I’m back from India. It was a long trip. Headwinds made the flights longer on the way back. It was 30 hours of travelling. The layover in London was 5 hours. The layover in DC was simply customs and sprinting to the next plane. The flight from London to DC was marked by sharp contrast.

Sitting next to me were an Indian man and his wife who were travelling to America to visit their son who works for Ameritrade. It appeared to be their first time flying. I spent an hour and a half helping them with their immigration forms. He was very proud that his son was working in America.

Across the aisle were two British girls who thought the best thing to pass the time of an 8-hour flight was to get drunk…so obviously drunk that the flight attendant started refusing them alcohol. The girls found it quite funny when they tried to get it from another attendant, a sure sign of inebriation. They recovered a bit as the flight attendants suggested they get some sleep to sober up lest immigration deny them entrance to the country.

There are many poor people in India. Unlike America, the majority of those living on the streets are homeless purely due to finances. It’s not difficult to find someone begging for money. Beggars will even come up and tap on car windows sometimes. Giving out cash to those who beg is never straightforward no matter where you are.

I would like to share with you what I saw one day while on my way to work. I saw an elderly woman crawling face up along the sidewalk. In order to move along she would scoot her bottom a few inches in the direction of her feet, reset her hands and feet, and then scoot a little farther. Every few scoots, she would pick up her purse, which would be by her arms, and put it by her feet. It took me a little bit to realize all that. She had a bandage on her right shin, which was probably preventing her from walking normally. She was dressed in a faded sari (putting on a sari is a difficult task). She was not begging. Wherever she was headed it was not close. There were no possible destinations for hundreds of feet. What I respect about this woman is that despite all of this she had dignity. I rather doubt I could equal her fortitude in similar circumstances.

I prodded him further and I’m pretty sure he isn’t putting me on. There’s actually a crematorium down the road. Apparently it results in quite a bit of smoke.

I called Dr. Joy David, a leader of the church, got the address, ascertained that church was from 9-12:30, and that the church hall was located on the second floor of the doctor’s residence. A couple of co-workers kindly wrote a map to the church in both Tamil and English so that both my driver and I could understand. On Sunday I left at 8:10 to be sure that traffic would not hinder my being on time. I arrived at 8:27, a little earlier than I had hoped or expected. I was greeted by Mrs. Joy David, who welcomed me in and also let me know that church wouldn’t start until 9:30 (I must have gotten it wrong over the phone). I am glad I learned to drink tea before I came to India so that I was able to accept Mrs David’s offer. Her tea was the best I have ever had.

I waited about 40 minutes while people trickled in. It was then that Raju Abraham, who was leading the church in the doctor’s absence, showed up. Everyone was glad to have me there, as most other churches I have attended. At this one, however, I was asked to speak. Raju gave me a variety of options.

Both our churches observe a remembrance service weekly where hymns are sung, people lead prayer, and thoughts remembering our Lord Jesus are shared. At the end of the service communion is taken. I tried to express that it was rather uncommon for me to speak at my own church, even during the open forum of the remembrance service, and that perhaps it was because I was overly shy. This by no means dissuaded Raju’s kind encouragement. Raju offered for me to speak for 10 or 15 minutes before breaking of bread, and I reluctantly agreed. I was concerned that I was going to embarrass myself. However, I decided that if I was going to embarrass myself, halfway around the world seemed like a good location for it.

Breaking of bread in my church is intermingled with prayer, singing, and sharing all at the leading of men. The women are silent during services except for the singing (Women’s roles are a very hot topic in my church, with members of both genders on either side of a given argument). At the church I was visiting, men and women sat separately. Most everyone sits on the floor including the musicians. Singing is chosen and directed by a song leader. Prayer, singing, and speaking follow a set order rather than being intermingled as they are at home. The prayer section includes prayer led by both men and women. The speaking is done by just one designated person. This week that person was me.

