Thoughts of a minibus traveller

The 14 year old asked about the saloo - the usually red cloth which wraps the Ramayana.  We , the older members, explained that we do not tie the cloth, but rather, wrap the cloth around the Ramayana and fold it. We asked an even older man why we should not tie it. He said that is the tradition. So rational minds might want to query 'tradition' and we always should , but there are some small things, which came down, which are harmless but connect us to a past of usually men who walked around with the books wrapped but not tied. Singing in a ramayana gole is one way  we maintain those threads.   I was 'young' when I started singing and when I was shown how to wrap the saloo . Unwrapping the saloo and laying it  flat is the start of the singing time. There is a warm kind of feeling, when you teach the 14 year old, about the saloo.  Some idea of continuity. We have a fourth generation singing in one of the goles. Most of us are first or second ...

dis tek pun de Internet.. ah know ah should tek me own but.. De customs man at Piarco tell me dat de only ting dey does tek from Guyana is pineapple an' plantain. Ah' meh had  to trow weh de sourie an' de peppah dat ah bring from Guyana fuh me fren because ah de tink ah should ah been straight up pun de customs farm an' seh yes, yes.. ah was bringing food into de twin island republic. But ah shut me mout bout de tennis roll an de chinee cake at de time.. ah tink nuff ah we know how fuh lie fuh de greater good. I aint know why dis deh in meh  head.. pineapple and plantain only... like is how some people mo' wanted dan odders as we move aroun' de Caribbean an' how customs and immigration does mek sure dat we know dat we aint know damn 'one Caribbean' an' how when we talk Caribbean it doan always reflect de whole Caribbean because it does depend pun who talkin' wedder is tourism people or whuh. Ah mean.. we need visa fuh Sint Maarten ...

What do Hindus/Hinduism/Hindu scriptures think about homosexuality/gay rights/gay marriage' ?  Hindus - professors, students, scholars, swamis, pandits, devotees, skeptics - have replied with different answers based on their rationale. In the Caribbean, religious leaders are often called on to pronounce on 'gay rights' and 'homosexuality' . Caribbean Hindu practice has been influenced by colonialism. There is a desire, where controversial issues arise, to appeal to conservative views so as not to be seen to be so 'morally' different from some forms of Christianity or Islam. Hindus around the world have been talking about human rights and about homosexuality. This blog post is a collection of some of the resources which discuss homosexuality and gay rights. There is a bias in this post to highlight those resources where Hindus affirm equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons. Hindu practices and thought are diverse, an...

De bus man is  a Sai Baba devotee so I jump in de bus an' we talk 'Sai Ram' . Meh min' deh pun de tings I gah fuh do , when de bus man shout at me.. 'Wuz Gandhi a homosexual'. I jump an' seh.. whuh? Who? . Bus man seh how dey bad namin' Gandhi an' sehin how he wuz a homosexual. I seh.. suh whuh wrang if he wuz a homosexual.. he aint do whuh he had to do? It mek anyting different? Bus man seh.. dat is not de point, but how dey could lie? I seh.. well far as I know, dey find de love letters dat Gandhi write to de white man he did like. Bus man seh.. so what.. two man cyan like each odder? Why can't a man tell anodda man he love him wid out it being homosexual ? I seh.. well all ah duh.. true true.. but how you know dat dem aint had someting going on? Bus man seh why dem Christian people slanderin' Hindu leaders like dat.  I tell de bus man, nah.. is because you lookin' at de ting from a christian perspective , dat you tink so...

Image taken from Smithsonian Magazine Last week two men chatted with me. One is 25, the other a week short of 25. Both are Guyanese. Both are law abiding, sensible, ambitious men. Both are gay. I want to write about them to honour them but I hate that I have to use Letters which are not their names to do so. So I will call one H, and the other one P. H lives on the East Coast of Demerara. Almost every day since the beginning of this year, H has been sending me nice messages.. pleasant good mornings on Facebook, and the kind of things. H on his Facebook posts is always positive. I chatted with H. He told me he had met me a long time ago at the SASOD Film Festival. P I had met a few years ago but know slightly. P is ambitious, self made man but I never heard his story until last week. He too has always struck me as positive and working on his goals. H is Black. P is Indian. H has been studying and working, since high school. He has been open to different kinds of jobs. He sa...

I like audio slideshows. Something about being able to enjoy the moments of beautiful photographs while listening to the audio with subjects' voices and other related sounds. The audio slideshows on the Guardian UK website are some of my favourite. This one from the New York times also shows the power of audio slideshows as a tool of online journalism. So I have been wondering whether I could use  audio slideshows as part of the blogging experience. This requires a different kind of organising and skill set. The digital recorder will capture the sound, so you have to be organising the audio and thinking of what audio would be good. The pictures for an audio slideshow need to be composed. They say 4 seconds per image so, a 2 minutes would require about 25 to 30 images, with some time for inter titles. The thing is... composing images while thinking of how the blog and the ideas would be formed is a task. The first place I went on Saturday was GuyExpo. I was confused at fir...

The Ramayana is a complex text, an important Hindu narrative which is part of the rich culture. We sing from it, we make ballet dances, we act and tell stories from it. The graphic arts are part of the Indian art tradition as well. Sita's Ramayana, according to the blurb on Tara Books, "shifts the point of view of the Ramayana – the saga of a heroic war – to bring a woman’s perspective to this timeless epic. Narrated by the heroine Sita, it is a powerful meditation on the fate of women, as they become pawns in the wars between men and kingdoms. But Sita is not just a patient victim of events – she endures her fate with fortitude, until the moment she decides to challenge it. The book unites two women from very different backgrounds: young urban writer Samhita Arni collaborates with Patua scroll artist Moyna Chitrakar to create this unusual graphic novel." The Hindu traditions of the feminine are complex - the divine energy Shakti is feminine , and in so...

