Sirens and Lights

Hi, everyone! Happy New Year! Just spent a refreshing 4 days in Devlali in Mahastra with my aunt, uncle and cousin and a few of their neighbors. We stayed at one of their bungalows and celebrated the new year with fireworks and temple visits and just relaxing. For those of you who have ever spent time with me in a city, you know how much i love weekend escapes like this one, so despite staying up way too late at night talking to my cousin and everyone else, I am feeling much more refreshed and ready to go off and start the research part of this trip to India (these past 2 weeks have mostly been planning the next two months and just getting used to being in India by spending tons of time with family). I’m starting to get used to being part of a family again instead of just doing things completely independently, so it’ll be a little sad to leave that, but I’m definitely ready to explore my own again. I’ve been missing that feeling of living only for yourself, you know? I don’t have a lot of time, as usual, so I’m just going to leave the updates at that.

I’ve been thinking religion a lot lately….especially since i’ve been going to tons of Jain temples and stuff… i went to go to this temple on Sunday that’s supposed to be one that every jain should go to….and i wasn’t allowed in because i wasn’t wearing pants or a sari (i was wearing a v. conservative knee length khaki skirt)…it’s stuff like this that really makes me realize that as much as I love religion and am completely convinced that having faith in something greater that us gives us the power to accomplish things we would otherwise have a hard time doing, organized relgion frustrates me because they involve broad rules that just make it impossible for someone to think about the more essential part of “being religious”– being as good a person as you can be and upholding the major values of the religion rather than the rather inane rules of someone else telling me what respect and reverence are. I’m reading Zadie Smith’s White Teeth right now, and the main character keeps referring to this quote, “When the heart is pure, all is pure” (it’s in french, so that’s my rough translation)….that is much more what religion should be.

Miss you all!!!!! Keep emailing! I put up a few new pictures under “Au Revoir” though none are post-haircut. I’ll put those up later. Talk to you all later…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2003 at 11:59 am and is filed under India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.