Some relative of the family is getting his janeu soon and the plan is to go to a village area some hours away to attend the function. I hear that about five hundred people and more than one full carload of Varanasi candy will attend.
I am speaking just a little Hindi and I started reading the Tulsidas Ramayan. It is entirely readable, but if I had no background at all it would be going more slowly.
I continue to think about establishing a commercial website doing middleman work here. My business model would be to take pictures of local goods and to describe local services, and then have an honest review of price and arrange for people to read exhaustive related materials which I compile. This would all be online, and I would be the only website in Varanasi doing anything like this. Nandan could handle fulfillment well and even manage workers to do this and I think we could both make a lot of money.
For my birthday yesterday Nandan took me to the Catholic church in Cannt. The custom here is to do religious things on one’s birthday (or any special day). I do not know the name but I will go again. It was built in 1993, making it the newest Catholic church that I have ever seen.
Rajan took me to some temples. I did not participate in the rituals but this was the first time I had been with a devoted practitioner and this was the first time I asked questions about the ceremonies. In short, he goes to a series of temples daily in a particular order and recites as quickly as possible with proper elocution a repetitive script. For different temples he has different rituals and words. As a variation he also presented his school’s admit card – his ID for upcoming yearly examinations – to most if not all of the murti (idols). His take on the religion is that gods like the rituals for the sake of the rituals; Nandan believes much less in this, and I wonder if he believes it at all.
At night Nandan and some of his friends – casual friends of mine through him – over and we had alcohol. They say that I am the first foreigner they have ever met who does not smoke cigarettes, eat bhang (marijuana), use alcohol, and the rest. I told them I do not drink but I did have the equivalent of less than three drinks on my birthday. Still I was tipsy enough, so perhaps I will remember this as about the fifth time in my life that I became wobbly from alcohol.
None of them had ever seen mixed drinks or wine outside television. They only knew how to buy whiskey and dilute it with water or buy beer. I explained to them what I new and made lemon vodka tonics for them. Smirnoff – made in India but with the branded label – sells for about $10 for 750mL. They have an interest in learning about mixed drinks and wine and I told them we could start having drinks, but my limit will be two and usually I will only have one. They all want 3-5 drinks, which is enough to make them happy for a while then drop them out of meaningful conversation. I like to have drinks with people and I like talking to them, plus I think they could do with interaction with someone who drinks for reasons other than to induce drunkeness. The kids are middle class so rotating the bill to all partakers will not be a problem, which is another perk of associating with Nandan instead of people that I randomly meet.