I had prepared a little while I was waiting for the service to start. I was also given a translator since my american accent may have been difficult for the audience to understand. I thought I did pretty badly. My remarks took about half the 15 minutes allowed. When I returned to my seat I was comforted by 1 Corinthians 1:27 “but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong“

My church in America is one of the few denominations which encourages women to wear headcoverings to church services, and is widely debated. I point out the practice because all the women in this church wore head coverings and the majority of them simply used the end of their sari that drapes off their shoulder to cover their head.
I would also like to point out that remembrance service at this new church was entirely centered on worship, which is appropriate. My home church is not as centered on worship and often focuses on ourselves as we relate to Jesus rather than Jesus himself.

After the remembrance service was a time of teaching. My translator was the speaker for this week. Not much differred in this portion from my regular church. The topic was discipleship, and I enjoyed the message, which was followed by a short break of about five minutes wherein the children where dismissed to a separate service. My home church has a break of thirty minutes.

The next session was a time of community prayer. Requests were shared by everyone (both men and women). My prayer requests were solicited, so I asked for a safe return to my family. We then broke into small groups, and I was paired with my translator yet again, who is a professor at a local college. He kindly explained all the requests to me and gave me a couple of general ones that I could easily pray for. After prayer we had a Bible quiz on Numbers (That’s a book of the Bible). It was an open Bible test, but even though I worked furiously, I only resulted in a score of about 75%. The winning score was a 96%. I kept the quiz and will be happy to share it upon request. This brought the morning’s organized services to an end.
At the end of the quiz I asked Raju if I could take his picture. He immediately turned it into a group shot:

When I went downstairs I asked for Mrs. Joy David’s picture, which also turned into a group shot:

Mrs. Joy David said that my driver had stopped by to say he would be a little late picking me up and to have lunch at the church, which I had previously tried to graciously turn down. I enjoyed a small lunch with them, and was soon on my way back to the Element K corporate apartment with my driver. Being at church was the most at home I had felt since coming to India.

Upon entering we went immediately into reptile city. Reptile city admission was half that of the overall park and my camera was coming so we again had to buy six tickets. The main feature was the snake pit where they hold live demonstrations of venom extraction. As you can see below, they also had a scorpion. I’m not sure if they take venom from scorpions, but the guy held it up so I could get a good shot.

Crocodile city has about 30 crocodile pits similar to the one below. Not all the pits are as full as the one below but many are.

The guys paid for me to have a picture taken while holding a baby crocodile. I would have tried to repay them if there was any chance in succeeding. From left to right: Neelakandan, Me, Bill, Sriraman, and Loganathan. No the crocodile didn’t have a name, but he does now.

After Crocodile Park we headed to Mahabalipuram. I recommend following the link in the previous sentence and reading the first three paragraphs (I will refrain from describing it here). We arrived ten minutes after closing so unfortunately we were unable to go inside the fencing. I’m actually glad as a ticket for myself is twenty-five times as much as for a native of India, and it would be impossible to convince them to let me pay it myself. Besides I think standing outside the fence scored better photographs due to the height.

We went to one of the other sculpture sites that was on the beach and had just three days earlier been made inaccessible with a high tide combined with previous damage from the Tsunami. On the beach were lots of people and lots of trash. I was happy to grab this snapshot though. On the left is Loganathan, and on the right is my co-workers’ team manager, Karthick.

After Mamallapuram, we went to dinner at a new restaurant that also had quite a bit of entertainment. A couple of guys in the group had their fortunes read by a man with a deck of cards and a parrot. First, the man will ask your name. Then, the parrot takes cards off of the deck one by one until it picks a card and takes it to the fortune teller. The fortune teller then pulls a picture out of the card and shows you. Lastly, he tells you your fortune out of his book. I assumed that there was a trick that the man used to indicate to the parrot when to pick the card out of the deck. All the cards looked different on the outside but were mildly abstract so Im guessing the man had memorized what pictures went with each card. When the group decided it was my turn the peer pressure combined with my curiosity of his trick led me to try.

