Hampi is an ancient city which used to be the centre of a Hindu empire about 500 years ago but was invaded by some conglomerate of damn Sultans or other who left it abandoned and vaguely ruined. Today it is a little laid back village/town which is a pilgrimage centre for Hindus and has the most spectacular temples and ruins dotted around a boulder-strewn countryside. It is stunning.
We arrived just in time to catch the end of the wedding season which is a 2 month period where a ton of weddings take place here, up to 20 a day, so it was inevitable we'd wrangle our way into one . The wedding procession we got caught up in involved 2 brothers marrying 2 younger girls. Leading the procession are the musicians dressed like some marching band. Mostly drummers, and one wildly self-absorbed fluter, they play intensely for ten minutes, walk about thirty feet getting their breath back and then kick off again. Following them was the lads of the wedding, drunken, shirts open, sweating profusely, dancing and yelling wildly (so far, so irish). The two bethrothed couples follow sheepishly along behind this crazed group of men who seem almost to be taunting the grooms with their bawdy man-on-man thrustings** over the nigh-on end of their bachelorhood. Finally behind the two couples come the women of the wedding with their collective reserve, giggling shyness in the younger ones and a fearsome dignity in the older ones. As the weddings are for pilgrims they often come from places where whities are quite rare and we found ourselves slightly eclipsing the married couples in our celebrity as we were dragged in to dance with the men. Starting out with a well structured two-step and moving smoothly into the chicken dance, I realised my sophisticated stylings would only be wasted on these sons of Vishnu and so, much to their delight, I started merely waving my arms around and yelping . They love that shit, those crazy bastards.
**
A quick note on men here. Homosexuality is still very much taboo in India. However there is a comfortable physical intimacy between guys here that does not exist at home. They drape over each other, arms around each others shoulders and waists, hands in each others pockets, they sprawl on each other if seated. They Hold Hands. You do not realise how intimate holding hands is until you see two guys walking by unselfconciously clasping hands and openly ogling passing girls. It is refreshing in some ways, this man on man affection, a change from the shuffling, throat clearing discomfort of a moment between Irish males, where every acknowledgement of good friendship is avoided as a potential Brokeback moment. I look forward to walking to football with you, Simon, hands clasped, swinging at our sides, the birds no doubt singing in the branches above us, me running a hand through whats left of your hair. Gone is the shame, no longer will our handheld walks have to be some dirty little secret. Aren't you glad?
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I am "In my country..."
About Me
The little things...
- Books that have new chapters instead of new paragraphs. Chapter 32, page 73.
- A hot dog is not a sausage.
- Vietnamese dubbing. All actors dubbed with the same bored woman's voice. Conversations between two people read like a shopping list.
- The little barbershops in every country. Someone should do a photo tour of the barbershops of the world.
- I am currently training myself to drink beer.
- Diarmuid may henceforth talk about himself in the third person.
- Every country I visit has the best sunsets and the most beautiful girls I've ever seen.
- Kangaroos can't go backwards.
- Mark Twayne is a genius. As is Donald Clarke.
- Bamboo trees are the best trees in the world ever.
- Ladyboys.
- The irishman I met who claims he carried out surgery on himself using a penknife to remove 4 little wriggling white worms from his own little white worm. Lovely.
- In Nepal its the year 2064. Where we're going we won't need roads.
- Sometimes walking along city streets I suspect someone is following me, a pickpocket maybe. I pause, pretending to window shop and let the suspicious character pass by, then I resume walking. It makes me feel like a spy.
- English Language Newspaper Reports - "Motor-cycle borne miscreants ", "Gave him a sound thrashing", "Caught in the wee hours"
- Car's reverse warning noises (like lorries have). Being serenaded with "Moonlight Sonata" by a reversing Punto.
- Dan Brown novels. The blurb on the back. "One of the samrtest (sic) writers around." Quite. May he burn in a hell of overused exclamation marks, italics and mysterious, beautiful scientists.
- There are 35 ambulances in Delhi for 14 million people.
- Powercuts randomly at anytime, worst at night as it switches off the fans and you wake up and have to peel yourself off the bed, the sheets wet with sweat.
- I have now got a facebook account cos I'm down with the youth of Britain. Bo.
- The Mango Tree Restaurant, where the dining experience is punctuated by the sounds of half eaten mangos thudding into the ground around you, having been thrown from the tree canopy by monkeys high above.
3 comments:
That sort of thing has been going on for ages here, it usually reserved for the scrummages and that dark warm place at the bottom of maul.
Speaking of which, I have video of the sadhu whipping his towel at a monkey in a very post-match-Blackrock-changing-room style.His technique is suspiciously good but he swears he's never heard of Briano or the Rogans.
Can we skip too? Or maybe frollick?
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