I'm The Lord Jagannath, Bitch

On my rapid advance northwards I entered the state of Orissa, and just in time. Shortly after I boarded a train out of the city, Hyderabad erupted into religious riots and federal troops have been sent in to impose a curfew and maintain order. Nobody seems to be quite sure why it started, but the current theory is that it was closely linked to large numbers of young men coming out of that afternoon's Secondary School Certificate exams at the same time as a quarrel erupted between Hindus and Muslims concerning...*sigh* the color of flags to be flown on the streets this Tuesday. When I passed through, the old city was bedecked in countless little strings of predictably green Muslim banners, but the Hindus felt entitled to replace them all with saffron banners to celebrate Hanuman's birthday. Fortunately, I am now in Kolkata, where all we have to worry about is a bizarre scandal involving a half-assed government coverup concerning the ownership of a property where five dozen people just died in a fire. Let's just talk about Orissa.

Orissa is not part of South India but isn't really quite part of North India either. People refer to it as part of "the East", which is typically defined as also including the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, and West Bengal. One notices immediately upon looking at a map that these states do not cover the entire eastern half of India, and in fact don't even include any of India's seven easternmost states. Like all cultural regions, it is somewhat arbitrarily defined, and when you say 'East India', what you really mean is 'the shitty parts'. This region is almost entirely an expanse of impoverished rural districts populated by "Tribals" (to use the local term). The whole region suffers from a lack of infrastructure, shamefully incompetent governance, and (unsurprisingly) is the center of India's Naxal rebels.

The Naxals are a weak and loosely organized, yet very tenacious movement of Maoist guerillas who openly or secretly control large swaths of the countryside and its villages. As I write this, the conflict is escalating as the Naxals react to the hardline rhetoric many of the political parties have been adopting. The government is hellbent on capturing the bands responsible for last week's railway attacks and is allegedly pursuing small groups including key rebel leaders through the forests of Bengal, Jharkhand, and Orissa. There isn't a whole lot of controversy about this fight. The human rights activists are pleading not to blow it into a full-scale war say that the Naxals are mostly humble, aggrieved peasants and don't pose any real menace to the state, but this appeal is falling on mostly deaf ears. I for one generally agree with them, but there has been a troubling rise in the execution of "government informants". War, however, is a Bad Thing, and the ill-conceived and half-assedly concealed government offensive is bound to only drive the rebels to greater acts of violence.

I finally alighted from my miserable train in the capital city of Bhubaneshwar to find that once again I had narrowly avoided chaos, but this time it was chaos I would have liked to be there for. The previous day, all of the city's autorickshaw drivers went on strike protesting... *ssssiiiiiggghhhhh again* the proposed establishment of a city bus network. They claimed, correctly, that having buses would hurt their business and suggested the very reasonable compromise of having buses routed only to places that nobody wants to go. The city's response seems to have been "Fuck your business", as the whole point of getting buses was to spare people the expense of hiring rickshaws in the first place. I would have liked to have been there, because by all reports if anyone pulled up to me on the street and hassled me for business, the rest of the rickshaw drivers would have flipped his tuk-tuk and beaten him with shoes for trying to break the strike.

As it turned out, the strike was now over and everyone was free to pester me, drawing up alongside and shouting "Sir, sit here! Sight seen tour! Bhubaneshwar city of temples! More than 500 temples!" I raised an eyebrow at this. "500 huh? Which is the good one?" "....there are many temples..." "Yeah, that's what I thought. Take me to the bus stand."

When I got where I actually wanted to be, the holy city of Puri, I was pleased to hear that there was only one temple anyone cares about, which meant it should at least be interesting. Puri is the eastern of the cardinal direction temples in India. In the middle of the old town some distance from the beach is the temple of Lord Jagannath, perhaps the world's most silly-looking god. Jagannath is now considered a form of Vishnu as "Lord of the Universe". The Hindu religion all too readily reveals the fact that it just absorbs other cults' gods as a matter of convenience and calls them aspects of the gods the mainstream already likes. While the religious art in general adheres to pretty rigid iconography that keeps Vishnu and his like looking more or less the same everywhere you go, they can't do anything about the appearance of the ancient idols from weird pre-Brahmanical subsumed religions. Somehow nobody seems to mind that when Vishnu assumes the form of Lord of the Universe, he becomes a black-faced, goggle-eyed midget with no legs and little silly hands without any arms. Jagannath bears an uncanny resemblance to a South Park character, suggesting particularly a plotline where Cartman would infiltrate a minstrel show. For once I gladly bought up some of the religious kitsch on sale outside the temple and am now the proud owner of several Lord Jagannath commemorative plastic plates.

Puri is best known for its massive cart-pulling festival in which millions of people come to see some very large carts be pulled. In fact, the English word "Juggernaut" derives from these Jagannath carts and English mens' astonishment at crazed Hindus throwing themselves under the wheels of the unstoppable carts believing they'll go straight to heaven. While I was glad to not be here at the same time as a few million Indians and anything slightly dangerous, I must say Puri was a touch boring without the risk of being bulldozed by a giant cart transporting an Alabama slaveholder's cartoon depiction of a black midget.

The one thing that enlivened my stroll in the temple area was running into a strange fellow named Ajit. He said to me "Ajit means 'unconquered'...but what is the true meaning?" I had to confess I did not know. He then informed me that my name (which he somehow took to be something not even remotely similar to my name) meant "like breathing, like air." "Hare Krishna Hare Ram Hai Vishnu Hai Shiv" he said, touching me on the shoulder and adding "I am a religious leader." Oh, good.

"Tell me, what is your feeling?" He asked. I couldn't stop myself.
"I don't know. I feel something...like the Truth is there, but I cannot know it fully..."
"YES! INDEED! Please sit! Tell me, your belief, you believe in the Jeezoo?"
".....No...."
"Ahhh, no, no! The Jeezoo Christ!"
"No."
"But you are Chreeshian?"
"No."
"A Mussalman?"
"No."
"But you know the Jeezoo?"
"Yes."
"The Jeezoo he is the one religion like the Krishna like Buddhi...
"All people know that the God is Truth. They think they have many religion but ha! They worship same God!"
"Yes! Yes!"
"And all religions share one great truth..."
"Come, come with me. I can show you the Truth."
"I know the Truth."
Eyes squinting..."And what Truth is this?"
"They're all the same shit."
".......Ok fine, you are not wanting Truth, young man."
"Nope."
"Maybe you are wanting....things?"
"Oh THINGS, please continue."
"You wanting....mountain grass?" wink, wink.
"But I cannot carry enough grass for my garden!"
"No, mountain grass...mari....oh. No want. You leave now."

I was thus made a persona non grata in the one religious order that could have shown me the Universal Truth, which is really what I was trying to accomplish. I also became a persona non grata at my hotel, where my attempts to weasel out of extra fees by leaning on my established friendliness with the cute manager girl led the rest of the staff to frenziedly report by walkie-talkie that I was hitting on the owner's daughter.

You win some, you lose some.

Except I got her number. GFB never lose some.