5, five days a week. In her first year she has to pick a specialization in Engineering and that will be the subject of the majority of her classes for the rest of the four years. She stated that you cannot change your type of engineering if you don’t like it because when you switch to a new topic, you have to start all over again. I asked her to explain her specialization and she had trouble putting a brief version into layman’s terms because of the way teachers explained it to her. I believe that this intensive education level provided to Indian college students gives them a huge advantage in the foreign job markets.

Mohitha also remarked that she did want to study in the US like her brother because she could not be that far away from home. It is interesting to see the different sentiments of the two siblings. She does a classical Indian dance known as Bahaka which was very intensive and involved a graduation ceremony where they danced for hours on end and the entire family attended. I got to see the pictures of her wearing jewelry, make up, and in costume. They did a worship of the dance god before they started which really interested me.

That night we attended a Rotary meeting with the other students of the homestays and got a chance for all the families to get together and socialize and discuss what each of the groups was involved in. Before we had left, my homestay mom gave me a local outfit to wear including a bindi for my forehead. She told me bindis were used for beauty and decoration. We had high tea there with some food and dessert.

After the Rotary meeting, our family brought us to the Skywalk mall to go shopping. The mall was huge there was a walkway on the top floor near the cinema. They brought us to a store known as Westside which is separated into a part known as “Indian Wear” and then another with “Western Wear”. Apparently the stores prices are going up because it is getting notoriety in India.

I bought a lot of kurtas which look like tunics with bright leggings/ pants. I went to the shoe section and my feet could not fit into the biggest size that they had. The employee helped me find a pair of sandals that are wearable. I also shopped for sunglasses because mine had recently broke and four salesmen surrounded me. Apparently shop lifting is a serious problem so they had to unlock each rack. They kept handing me pair after pair. I felt very awkward to be catered to like that in addition to have each of them watch me as I tried each one on. I had thought that they were 279 Rupees which is about $5 US, then I saw him write in the amount and they were 2799 Rupees which is about $40 so I had to decline buying them. After we had finished our purchases we headed back to their house. I took a nice shower and I had passed out in my king size bed.

Just a quick note on the interesting way that Indian people communicate; they do a head bobble side to side while you’re talking to agree with what you are saying. It almost looks like they are saying no or it is just distracting to watch them. They also have some very distinct hand movements when saying yes, end phrases with “ya ya” and when they want you to follow them they repeat “come come come”.

On the third day (the 14th of March) after our sophisticated home cooked breakfast with dosa and chicken and potato stew, we met with the rest of the SAS (Semester at Sea) homestay people to visit this area of Tamil Nadu ( the state Chennai is in ) with ancient Hindu temples. I discussed the Hindu religion a lot with my family. They explained that unlike other major religions, Hindu doesn’t observe any strict guidelines about when and how to worship. My family usually does not go that often to temple and would only go when there is a social event. For example, they would go with other rotary members when invited. Even the restriction on beef is not strictly observed. While I was with them, Meena ate beef one night at dinner.

The religion has a huge pantheon of gods and in that way can accept and explain other major religions. For example, they will worship Jesus as a god because it is not a big deal to add another god to worship. There are three major gods, the creator, the preserver and the destroyer. The creator god had an elephant head for a head and there was an associate story to explain it. This was prayed to before any major projects that one endeavored to do. The god Shiva will never exist in statue form because he was cursed that nobody would be able to worship him in that way. Because the religion believes in incarnation, many people will not eat meat. The restaurants distinguish on the signs whether they offer non-vegetarian (meat) or vegetarian meals. Meena’s niece does not eat non-vegetarian (meat) on Saturdays when she used to go to temple, which was difficult for me to understand or translate the double negative.

The temples we visited were built 2,000 years ago and were carved out on one piece of stone that had been dragged from a very long distance. It had not even been finished. It had very intricate carvings inside and outside of the main building and there was only a small hallway inside with small rooms coming off of it. We visited two other ones with similar carvings. There were a lot of other tourists there and the sun was beating down on us so it was uncomfortable.

There were young girls walking around on the temples that were ten and twelve that were chatting with us. I was suspicious about why they were there without adults but as we left, I understood why. They had goods to sell to us and that’s why they were talking to us before. I had a lot of terrible stories about the street kids in these second and third world countries and I refused to buy anything from them. However, it is sad to see children that young already losing their childhood because of poor social conditions.