made snana, hindi stories

we're in mumbai and we're leaving tomorrow. trying right now to upload
pictures. i saw a truck the other day that said on the back: "horn
please okay". i liked that.

so one thing i wanted to write about was "made snana." in mysore we
saw a lot of stuff about this in the newspaper. i've been really
interested in caste stuff and this goes along with it. apparently
there's been a very old tradition of lower caste people who roll
around naked in the unfinished food of upper caste people. and there's
discussion of a ban or a prohibition of some sort, that this should
stop. there were photos in the paper of people rolling in the food. i
might have it totally wrong, but this is my understanding of what's
being discussed.

another thing interesting is about cultural hindi stories. there are
something like 613 million hindu gods. and there are stories and
stories about them, and they have personalities and long drawn out
details about them. and this is like a standard set of stories that
are written about and told to children, and they instill morals and
ethics and Good Advice about How to Live. this is really cool. we
don't have anything like that. i mean i guess there's shakespeare, and
fairy tales like the three little pigs. but we don't have a set of
moral stories like that. we should, i think! i think that's really a
good thing.

we went to a cool weaving loom place yesterday that was cooperative
and i liked seeing that a lot. it was interesting to see both men and
women working the looms - usually it seems like certain jobs are all
men or all women. something else we see sometimes is at construction
sites - it's both men and women carrying the bricks. on their heads.
really. when people carry something on their head, they put on a
padded doughnut thing on their heads, and then the heavy thing. often
the heavy thing is a bowl or basket of bricks.

okay i'm gonna sign off for now. more later today or tomorrow.