- June 14, 2014, Saturday.
- My friend Evan and I have been enjoying our extended summer vacation lately, ever since UP moved its opening of classes to August. To add some diversity to his summer-vacation life, and to air my mind from my pre-class-opening tasks and paper works, we decided to meet again. This time, I decided to take my chance to let Evan peek into my little Indian world; it was Evan's first "immersion" in all-things-Indian.
- We met this morning at my house, and off we merrily went to Manila's Little India in UN Avenue. Since we arrived a bit too early for lunch, we walked along Mahatma Gandhi Street to go to Manila's Hindu Temple (mandir.)
- Visiting the temple has always been a good experience for me. Not only do I get to constantly refresh my memory about the stories about gods and goddesses in Hinduism, the temple's history, and the society involved, but there is always something new or different whenever I go there. When we visited today, I was surprised to see that the temple was being repainted and partially renovated to make it look more festive. On top of that, the statues of the gods, as well as the temple's life-size cow statue, Surabhi/Kamadehnu (mother goddess in the form of a cow) were all in nicer costumes today. Apparently, a child was to celebrate his first birthday in the temple; first birthdays require certain special religious rituals.
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| Evan and Surabhi. |
- At the second floor, Evan and I wore kurtas on top of our shirts, just so I could give him an experience of wearing an Indian costume (and another excuse for me to wear my kurta again.) As with all the other people I've brought to the temple, I narrated the stories of all gods and goddesses present in the temple. I also highlighted the significance of the lingam and yoni, since people normally mistake the lingam-yoni to be a tea pot, a genie lamp, or just an "unusual statue;" It is actually a fertility symbol, and a symbol of the cosmic union.
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| Peacock lamp. |
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| "Is it a lamp??" - After asking Evan to have a wild guess on what the lingam-yoni was. |
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| Yay kurta!! |
- After a lengthy narration about everything, we headed to Assad Cafe to have Evan's first full Indian lunch. We had chicken masala, Kashmiri fish curry, and mutton biryani. To beat the hot day, we had mango lassis to drink too.
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| Happy boy. |
- We later picked up half-a-kilo of sweets and some samosas from Assad Minimart, and headed to my house for a Bollywood movie session. Instead of popcorn, we ate the Indian sweets; we had some laddoos, jamons, cream-filled jamuns, jalebis (syrup-y funnel cakes,) rasgulas, and some almond squares.
- "Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi" ("A Match Made by God") was a movie that I have been recommending to Evan, but he had no chance to watch the film until we decided to watch it at home. The movie had a clear message, had some meaningful songs, had less characters, and had a simple plot. The film's bonus was that it provided colorful shots of Amritsar, where most of the movie was filmed; Amritsar's "Golden Temple," the center of Sikhism, was also shown several times in the movie.
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| Don't.... |
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| Disturb.... |
Meeeee....
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| Indian sweets. |
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| We said a brief hello to our friend Merrill. |
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| First taste of Indian sweets. |
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| "Do I like it??" |
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| "Again, don't disturb me, I'm watching." |
- Evan had to go somewhere for dinner with his family after the movie, but it was awesome that we had another interesting day around Manila. I was probably keen about today, because I was once again able to let a friend have a look inside the world that I have been involved with for as long as I can remember. (Of course, that meant having the task of showing the awesome sides of India and India cultures.) I was glad that he liked the curry and the movie, but most of all, I was happy to realize that I had another friend who had an open mind and who was willing to understand other cultures.
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