Goan to the chapel
Sorry -- couldn't resist.
I do feel a bit as though all I've seen in Goa is churches, though. There are certainly a lot of them. There were in Cochin, too, but they were neither as big nor as universal: my last morning there, for example, I visited a synagogue instead.
It was a lovely little building, 17th-century, I think, with a very ornate blue and white patterned tile floor. I also went to a Jewish cemetary a short distance away; it's officially closed to tourists, but I think the guard uses that to his advantage to augment his salary -- probably to outsrip it entirely -- by letting in anyone willing to bribe him heavily enough. In my case, this meant 20 rps, or about 46 cents. 
The tombs were all raised, which isn't something I'm used to seeing in a Jewish graveyard, but presumably the water table is high.
There were no burials more recent than the early 20th century, and most of them looked to be much earlier -- although since the tombstones were entirely in Hebrew, I couldn't be sure. Very few tombs -- only one or two -- had stones placed on top of them, which would have indicated a visitor.
There are only a few Jews left in Cochin -- most of them moved to Israel after 1948 -- but the whole area is still known as "Jew Town," and the main drag is Jew Town Road. It felt a little funny being in the temple and watching all sorts of tourists walking around and snapping photos, asking questions that indicated they clearly knew nothing about judaism. 'Tis but fair payback for my visit to a Jain temple in Delhi, I suppose.
Or my activity of yesterday evening: I went to Friday night mass at the little church up the road from my hotel. I did ask if it was all right if a stranger attended, and the woman I spoke to said of course: "there are no strangers with God. We are all family." The service was in Konkani, so I think I was forgiven for appearing rather clueless about what to do when. Konkani is written with Roman characters, thankfully, so I was able to follow along with the hymns after the first verse.
After church, I did have, as promised, Goan food for dinner. I tried prawns balchao (I think) -- and it was, indeed, spicy. Too spicy for me to eat without lots of bread: I picked out the prawns (eating them, not discarding them!), then dipped chunks of bread in the sauce, allowing some time between each bite for my mouth to cool off. I was only able to make it about halfway through, although that was as much through feeling full as it was through being disabled by the heat. I have no idea what the dish was made of: the sauce was red, but more a dried-pepper colour than a tomato one, and I'm pretty sure it had shrimp ground up it it. I also had wine, for my first time in India; this was kind of a mistake, as it was pretty bad wine, and a 250 ml. bottle cost me two and a half times what I paid for the main course.
No dogs to feed the leftovers to -- which is probably lucky for the dogs. I liked it, but I'm not so sure they would have.
This morning, I hopped in a cab and travelled out to Old Goa, the capital of the Portuguese colony here in the 16th and 17th centuries. Now, it's an odd cross between a small town, an archeological site, and a tourist trap.
The tourist trap part of it is, fortunately, rather small: mostly a handful of very insistent men trying to sell postcards and devotional candles outside of the major monument, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, where St. Francis Xavier is buried. Busloads of Christian tourists come to see the tomb, which is ornate, but didn't catch my eye especially. Skipping the sound and light show on the life of Jesus (thus saving 10 rps), I headed for greener pastures, walking uphill (always a good tactic) towards still more churches, one of them in ruins. 
My taste for the ramshackle and abandoned was amply satisfied by the convent of St. Monica, which was artistically unkempt and entirely empty of any visible bodies (there were nuns in the off-limits portion of the building, but none in either the chapel or the passages leading up to it). The walls were partially covered by beautiful green and blue-patterned tile. I probably was supposed to be focusing on the crucifixes and saints rather than the tile, but I was in a a bit of INRI overload. Besides, the tilework was the prettiest thing in the place.
Still better was the church of Our Lady of the Rosary, all the way at the top of the hill.
I think it wasn't supposed to be open to the public at all, as it's being restored, but I was lucky enough to get there at the same time as a couple of the workmen, who let me look around. All these Portuguese churches are indredibly ornate, with numerous intricately carved altarpieces both on the end wall, as well as in side niches up and down the aisle. Nave? In this chapel, one of the decorative constructions at one end of the transept had been disassembled, and was lying in pieces on the floor. 
I don't know what they're doing to it -- the workers' English wasn't good enough for me to find out -- but I hope repainting isn't on the list. Everything's so overdone that if it were new and shiny, it would just be gaudy. Here, there was no tilework, but there were the remains of an abstract mural painted in red curlicues up and down the walls. I wanted to go up one of the turrets (naturally), but the workmen were ready to go, and I was kicked out.
The ruined building, which had once been an Augustinian monastary, is an active archaeological site. The only walls standing are of the porous red stone so many buildings around here are constructed of, but there was a man piecing together tilework panels on one of them, presumably from fragments workers have found. He was using an actual metal scaffolding, the first I've seen in India -- everywere else, they've been made of bamboo. The other workers there today were all women, and their job seemed mostly to consist of carrying out large bowls of rubble on their heads.
