Puri

Every time we visit Bhubaneswar, we also visit the town of Puri. Puri is famous for its temple, the Juggernath temple, from which every year a giant statue of the God Juggernath is taken on a journey. The trip from Bhubaneswar to Puri is about an hour, so we normally leave early in the morning so that we can come back as early as possible, for Puri becomes extremely hot in the afternoon.
The first temple we visited in Puri was that of a Goddess, who supposedly granted whatever you asked of her, providing that you promised to give her something in return. My dad said that whatever he had asked for he had received, but I was not too sure that it was completely because of the Goddess. Leaving reason and logic behind, I too asked for something and promised something in return. The interesting thing about this goddess is that she is the only goddess in which fish can be given too. In most Indian temples, fruit and milk is given to the Gods as food; in this temple, fish was allowed.
After dropping my aunt and grandmother off at our ancestral house (which has been in our family for five generations), we went to Juggernath temple. The car was only allowed up till a certain point, after which we took a rickshaw to the temple. Shoes weren’t allowed in the temple, so after leaving them outside and washing our feet, we went inside the temple. This is one of the few temples in which only Hindus are allowed inside; in fact, one of India’s Prime Ministers, Indira Gandhi, was not allowed inside the temple because she wasn’t Hindu. Inside the temple are a series of mini temples, each devoted to a specific God or Goddess. We visited almost all of them, almost running across the scorching marble from temple to temple. After visiting the smaller temples, we went to see Juggernath. The doors (which Juggernath is kept behind) were closed, as this was the time in the festival in which Juggernath was “sick”. The story behind this is that all Gods come to earth, and so as part of Juggernath’s mortal life, he also falls sick, which is indicated by this time in the celebration (he also gets married and takes a vacation before he finally returns to his resting spot in the temple). After leaving the temple, we went to one of the restaurants that we also always go to in Puri (more because it has air-conditioning than because of the quality of food available). While walking, many, many of the beggars in Puri came and asked us for money. In fact, the amount of poverty in Puri seemed to be exponentially higher than that of any other city I had visited. And it wasn’t just this time that I had noticed; every time we visited, the poverty in Puri seemed to be increasing. There are a few possible reasons for this. Perhaps this was because of the fact that Puri itself hasn’t changed very much. I asked my dad if Puri looked any different from the time when he used to come during his summer vacations and he promptly responded that nothing had changed. With no change coming into the city, the opportunities for the newer generations are extremely limited. Most sons of priests know that they are going to be priests, so they don’t go to school and receive an education; instead they sit around all day, asking for money so that they can spend it on whatever they want. However, many of the beggars were women. For that there is another explanation. Many times if the husband dies, the family casts out the wife so that they get the land that the husband had. They can’t simply throw her out of the house in their own city, as then their reputation would be tarnished, so they bring the widows to Puri and then leave them there, where they are exploited and have no way of bettering their situation. Puri desperately needs some change, but as it is a religious city, change will be slowly accepted.
Anyway, after lunch we visited our ancestral house to rest before we visited my grandfather’s sister. The house itself has not changed at all. Ever since I can remember, the house has looked the same, with the sole exception that there used to be a cow that used to live in the house, but now is on the streets. I wasn’t in the mood to rest, so I began to flip through some old wedding albums. I came to my parents’ wedding album, which I had never seen before. It was interesting to see how everyone looked-not only my parents but other relatives. Soon everyone was flipping through the albums, reminiscing about weddings and the time when this happened or the time when that happened.
Going to my grandfather’s sister’s house was last on the agenda, and we only stayed for an hour. I had a little bit of fun playing caram with my cousin. The caretaker and his wife came to join us in playing caram, and for the hour that followed, the conversation was reduced to smiles and some broken Hindi (the caretaker’s wife fortunately spoke Hindi and Oriya, so she became our translator). This caused for some awkward moments, but it was still a fun experience, and by the end of the game, we were smiling and laughing as though they were my relatives who I had known for years. My hope is that after my grandfather’s sister dies, they get the house, as the caretaker’s family has been taking care of my grandfather’s family for years.
That culminated the trip to Puri. On the way back we passed by the Konark Beach, a beach we normally visit but this time decided not to. Hopefully Puri has changed by the time I next visit the town, but I’m not hopeful.

My Big Fat Indian Wedding-Bhubaneswar, Orissa

After staying in New Delhi for a week, our plan was to stay for two weeks with my dad’s mother in the small city of Bhubaneswar, in Orissa. Bhubaneswar is the capital of the eastern state of Orissa. The language spoken is Oriya, although my dad and his family speak Bengali (since they are from the state of West Bengal, where Bengali is the local language).
The day we reached, we had a wedding to attend. After dressing up in traditional Indian clothes, we departed for the guest house, where we would stay for an hour, chit-chatting with all the relatives. The only problem with that was that although I could understand Bengali, I could not speak a word of it. So after doing pranam to all the elders in the family (essentially touching the feet of the elders as a sign of respect) and nodding when everyone said, “Wow, she’s grown so tall,” the cultural barrier got in the way of any “chit-chatting” that I could have done. After watching the England-Germany game for an hour, we were told that it was time to go to the place where the wedding would take place. The place was only a kilometer away, but as is traditional in Bengali weddings, we were to walk the one kilometer, dancing to the music that was emitted from the truck that was leading the way.
In theory, we should have all been dancing. In reality, it was too hot and humid to dance, but more importantly, the songs were either Bengali songs or old Hindi songs that were slightly difficult to dance for. After spending a good 45 minutes dancing/walking, we finally arrived at the wedding place, where we went to visit the bride. She was wearing the typical Indian wedding dress- a red sari with lots of gold ornaments- and was sitting in a room by herself. Everyone from the boy’s side of the family insisted on taking a picture with her, such that by the end of the night, she must have taken at least one hundred pictures.
Truth be told, I felt a little sorry for the bride. She was surrounded by people she met for the first time, who insisted on taking pictures with her and touching all the gold ornaments that she was wearing. Albeit the fact that she was sitting in an air-conditioned room, the room was not very cold, and she was decked in at least two kilograms of gold, meaning that she was probably feeling hotter than we were. Anyway, after taking pictures with the bride, we left to eat dinner. This was when things became a bit strange. Apparently, tradition dictated that the girl’s family members were not allowed to see the groom, meaning that they had already eaten and left by the time the boy’s family members had arrived. I thought that marriages were a time when both sides of the families met each other, but clearly this was not the case. In addition, while we were eating, the marriage was going on. So while everyone was getting concentrating on the food, the bride and groom were preparing to join their lives together. The actual wedding ceremony was to last for four hours, from 10 pm to 2 am, but most people left around 12 am, meaning that most people didn’t see the actual wedding ceremony take place. They just ate food and left. This wedding seemed to be more a place to eat good food (although our driver later informed us that the food was pretty terrible considering the normal marriage standard of food) with a wedding thrown in on the side.