Bless This Mouse
Since I have been back from India I have been upsetting quite a lot of people with my tales of poo and such. However, there is one excursion that we took on the trip which seems more likely to make people shiver than others.
It is the last day of the trip and the trip leader has a “surprise” for us. We are promised that we will see something that we have never seen before. The surprise is 90 minutes away on a bus and for some reason we are told to bring socks.
On the way the surprise is revealed. We are visiting “The Rat Temple”.
Now, for a laugh, I would like you all to picture Judith Chalmers of “Holiday Programme” fame standing, as she did, in a bathing suit, sarong and white shirt tied at the waist, delivering this link to camera in an effort to introduce the next feature on holidays in Rajasthan.
“The Karni Mata Temple was built by Maharaja Ganga Singh in the early 20th century in the late Mughal style. The story goes that Karni Mata once tried to restore the dead child of a storyteller back to life but failed because Yama, the god of death, had already accepted his soul and re-incarnated him in human form. Karni Mata, famed for her legendary temper, was so inflamed by her failure that she announced that no one from her tribe would fall into Yama’s hands again.
“Instead, when they died, all of them would temporarily inhabit the body of a rat before being reborn into the tribe. Therefore, the rats are considered to be incarnations of storytellers and are much revered. Therefore the temple is home to a shitload of filthy rats. Let’s join Anneka Rice and her young family as they sample the delights of Rajasthan and the Karni Mata Rat Temple…..”
Yes, the Rat Temple is not just a name, it is an actuality. The place is swarming with legions of them. And they are not the cute ones, either. They are manky, warty, deformation bearing, filthy, massive brutes. Not content with being vile as they are, many of them are sporting disproportionately gigantic genitalia, just for that extra nausea factor.
And the socks? Well, everyone knows you need to take your shoes off to enter a Hindu temple, don’t they?
Personally, I didn’t bother with the sock idea. Somehow, I reasoned that rat urine would still reach my feet if it soaked through my socks. Rat-pee absorbing socks actually disturbed me more than going barefoot for some reason. I went au naturel through the rat excrement and pee. Skipping gaily as I went. With a song in my heart. And a tic in my left eye.
Before we left the bus, Meeester, told us all the story of the Rat Temple. “All rats would be worshipped and cared for as they would be reincarnated into tribesmen. And remember that of course Ganesh did ride about on a rat, so the rat is worshipped generally in Hinduism”
I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head. Now I’ve heard everything. God bless those little blighters and their Bubonic Plague; they’re holy! The misunderstood little buggers. What’s next? A slug shrine? A maggot palace? A cockroach chapel?
There are a couple of things we should know before we go in:
1. If you stand on a rat and kill it (fairly likely- if one of the disease ridden bastards so much as touches me, it’s getting reincarnated right there and then) you must pay money to the temple. Really, a collection plate would be so much easier. Still, then you wouldn’t get to kill a rat. I check how much money I have with me to see how many I can afford to squish.
2. If one (gulp) runs over your feet, it’s lucky! (although if one runs over my feet it’s luck will have run out, as I’ll hoof the bugger skyward)
3. Special luck goes to the person who spots The White Rat. Oh goody; a game! How much do we owe if we squish the white rat? We have a whip round.
4. The rats have plates of food lying about for them. Feel free to bring your own food and have a picnic with the vermin. It’s lucky! Even better- dip your fingers into the dishes of rice the disease ridden buggers are eating and help yourself! It’s even more lucky! No joke- we SAW people doing this.
Still, in poured the tourists. And good luck to them. They’ve got their PR sown up.
I am currently writing to the Church of Scotland Head Office in Edinburgh to suggest that they take strident action to increase the number of bums on seats at the Sunday Services. At last, a refuge for the kebab-fuelled shitehawk seagulls of Aberdeen, and a home for the mangy, one-footed pigeons of Glasgow. All hail the holy flying rats. Let us worship at your webbed scaly feet!
So, in summary:
- Journey to Rat Temple: 90 minutes
- Time in Rat Temple: 10 minutes
- Journey back to hotel: 90 minutes
- Time spent scrubbing feet with antibacterial soap, Dettol, bleach, iodine, metholated spirits and wire wool: Forever.
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Holy Smoke
Funeral pyre at Varanasi (Photo: P. Neville)On the itinerary we are to be going on a boat trip.
This is no ordinary boat trip; this one is on the holy river of the Gangees.