There's a lot of rubble throughout India. Part of this is due to the fact that much of the infrastructure is crumbling, but part also seems to be the result of new construction. Here, it was obvious which direction things were going, but elsewhere, it's often not terribly clear. Piles of bricks or stones sit on sidewalks, or simply by the side of the road, and no one seems to be doing anything in particular with them. A sidewalk (made of cobblestones) may be missing a section, but not in connection with one of the stone heaps. Half-finished buildings stand here and there -- sometimes with workers hanging about, sometimes not. If the building's old, I assume it's simply falling down -- but what's "old," exactly? A building put up in a slipshod way could crumble in just a few years, I assume. Or then there are projects like the chic shopping mall in Delhi that was pulled down today by the government, in a strike against illegal buildings. That's all the paper said, and I was left wondering if it was illegal because those who built it didn't own the land, or they hadn't gotten permits, or if construction didn't meet some codes. And was it pulled down completely today, or will half of it remain standing, to puzzle some other tourist trying to figure out if it's going up or coming down? Something about the construction techniques that I can't quite put my finger on is different enough from American ones that most half-built buildings just look odd to my eye, increasing the confusion.
OK -- so that was a bit of a tangent.
I still can't put up pictures here, so I'm going to call it a day and head out to catch my plane to Bombay. I think it's safe to assume I'll find a suitable internet outlet there, and can illustrate the past few days. Assuming, that is, that I make it to Bombay. My host here advised me to try to carry my bag on the plane, which is an iffy proposition: I was able to do so going from Calcutta to Bangalore, but in Bangalore I had to actually leave the airport -- go out into the taxi queue -- in order to get to my connecting gate, and they didn't want to let my leatherbaby back on in my carry-on bag, despite the fact that its scissors were under the 6 cm. limit stipulated on the advisory sign. This, mind you, despite the fact that Kirpans (Sikh ceremonial knives, which adult men are required to carry with them) with 6-inch blades and 3-inch handles are permitted on domestic flights. I obviously have to start a religion in which Swiss Army knives have central ritual significance. And she who carries the Swiss Champ XL is high priestess....
posted by Ruth | 2:02 AM
1 of 140 in INBOX
I do feel a bit as though all I've seen in Goa is churches, though. There are certainly a lot of them. There were in Cochin, too, but they were neither as big nor as universal: my last morning there, for example, I visited a synagogue instead.
It was a lovely little building, 17th-century, I think, with a very ornate blue and white patterned tile floor. I also went to a Jewish cemetary a short distance away; it's officially closed to tourists, but I think the guard uses that to his advantage to augment his salary -- probably to outsrip it entirely -- by letting in anyone willing to bribe him heavily enough. In my case, this meant 20 rps, or about 46 cents. 
The tombs were all raised, which isn't something I'm used to seeing in a Jewish graveyard, but presumably the water table is high.
There were no burials more recent than the early 20th century, and most of them looked to be much earlier -- although since the tombstones were entirely in Hebrew, I couldn't be sure. Very few tombs -- only one or two -- had stones placed on top of them, which would have indicated a visitor.
There are only a few Jews left in Cochin -- most of them moved to Israel after 1948 -- but the whole area is still known as "Jew Town," and the main drag is Jew Town Road. It felt a little funny being in the temple and watching all sorts of tourists walking around and snapping photos, asking questions that indicated they clearly knew nothing about judaism. 'Tis but fair payback for my visit to a Jain temple in Delhi, I suppose.
Or my activity of yesterday evening: I went to Friday night mass at the little church up the road from my hotel. I did ask if it was all right if a stranger attended, and the woman I spoke to said of course: "there are no strangers with God. We are all family." The service was in Konkani, so I think I was forgiven for appearing rather clueless about what to do when. Konkani is written with Roman characters, thankfully, so I was able to follow along with the hymns after the first verse.After church, I did have, as promised, Goan food for dinner. I tried prawns balchao (I think) -- and it was, indeed, spicy. Too spicy for me to eat without lots of bread: I picked out the prawns (eating them, not discarding them!), then dipped chunks of bread in the sauce, allowing some time between each bite for my mouth to cool off. I was only able to make it about halfway through, although that was as much through feeling full as it was through being disabled by the heat. I have no idea what the dish was made of: the sauce was red, but more a dried-pepper colour than a tomato one, and I'm pretty sure it had shrimp ground up it it. I also had wine, for my first time in India; this was kind of a mistake, as it was pretty bad wine, and a 250 ml. bottle cost me two and a half times what I paid for the main course.