When prompted I shared that my name was Benjamin. The man let the parrot out of its cage and the parrot immediately pecked at some grains outside his cage. The man quickly brushed them away so that the parrot would focus on his task. At this point I realized that the man had a small amount food in his hand. The parrot pulled the first card off the deck, looked at the man, and then dropped it. I was staring at the man’s hand once I saw where the parrot had looked. The parrot pulled and dropped the second card after a second glance. When the parrot pulled the third card, the man blatantly rotated his hand to lift up the food to the parrot. The card was delivered and the reward received. I was appalled (not that there was a trick, but that it was so obvious). Out of my card he pulled a picture of Jesus. At this point I was working very hard to stifle a laugh (not that I don’t follow Christ; it was just that the whole fortune was such a simple affair. So simple that if he lit his face from underneath with a flash light it would have made seem it less hoaky). He then read some fortunes such as: “You will make a major purchase soon”, “There will be a marriage in the family”, and my favorite was “You often travel to foreign countries”. This is my second time overseas. The last time was ten years ago.

The rest of the entertainment was quite spectacular: an 11-year old doing slack rope walking and dancing, live pottery making and some lovely baskets that I tried very hard to purchase myself for Jessica, but was thwarted by Neelakandan who paid for them instead.
Next up on Steinbox.com: Going to Church

Parthieban was very excited to meet me, very excited that I was an American, very excited that we were both Christian, and most excited of all that I wanted to take his picture.

His family is Hindu and he was introduced to the Christian faith by his uncle. He was kind enough to spell his name so that I could put it on my web site. Although a couple times I started walking away, he happily started walking with me. I was charmed by the simple joy that he held. He said that he lives near the beach. I asked if he was here for the tsunami. He said he was, but that it was only a few feet high (the epicenter of the tsunami was on the other side if India). He asked how the tsunami was in America. I told him we didn’t get it. He seemed a little dissappointed that we did not have that in common.

He enjoys cricket, as all Indian boys do. His favorite subjects are Science and English. He finds math confusing. I have no idea what his faith is really made of or what it is truly in. I hope that his faith is not just a matter of youth that will be choked by the weeds of society. My young friend parted ways with me after about fifteen minutes and I was a little sad to see him go.

This little girl was playing with a stack of newspapers.

This cow was near an intersection with a main road. I don’t really know why its horns are painted, I can only assume that it has aspirations of being a stoplight in its next life.

I call this one “open for business”

Tomorrow the guys I’m working with will be taking me to Mamallapuram and maybe some temples. I will be sure to have many pictures.

We walked to the elevator where we joined a security guard who was going down.

The elevator doors slid shut and with a couple creaks the elevator started down.

After a couple of seconds it eases to a stop, the doors crack open and…

everything goes dark

I see some light coming from the streetlights and into the foot-wide opening in the doors. I panic mildly. The security guard pushes the door open and he and the driver motion for me to get out of the elevator. I place my hand on the driver’s shoulder to make sure I don’t get lost in the darkness. We are not on the bottom floor. My elevator-mates and another security guard who must’ve pressed the button talk in Tamil. I hear shouts and cries from the pitch-black game room next to us that resembles a school lunchroom when the lights are turned off in a vain attempt to establish order.

(Power outages are quite common. So common that one occured at the end of the last paragraph and is still in effect. Thank the good Lord for laptop batteries or I would have lost this blog.

Power’s back! Much better. This fits in well as it is the next event in the story.)

After about a minute, the power came back on and the elevator was back in order, so we resumed our descent with the second security guard replacing the first. The driver and guard started saying the word “mistake” to me in a narrative fashion. It takes me a while, but I figure out the elevator call button must have been pressed by mistake. This was one of two rather fortunate coincidences, because otherwise we would have been trapped in the elevator, the second being my driver’s presence; I would have really panicked without him. But perhaps I should be seeing providence instead of coincidence.

When I got to work today, I find out that Sriraman, my coworker, actually got stuck in one of the elevators, likely in a blackout, later that evening.

Ben reports this is about the only touching you will see between husbands and wives in public…

and my favorite, what looks like the Indian version of stopping at Starbucks on your way to work…

also what ben calls the tiny temple…