Medicine Man
Mumu (the baby) wasn’t feeling too well they thought. And so they decided to go see the
muslim medicine man and they invited us to come along. The Fakhir (Muslim medicine man… I’m
not actually sure what Fakhir means) is mostly employed by Hindus rather than
Muslims, interestingly enough.
We came over to his little shop booth (it kindof reminded me
of what little shops in a gypsy caravan might look like: small, light and
probably really easy to knock over…) and waited for him to set up. Razu went first.
First, Mr. Medicine Man cuts off Razu’s old talisman,
prepares another talisman: a small, silver (colored) container with a small
“mantra” (a short word or phrase that is supposed to be answered with a
specific result, like a magic spell) inside it. Are you followng?
It’s a little hard to explain.
He puts this little talisman on a thread that he makes
either into a necklace or a bracelet for your arm. He splashes your head with holy water, has you drink it
(Alexis got sick from this later—I tried to hold it in my mouth to see if I
could spit it out after, but I couldn’t…), puts his hand on your head to bless
you, pats your back, and puts a white powder dot on your head and gives you a
little packet of powder to reapply for the coming nights and mornings.
So that was cool.
He talked to the other people about what they needed and checked their
pulse and stuff first, but I guess he understood we were doing this as tourists
so I guess we just got the general beginners blessing.
Waterfalls? Or caves?
We went on an all-day trip yesterday. I rode my first train. The station smelt like urine and there
were dogs everywhere and it was really confusing… but we got on the train and
rode up north out into the jungle.
When we started going through the tunnels, we heard some of
the other Indians start to yell.
“Aaaaaahhh!” they gave excited shouts and howls—so of course we joined
in: “Whooooooooo!” we screamed.
“You too!” I said to Madhu, one of our translators.
“No. I am from
here so it’s different for me. You
are doing it wrong. You sound like
cats! Do it stronger!”
I told Sarah we had to do it stronger, so the next tunnel we
passed both of us did an ogre’s “Ooooooohhhhh!”
“No, higher!” Madhu said. “More excitement!
More force.”
Yeah, we pretty much screamed the next tunnel.
The ones after that I turned Latina and did my ARRIBA-latin
calls…
Pretty much one of the funnest things I’ve done since I’ve
been here. Scream in the
tunnels. Everyone was like, “Oh,
those Americans…” And then they
all wanted pictures with us of course when we were out and wandering about.
We saw old (dead) British gardens with some Hindu
statues—more mermaids (only these ones had two fin-legs)—I’m curious whether
there are mermaids in Hindu stories because I haven’t run across any yet… I
will have to ask the translators…
We were told there was a waterfall, but we passed it without
looking out the window and seeing it… :/
We saw a tribal dance and got to join in—though I just
messed it up and tripped over everyone (I’ll put up some videos soon).
Last we saw some caves which were pretty great. We ran ahead of everyone and climbed up
these steep, steep steps to get to a temple (a shrine with a bell and some
little statues in it).
Also I played baseball with Siddhu. We were playing catch, then he ran and
grabbed an old sprite bottle and started banging on the ground and raised it
like a batter. “Okay!” he
said. “Ready!”
So he hit it a few times. I was really impressed. And it was fun because I got him to flex his muscles and
give me a game face growl and everything.
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