Note: This post was written over a week ago, back when the Internet was still out at SEERI. Unfortunately, the internet cafe where we were making daily pilgrimages for some reason had a strange aversion to Google's Blogger site. Thankfully, however, this very day the internet has returned, and I can present to you this belated post.
I could easily spend this post regaling you all with yet another tale of a great weekend trip (to Kumily, another spot in the Western Ghat mountains), and tell you all about the amazing views, and the elephant ride (awesome). However, I’d rather spend a little time to talk about the crazy amount of Indian hospitality to which I’ve been treated this week.
The first experience was last Thursday, when I traveled on a little SEERI class field trip, as we jokingly called it. We woke up at 5 am and traveled to a place about 2 hours away to attend the ordination of one the students here, Mathew, aka Vinu, as a Qashisho (priest) in the Orthodox Syrian Church. This trip was made in our excellent SEERI van, which has amazing wall and ceiling carpeting, and which we have to hop out and push in neutral every time we need to start it. This undoubtedly caused some consternation in one town, when the van accidentally stalled out and died and several white guys hopped out to push it! A lot of Indians seem to expect every Westerner to drive a Mercedes or ride around in a luxury bus…certainly not a 1980s shag carpet van/bus that has to be pushed for the engine to start. Anyway, tangent complete: The van was great.
When we arrived at the church, I was told it would be a long service…boy, were they not kidding… In the Orthodox Syrian Church here, the ordination service lasts about 3 and a half hours, not including the preceding prayer service (which we arrived too late to attend). I think I could handle a 3.5 hour service in a language I understood, but this service was almost entirely in Malayalam, and we stood for at least 2 and a half hours of it…. By the end, I was definitely on my last leg, but I was encouraged by Fr. Vinu, who had to kneel almost the entire time! Anyway, at the end, Fr. Vinu was suited up in his priestly garb and served his first communion, and I felt like I was watching Batman or Ironman suit up… very cool, worth the wait.
After the service, we were served a fine meal by the church and headed back to Kottayam. Later, on Saturday, we traveled to Kumily (as I mentioned earlier) with the usual American crew: Shaun, myself, and Joshua, and were shown around by our generous and extremely hospitable fellow student Fr. Mobin, who was born and raised in Kumily. Mobin arranged everything. He drove us, arranged our elephant ride, and took us to scenic viewpoints that he knew. Once we got to Kumily, we were joined by his cousin Anoop for the rest of the day. Mobin took us to his parents’ house for lunch, where his parents fed us amazing homecooked food and let us explore the property. They live simply, and life isn’t easy, and in many ways it was like stepping back in time to an India that is rapidly disappearing. Mobin’s parents have 5 acres of land, on which they grow cardamom, pepper, and rice, among other things. A lot of what we ate came directly off the land, grown without fertilizers… very natural. We had fresh bananas recently picked from the tree, rice fresh from their rice paddy, and tapioca that we cut from the root of the plant ourselves. It was all quite Romantic, but life is hard for Mobin’s family. They’ve had to sell a lot of their property already, and it’s almost impossible for them to make any profit from farming due to increasing costs of labor. The future for this sort of life in Kerala seems dire.
Later, Mobin’s cousin Anoop took us to his house for dinner, where a power outage forced us to have a candlelight dinner! (Power outages are just an expected thing here in India). Despite the outage, the food was excellent, and Anoop’s parents were incredibly generous.
On Sunday, I had another encounter with Indian hospitality. I went with Joshua and Shaun to attend church at Puthupally (a big Syrian Orthodox church). After the service, we met one of Shaun’s old friends from the US, Sanish. Sanish was in India for his wedding (which was the next day, Monday), but he invited us all to his family’s home nonetheless. There, I enjoyed getting to know Sanish’s family, particularly the Americans. It was a blessed relief to be able to converse more freely with people and not have to worry about being understood. They were all very kind and friendly, and I stayed there for several hours and had lunch. And of course they invited me to the wedding the next day!
So that’s how I ended up spending my 4th of July at an Indian wedding! It was a beautiful service that I was able to follow using the English translation of the Malayalam order of worship that I got on my Kindle. It was also helpful that a good portion of the service was in English, for the benefit of all the young Indian-Americans that were in the congregation. Everyone was in their finest colorful silks, and I was even a little decked out Indian-style in my red juba! After the service, I was hearing American accents everywhere I turned, which was kind of strange after being here a month. I enjoyed meeting quite a few of the Americans there, and afterwards we went to a huge reception in the church’s banquet hall where we had even more great food and were greeted by the bride and groom. I was overwhelmed by the generosity they showed in inviting Joshua and myself, whom they had just met.
So, even though I didn’t have a burger or see any fireworks for the 4th of July, I think an Indian wedding to cap a week of the best sort of hospitality is about as good of a 4th that I could hope for!