My favourite part of the Ramayana is in the Aranya Kanda (Chaupaii 35,36) where Lord Rama dialogs with Shabari on the nine forms of devotion or  "navadhå bhagati" Over the last two weeks, we have sung this part twice and maybe because of old age , I started to wonder how I measuring up on them. Listen, O good lady, to My words I recognize no other kinship except that of Devotion. Despite caste, kinship, lineage, piety, reputation, wealth, physical strength, numerical strength of his family, accomplishments and ability, a man lacking in Devotion is of no more worth than a cloud without water. Now I tell you the nine forms of Devotion; please listen attentively and cherish them in your mind. The first in order is fellowship with the saints .. There are traditions of how saints are formed, and this saint thing has to happen two ways.. the followers recognise the saints, and the saints are descended from lineages of spiritual tradition. I know one or two saints.. and on ...

I was angry, really angry at a guy for whom I have the greatest respect . I had spent a lot of hours working at this computer centre and had hoped it would have turned into this active place from which dynamic and fantastic things would happen. Instead, there was dust all over, the server had not been used for some time. There were reasons for the closing of the centre, but I was still angry when I saw the dust and the unused place. Self less service. The Bhagvad Gita talks about selfless service.. about giving freely without wanting anything in return and of offering help when asked. I used to tell people that I liberated myself from feelings of inferiority to Caucasian races by putting a pound coin in the hand of a white beggar in the UK.. . Now I feel bad for the reason for giving that pound coin to show that I was superior and could help a white man. There is a tradition of sharing the wonderful stories of philanthropy, and some people position themselves so that t...

The baani style Ramayana gole singing was handed down from generation to generation. We are learning now how there were different tunes for the baani, depending on the time of the night.. I never imagine singing beyond 9pm much less until midnight and after.. but we have to pick up all the old tunes and styles before they die out. This is one of the things which are handed down, or in my case, just absorbed because you are just thrown in and you are supposed to learn.. nobody ever taught. But,.. this man we are learning or reviving some of the baani sings at a higher pitch and with a bigger voice than most of us, and I am a lil friken of him.  But tonight, he asked me to sit next to him and to sing with him on his side of the Gole.... I was like, who me.. and I am thinking that hey.I graduate Yep,  I am like the old men of years ago, except I dont smoke and I dont tek meh tups to wet or open meh troat before we start.. in fact, I was thinking,, shoots, I am officially an...

The Pandit was clear in his sermon that this night of Laxmi and this time of Navratra highlighted the need for the respect for women. He quoted several times about how a country , society and a home where women are not respected will be destroyed. We sang part of the Sabari katha from the Ramayana. The part where Sabari represents herself as the lowest of the low and Lord Rama said that regardless of who you are, the devotion is what counts. After the service, we are gaffing and one of my Ramayana gole members said that Kaliyug (this dark age, the age of the demon Kali ) is one in which men need protection and because men are not being protected then things will go haywire and that because women are 'in charge'.. the Pandit said no way, are you saying that Kaliyug means that because men are not dominating.. my colleague said.. that it is scientific, men are more adventurous than women.. then another man said that the Ramayana said something about men and women  and women ya...

There was a dog bracing the wall in the mandir.  A man was sitting next to her. I know it is her because of the teats. A real dog, not a person who I am calling a dog. I thought, what the hell.. and I looked at the two men who sit next to the dog on the nice red carpet. It was at Rama Krishna Mandir , second night of Navratra. Nobody seemed to be bothered with the dog.. or is like Hindu people, usually tolerant of most things once they not making noise. I know at another mandir they sometimes had problems with a smelly drunk man and the president had to battle between asking the man to leave/chasing him out or have the people leave the mandir in masses.. no easy thing.. but this dog, was not smelly or barking or anything like that. The old man said to leave the dog.. and I just wondered if on this nice plush carpet, who else sit down and where they come from.. and I wonder how often they clean it.. carpet hard to clean. But the Ramayana is clear ".. all animate and inanimate b...

The first Navratri for 2010 is finshed. Thanks to the Ramayana Gole, I was privileged to visit a few mandirs . I am no devout 'keeper' of 'Navratra'. Parsad as we call it is the offering, made with ghee, flour, sugar, milk, fruits.  And no purist is going to cuss me and tell me what is the right thing. Where I come from in Guyana, it is called parsad. So I ate a lot of parsad this Navratra. I could have eaten more because there is always a lot. Some of my non-Hindu friends like parsad. One or two though.. ask first.. was this made for a puja, because even though they like parsad, they belong to religions which talk about devil food, so they have to abstain from it. There are different atmospheres in the different mandirs. Some of them are crowded, some of them are not so crowded. Some people have quieter services while others have services which feature multiple activities. I liked how the Ogle Mandir integrated the Ram Lila enactment, if only to keep the children i...

The Hindu traditions in Guyana date back to when the indentured immigrants came and some of them started to find ways to keep the traditions alive. One of the traditions is the singing of chowtaal and ramayana in groups, or goles. Chowtaals are songs sung at Phagwah time. The Ramayana is the story of Rama and Sita, which exists in various versions. The Tulsidas version - the Shri Ramcharitmanas is the popular one in Guyana. So, how does the gole work? The groups used to be men, usually from a village and affiliated with a mandir. The men mostly had to learn Hindi or Awadhi, or they would have learnt by rote the sounds. The tunes are called 'baani'. The instruments are the dholak which keeps the rythmn and the jaal which the singers use to keep the time. I have been singing Ramayana since 1987 or thereabouts when a random group was formed which consisted of men from all over Georgetown who had been part of other village goles. We called our selves the Torchlight Ramayana...