Kuantan/Thaipusam

Although I have been ignoring this maxim, I know in my heart that brevity is the soul of blogging.

Three exciting things happened this week.

1. I met my state coordinator from the Malaysian Ministry of Education, who is one of the kindest, most hospitable, and most generous people I've ever met. (And my family is pretty darn kind, hospitable, and generous, so I have high standards.) She's making us feel completely taken care of.

2. I also met the beach that will be my second home while I'm here. I didn't take any pictures, because I'll flood you with pictures later. Let's just say it was so beautiful that I almost cried. And y'all know I'm no crier.

3. I went to a Hindu festival called Thaipusam at the Batu Caves outside Kuala Lumpur. The 20 of us from Pahang were there for about 13 hours, which was exhausting, but also a great chance to see things very thoroughly. I won't try to explain what it's about, because I don't know enough about it to do so accurately and respectfully. Just read the Wikipedia article.

In addition to a pilgrimage site, the Batu Caves area also becomes something of a festival grounds during the holiday, with tons of Indian food and sweets and even carnival rides (in a section labeled "Euro Fun Park"). The atmosphere was certainly carnivalesque, as it was full of loud music, sari stands, aggressive vendors, and Bollywood DVD stalls.  There were millions of attendees, and I've never felt so crushed in a crowd before.

However, the somewhat wild atmosphere was coupled with a meaningful religious holiday. It was an odd experience to be an outsider at an event like this. The core of the experience for me was basically gawking at devotees dragging chariots with hooks stuck into the skin of their backs and watching as others had hooks attached to bells, fruit, or even coconuts put into or removed from their backs. Oh, and seeing skewers pierced through their mouths from one cheek to the other. People even carried their babies up the hundreds of steps to the caves suspended in cloths hung from long sugar cane stalks. As I understand from talking to a Hindu man handing out pamphlets condemning the showiness of Thaipusam, these parents had prayed for a child and vowed to do this walk if granted one. Supposedly, people work themselves up into a trance-like state so that they don't really feel the pain of all this.

It was easy for me to feel judgmental of other tourists who were getting all up in everyone's face to take pictures of the devotees, but I was also there as a picture-snapping voyeur (if a less aggressive one). Fittingly for someone who took pictures despite the urgings of my moral compass, most of my photos came out terribly.

The experience seemed very foreign to me, but it's not as if the concept of religious sacrifice is a foreign one. The very physical nature of it that was somewhat jarring, but I guess it's one way to seek a transcendent experience. This is a really simplistic and irreverent thing to say, but here goes: Maybe in doing something like this, you're at least really in the moment and really DOING something, rather than sitting bored and with a wandering mind in a pew. Oh, it also made me think about under what circumstances I can and cannot handle watching violence/physical pain. It didn't bother me much to watch this, but I hate violence in movies. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Ugh still too long. It's always easier for me to write more than to edit down to less. In future will edit more.