Vellaikkaari: i [heart] aravanis.

The Chittrai festival finally wound up yesterday morning as Alagar began to make his way back up to his temple on the mountain, about 15 km away. I got up at 3:30 AM and got ready because I thought we were supposed to leave at 4 AM in order to make it to Tallakulam in time to get darshan. Of course we didn't leave until 5 AM, reminding me that I've got to stop thinking in American time. Because we left late, we basically had to run around Tallakulam, asking people where God was. We made it just in time and got great darshan right up close. This part of the festival was known as puuppalakku or "flower palanquin," which Alagar is carried around on. The priests throw blessed flowers from the palanquin to a lucky few devotees. As Alagar approached, some people in the huge crowd offered up small steel tumblers filled with sugar, on top of which a camphor flame was burning. After Alagar passed by, some people passed out the sugar to us as prasad. There was a rush among the people when Alagar got close, and it's something you really have to experience to appreciate. According to my friends, this was my opportunity to ask God for my research to go along swimmingly, and to have my wish granted, but I was too busy watching the people praying to Alagar to think about my own wishes. Hopefully I'll get some merit for being there, though.

Today it was back to our baser needs and desires, as we made our way to the cinema to watch Spiderman 3, dubbed in Tamil of course. If you read my blog on the misadventure that was watching "300" in a Madurai theatre you can understand my hesitation about going to another American (local translation: porn) movie. I actually did some research on the internet to see if there were any sex scenes, or other scenes that might make the male audience go into a state of hysterical excitement, but it seemed that the Spider-Man 3 would be pretty tame even for local tastes.

When we sat down in the theatre, we were happy to see that several women had showed up with families to watch the movie, though the audience was still about 95% young males. And as such, the audience did not disappoint as far as crazy movie-watching antics go. Firstly, it was total chaos getting everyone to find a seat. It was 30 minutes into the movie before people managed to get themselves seated in a chair. Ever seat in the theatre was eventually taken. People wanted to see this movie so badly that handicapped individuals were being carried in on people's backs. During the entire movie people were whistling at ear-splitting volumes, not surprisingly when there was any kissing or clothing on women that could be construed here as revealing. Some front-bencher had one of those red-laser lights which he used to point out any breasts on-screen for the benefit of visually impaired individuals in the audience. It was interesting to note the uproar among the young men during certain scenes. In any scene in which masculinity appeared threatened, such as when Peter Parker cries when Mary Jane dumps him on the bridge, the entire audience burst into an uproar of heckles. Not surprisingly, everyone started to get up and leave 5 minutes before the movie was over which was frustrating to me because everyone was standing and preventing me from getting my 40 rupees worth. I have never quite understood how people here can sit still for 3 1/2 hours to watch a movie, only to leave 5 minutes before it's over. I did, however, particularly enjoy the first 5 minutes of the movie when everyone burst into applause after Mary Jane sang a song on stage. People seemed pretty happy to see a song sequence in an American movie.

A friend of mine had a lot of questions about American culture based on this movie. Firstly, when Peter Parker puts the engagement ring in the glass she asked me what "champagne" was. Then she asked me if I had tasted it and was pretty shocked to learn that I have consumed alcohol in my life. If you aren't already familiar with this taboo, women here aren't "supposed" to consume alcohol, and if they do they are considered really bad. Furthermore, drinking in general, even for men, is considered degenerate. (Even though recent data show that 250 million people in this country regularly pound whisky and 1/4 of those are women!) She also noted that America is "very dark." I think she got this impression because a lot of the scenes were filmed at night. I sort of got frustrated at this question. I told her that the sun shines in the U.S. just as well as in India, to which she replied, "Really?" I bring this up not to make my friend look stupid, because she is incredibly intelligent. But I tell you this just to highlight how vast the gulf between Americans and Indians sometimes seems. It's sometimes very hard to communicate the realities of one's life back at home to people here. The difference between India and the U.S. appears quite literally to be the difference between night and day, as far as my friend is concerned. It's hard to explain that what people are seeing in a movie simply isn't true, just as it is incredibly difficult to get backward notions about India out of the heads of most Americans.

Tonight at 8:00 PM I dared to go to the ironing man's shed to try to pick up my clothes. 8:00 is supposedly a perfectly legitimate time to be outside. In fact, people encouraged me here that I could be outside as late as 10 PM without problems. The fact is, however, that herds of young men loiter around the Ambedkar statue next to the ironing man's shed. And they simply cannot resist harassing me, night or day. Today I just completely ignored it because I am so very tired of it all. I am sick of feeling intimidated any time I have business on the main road. These youths didn't really do anything bad, but it's really frustrating to always be singled out and targetted with these absolutely infantile and childish tactics. One gets the feeling of wanting to prove to them that you can speak Tamil, to put them in their place, but there is also the feeling of absolute exhaustion which results in one just remaining silent. As I was walking past I really wanted to pelt them with stones, but here comes this woman walking down the road with her arm around this man's shoulders and she scolds them for me. I really just wanted to go and hug this woman. Finally, someone standing up for me in this place! But then I realized, wait a minute! This woman has a pretty deep voice. This woman has her ARM AROUND A MAN! Impossible! You see, this woman was really a man. An aravani. Aravanis are a community of men who dress as women. Some of them are castrated or have sex change operations. Some of them are prostitutes, and I think this one had just landed herself a customer. She was pretty much my hero of the evening. Indeed, the month. Maybe the year. Looks like aravanis, who are themselves sort of living at the fringes, are the only folks around who will stand up for the white girl.

Besides aravanis, I also majorly heart Vijaykanth and Kalaignar right now. Vijaykanth is a famous actor turned politician whose party won in the constituency of Meenambalpuram. As I mentioned before this area doesn't have a proper road. In fact, it's the worst "road" I have ever seen in Madurai. The government has been promising a new road for years but it's never materialized. Flash forward to Vijaykanth and now he has got Karunanidhi (Tamil Nadu's Chief Minister, known as Kalaignar or "the Artist" for being a famous cinema script writer) to see to it that a road is finally put in here. A couple of months ago they had put in new manholes, the first step before laying the road, but these became completely destroyed in a matter of weeks. As a result, there were huge gaping holes in the middle of the road several feet deep. A few days ago they put a bunch of tree branches down in those holes and the local goats were feeding on them. I figured that nothing was ever going to happen. But sure enough, yesterday the bulldozers started rolling! Looks like we are going to have a road running out to Meenambalpuram. And Tamilarasi told me it might even last six months before it's destroyed!