Matthew. Jan 11, 2009
It is Sunday morning. Linda and I went up to the ashram at 4 am to see what might be happening in the celebration of the 129th birthday or Jayatri of Ramana. There were a lot of people there and some ceremonies and some music seemingly left over from the festivities of the night before which was full moon night – a monthly celebration where thousands of people walk around the mountain Arunachala which is celebrated as a manifestation of Siva under his aspect of fire. The temple we are going to visit tomorrow at Chidambaram is dedicated to Siva as lord of the dance or Nataraja. We performed the circumnambulation or pradashka earlier in the day starting at 6 am on the inner path, not on the noisy dirty streets. We were told that this inner path is dangerous (symbolism) but we found a very good guide. The president of the ashram actually came out to reassure us. The whole journey is 10 km (6 miles) and took about 4 hours with some stops at temples where priests were performing poojahs or ceremonies receiving grace from the deity. It was very nice to be on the side of the mountain as the sun came up with the clouds covering the top as Siva slept as Saran described it.
Backtracking :Kachipuram is renowned as one of the monastic centeres presided over by one of the representatives of Shankara, a jadaguru. It is also famous for its silk saris many of which are interwoven with gold and silver and are thereby quite heavy. About 80% of the population of Kanchi (200,000) and its surrounding region, depend on handweaving for a living workin in homes and coops. Some of these workers are school age children and become bound to the loom owners through a system of loans to the families. There is an organization called RIDE – Rural Institute for Development Education which is mandated to free children from these circumstances and to place them in their own transition schools for 6 to 12 months. There are many ways that RIDE can provide access to volunteer work in teaching, training councelling. They also have a program where they will provide accommodation and food and show you over their programs for a fee. Another way they assist is to put tourist silk buyers in touch with sellers who support child free labour.
Backtracking 2: Mahabalipuram was hit quite hard by the tsunami of some 4 years ago. Following this it has become quite a center of orphanages but it was pointed out to me that many of the fund raising that takes place for the children is really exploiting them for their begging potential when they should be in school or playing.One has to do ones research if you want to help and not run the risk of contributing to a corrupt exploitative organization. From a slightly different point of view while we were going around the mountain yesterday we were approached by a couple of older ladies who adopted the most plaintive expressions as they held out their hands for some little offering. Saran warned us that their expensive nose piercings indicated that the were in fact rich. He managed to get from them that they owned the land we we were on and that they had sons overseas who sent them money. He gave them 1 Rupee as humiliation (about ½ cent).
I am going to try posting pictures again and will try to add captions if it works.
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