No dogs to feed the leftovers to -- which is probably lucky for the dogs. I liked it, but I'm not so sure they would have.
This morning, I hopped in a cab and travelled out to Old Goa, the capital of the Portuguese colony here in the 16th and 17th centuries. Now, it's an odd cross between a small town, an archeological site, and a tourist trap.
The tourist trap part of it is, fortunately, rather small: mostly a handful of very insistent men trying to sell postcards and devotional candles outside of the major monument, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, where St. Francis Xavier is buried. Busloads of Christian tourists come to see the tomb, which is ornate, but didn't catch my eye especially. Skipping the sound and light show on the life of Jesus (thus saving 10 rps), I headed for greener pastures, walking uphill (always a good tactic) towards still more churches, one of them in ruins. 
My taste for the ramshackle and abandoned was amply satisfied by the convent of St. Monica, which was artistically unkempt and entirely empty of any visible bodies (there were nuns in the off-limits portion of the building, but none in either the chapel or the passages leading up to it). The walls were partially covered by beautiful green and blue-patterned tile. I probably was supposed to be focusing on the crucifixes and saints rather than the tile, but I was in a a bit of INRI overload. Besides, the tilework was the prettiest thing in the place.Still better was the church of Our Lady of the Rosary, all the way at the top of the hill.
I think it wasn't supposed to be open to the public at all, as it's being restored, but I was lucky enough to get there at the same time as a couple of the workmen, who let me look around. All these Portuguese churches are indredibly ornate, with numerous intricately carved altarpieces both on the end wall, as well as in side niches up and down the aisle. Nave? In this chapel, one of the decorative constructions at one end of the transept had been disassembled, and was lying in pieces on the floor. 
I don't know what they're doing to it -- the workers' English wasn't good enough for me to find out -- but I hope repainting isn't on the list. Everything's so overdone that if it were new and shiny, it would just be gaudy. Here, there was no tilework, but there were the remains of an abstract mural painted in red curlicues up and down the walls. I wanted to go up one of the turrets (naturally), but the workmen were ready to go, and I was kicked out.
The ruined building, which had once been an Augustinian monastary, is an active archaeological site. The only walls standing are of the porous red stone so many buildings around here are constructed of, but there was a man piecing together tilework panels on one of them, presumably from fragments workers have found. He was using an actual metal scaffolding, the first I've seen in India -- everywere else, they've been made of bamboo. The other workers there today were all women, and their job seemed mostly to consist of carrying out large bowls of rubble on their heads.
There's a lot of rubble throughout India. Part of this is due to the fact that much of the infrastructure is crumbling, but part also seems to be the result of new construction. Here, it was obvious which direction things were going, but elsewhere, it's often not terribly clear. Piles of bricks or stones sit on sidewalks, or simply by the side of the road, and no one seems to be doing anything in particular with them. A sidewalk (made of cobblestones) may be missing a section, but not in connection with one of the stone heaps. Half-finished buildings stand here and there -- sometimes with workers hanging about, sometimes not. If the building's old, I assume it's simply falling down -- but what's "old," exactly? A building put up in a slipshod way could crumble in just a few years, I assume. Or then there are projects like the chic shopping mall in Delhi that was pulled down today by the government, in a strike against illegal buildings. That's all the paper said, and I was left wondering if it was illegal because those who built it didn't own the land, or they hadn't gotten permits, or if construction didn't meet some codes. And was it pulled down completely today, or will half of it remain standing, to puzzle some other tourist trying to figure out if it's going up or coming down? Something about the construction techniques that I can't quite put my finger on is different enough from American ones that most half-built buildings just look odd to my eye, increasing the confusion.
OK -- so that was a bit of a tangent.
I still can't put up pictures here, so I'm going to call it a day and head out to catch my plane to Bombay. I think it's safe to assume I'll find a suitable internet outlet there, and can illustrate the past few days. Assuming, that is, that I make it to Bombay. My host here advised me to try to carry my bag on the plane, which is an iffy proposition: I was able to do so going from Calcutta to Bangalore, but in Bangalore I had to actually leave the airport -- go out into the taxi queue -- in order to get to my connecting gate, and they didn't want to let my leatherbaby back on in my carry-on bag, despite the fact that its scissors were under the 6 cm. limit stipulated on the advisory sign. This, mind you, despite the fact that Kirpans (Sikh ceremonial knives, which adult men are required to carry with them) with 6-inch blades and 3-inch handles are permitted on domestic flights. I obviously have to start a religion in which Swiss Army knives have central ritual significance. And she who carries the Swiss Champ XL is high priestess....
posted by Ruth | 2:02 AM
1 of 140 in INBOX
posted by Ruth | 6:50 AM
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