You may have seen images of the Gangees on your telly from time to time. The images will doubtless include hoards of people bathing in the sacred river and making sure that the water washes over every inch of them. I am told by Meeester, font of all religious knowledge, that Hindus believe that the water of the Gangees will purify them. Just like the old Catholic trick of going to confession to erase your spiritual hard drive, a quick dip in the Gangees will wash those sins away.
If you survive the typhus, you can live your life, guilt free.
The Gangees is so special that it has actual Goddess status in India. The reason for this is that it provides India with most of its water. Including its drinking water. It deserves to be worshipped. It’s the same deal for cows. Cows are godesses as they provide the people with milk. That’s fair enough. I’m all for the worshipping of the real and tangible. Maybe this Hinduism lark isn’t as wacky as the images of wee blue guys and half-men/half-elephants makes it look. But I’m thinking that the chickens really do have a case here. All those eggs and not one bit of respect.
So, we’ve established a few things about the Gangees:
- People bathe in it
- People worship it
- People drink it
OK, so why then, are there mountains of crap being chucked into it? Is it OK for a Catholic to drop kick a soiled nappy into the Vatican? No. Would St Paul’s Cathedral be satisfied with someone emptying their car ashtray into the pulpit? I don’t think so. And Synagogues frown upon someone relieving themselves on the doorstep, I am told.
As we float on the river in our rowing boat, looking back at the Varanasi pilgrimage site steps which are the ones you see on the telly showing masses of Pilgrims washing their cares away, there are mountains of untreated sewage and refuse. Kids are diving into the river right beside the raw sewage. I see a man
cup a handful of Gangees into his mouth inches away from effluent dribbling from a pipe directly into the goddess.
Mentally I am running though the database in my mind and double checking the status of our inoculations. Hurriedly I tell the kids NOT to dip their hands in the water or open their mouths.
As “luck” would have it, aside from the daily sin washing rituals of the pilgrims, there’s something a bit special going on tonight. For some reason I do not find this out til I am on the boat with no choice but to witness it. The special event is the burning of some bodies on a funeral pyre next to the Gangees. Today 300 bodies have been burnt already. Sniff the air and you can smell them. Open your eyes and you can see them.
Focusing on the billowing smoke at first it takes us a couple of minutes to realise we can clearly see about ten bodies lined up on the steps ready to be flung in. They are covered in brightly coloured silk but there’s no mistaking what’s underneath.
Varanasi is famous for this ritual. Being cremated in this way ensures that people release their five skandas (elements) back to the Universe. It is the holiest death you can get. Having your ashes scattered directly into the Gangees gets you spiritually where you want to go. Hence Varanasi is chock full of old folk hanging about waiting for death with their names on the funeral pyre waiting list.
It’s a fun town.
I am wondering if the experience is greater if the ashes are still hot. Hence the proximity of the pyre to the river. I muse on whether the same effect can be achieved by a relative calmly traveling to Varanasi with a pot of cold relative ash from their hometown and quietly scattering them on the river. I am clearly not getting Hinduism.
In the interests of balance and religious understanding can I just quote Religion and Philosophy maestro, Meeester, who does get Hinduism,
“This scene reveals Hinduism’s ancient and primal heart. It is shocking to us, with Western sensibilities, looking like a scene from Hell. But to the Hindus this is the essence of their beliefs”
Yeah, talk to the hand, Meeester. My kids are looking at dead grannies being chucked on a fire. Suddenly I’m thinking Eurodisney might be a good idea next time.
The holy human barbecue also provides some entertainment for the locals. A crowd is watching as bodies are being chucked on the fire. Beers are being drunk, picnics are being eaten and business is being done between the local town hoodlums. We suspect that the families of the deceased are in there somewhere, but to us it looks like folk have come out to watch like they would a parade. There are professional mourners, local dignitaries sat in high seats taking “donations”, and a wild haired and loin cloth clad bloke who looked like a deranged Indian Charles Manson dancing and chanting over the next body in the queue. He was the priest.
We maintain a respectful distance. To be honest, quite few of us, can’t bear to look. Some of the pupils are visibly blanching.
Indy pipes up, “Mum, I just saw one being thrown on the fire!”
So my ten year old has just seen a dead body being chucked on a fire. I’m not so sure I feel good about this life experience he has just had. In one year we’ve gone from explaining what happened after death to Molly, our now deceased family cat, to casually watching cadavers tipped into an inferno.
But it gets better. The boat moors beside the burning activities and we are invited to go have a wee looky, close up. At some burning bodies. On a bonny.
No photos though. That would be disrespectful.
I brace myself for someone offering my son a stick so that he could have a wee poke at the bodies on the fire.
Religion. Don’t you just love it?
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