Shabbat in gardens, Ram

Shabbat in gardens, Ram Temples, Palaces and Quarries..

Saturday I spent the day seeing Bangalore with a close friend of my brother-in-law, Scott. Charlie does leadership training…though he loves to tell everyone how he dubbed the 1979 film Jesus into 75 Indian dialects. He took me to a famous botanical garden..which happened to be having a fabulous flower show…we walked in short sleeves for 2+ hours. The colors were wonderful and given the winter fury back home it was truly grand.

Then to the famous Ram Hindu Temple…wild monkeys…a very large stone carved ram, Hindu priests offering me prayers-poojah. I thanked them…still had to push their hands away from my forehead. Walking down back to the car, I noticed several NEW cars and a Hindu priest with a fire bowl….that’s right, the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof blessing Motel’s new sewing machine…and these Hindu priests blessing cars and trucks! Take the coconut throw it on the ground..smashing it, place a small fruit under each of the four wheels, flowers on the hood..take your hands waving them through the fire bowl and then cover your face. Oh and take off your shoes, placing them under the car…then drive the car over the fruit and your shoes. Then place an offering on the plate for the priest…then watch the monkeys eat the sacrifice.

Then to one of the three palaces of the last King/Maharajah of Meysore who died in 1974. His son still lives in the palaces…has five very nice cars…but no title. The palace was built in 1860 with lots of European details…okay, I saw it.

My host and his wife wanted to eat at a Pizza Hut…okay, I was treating. I had an Indian pizza not much different. But the people in this new upscale restaurant were all young upper middle class professional Indians…interchangeable with any suburban group in America…dressed the same…kids dressed like little Americans..not sure how I felt about it until about 45 minutes later.

Charlie ended my quick tour by taking me to a very large granite quarry at the edge of town. I was not sure why I needed to see this…until I got there. I stood at the edge and looked down into a pit where human beings…mostly women and children were hitting the large granite boulders with hammers, steel rods and other rocks. Women, many of them Banjara women from Andhra Pradesh were throwing the smaller broken rocks into a trailer that would later be pulled by a tracker. When the trailer is filled the family gets 500 RS, a bit more than $10 for their work. These are bonded servants…slaves, rural peoples who caught in the draught of the last year..borrowed money they could not pay back. The loan was then sold plus interest to the quarry owner who takes the family as workers with additional threats I am told. They are given coconut-thatched huts, 3 X 6 feet for the entire family. I saw several and the gates with locks that prevent them from leaving…though there really is nowhere to go. I stood and watched a little girl play with an empty plastic bottle…the sun was very hot…no safety measures. Charlie told me that many get very sick long before the debt is paid…their hands cut and hardened…limbs damaged even severed. I found myself in disbelief..looking away..trying not to think about the foolish assumption that slavery is over. I remembered that Deut 5, a repetition of the 10 commandments, teaches that Shabbat reminds us of having been slaves and freed. It was Shabbat afternoon in Bangalore…I had walked through gardens, palaces and temples, I was free to even eat at a Pizza Hut with people from an India that was radically different than the one at the bottom of the quarry, it was very difficult to rejoice in my Shabbat.