„Whenever people talk about friendship, they always bring up Karna and Duryodhana’s names. For they had a strong bond of friendship between them.” Or so it says in the Mahabharata. Vedavyasa, the great sage dictated the Mahabharata, which includes the Bhagavadgita, to Ganesha, the elephant god, in order to teach young and old the path of righteousness, knowledge, justice, and love.
The professor traveling with us for our month long journey through southern India, would always read to us excerpts from the Mahabharata, the Panchatantra, and the Ramayana on long bus trips. Not just entertaining, but a window into the Hindu religion itself.
But it wasn’t just history or religion that I learned about in India.
I was fascinated by the mixture of cultures that peacefully make up this subcontinent. Interesting that English is the assistant language in this multi-lingual country. The TV game show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, for example, featured conversations in Hindi, but the game questions were in English.
Yes, I try to watch as much local television as I can when I am traveling. The most fun here, of course, were the Bollywood movies.
Oh, and one thing I though was worth mentioning…after noticing the people who were washing their clothes in the river and drying them by laying them on the grass, one of the hotels I stayed at, sent our laundry “out” to be done. Yes, it came back clean, but there was a bit of grass on some of the items !!!
Are you a tourist? Have you become real?