At shellfish restaurant with Dutch guy named Jeroen teaching me a bit of obscene Dutch (his email is jeroenov@hotmail.com):

"Ghot fer dommeh \ how yuh beck \ kanker shnol, honde lul
 God da*mit \ shut your beak \ cancer sl*t, dog d*ck"

That is what I am supposed to lean over and say when I notice that someone talking nearby me is Dutch.

The thing I love most in this town is just wandering around the wet alleyways (we seem to always be between fresh showers), everything coated in red from the clay earth underfoot, and see the barefoot people going here and there, some doing farming but most in the religion business. Seems that this town calls its own one of India's famous Shiva Lingams (that is the great Lord Shiva's johnson to you incognoscenti) that fell to earth when he was pursued by an enemy (its made of stone, permanently hard that is) and has the power to wipe away one of the most greivous of sins - killing a Brahmin. People who I presume have not recently done anything as bad as killing a Brahmin arrive here in busloads from other parts of the south.

Seems going on pilgrimage to a famous shrine is one of the only legitimate reasons your average south Indian has for blowing his hard-earned cash on anything as frivolous as travel (paying for meals and lodging and whatnot) to a place wher he has no relatives to stay with.

When Hindus reach a famous shrine they don't come there only to look at it and snap pictures, it is functional. They are there to fulfill a religious duty, advance themselves on a spiritual level, and get something concrete done: they demonstrate this by doing something called "a puja." "Puja" to me just means worship but to the people of Gokarna it also means dollars. Your typical puja involves the visitng pilgrim, a preist who is paid to participate (or technically given a "gift" of an amount of money he chooses), and some sort of physical offering (typical items include, rice, banannas, cocounuts, oil, fraigrant or beautiful flowers, insensce, milk, oil, ghee, red kum kum powder or paste, etc.) which the preist offers to the god (or pours or smears on the lingam in this case) while saying prayers, mantras, reading scripture in sanskrit. So there are loads of preists and offerings-sellers living in this town waiting for the next bus to arrive. As a bonus some pilgrims also eat here or by a rosary, small icon, picture, or devotional music tape. This is the life of a temple town.

The entire landscape of the Indian subcontinent is holy, all the natural features are sacred, every place was the scene of some famous episode in the life of the gods or is the abode of some god or demon. Depending on the perspective of the pilgrim this significance of the landscape can be literal or figurative or somewhere in between.

For many pilgrims to Gokarna this trip is their first sight of the West coast of the Indian, subcontinent. A holy sight (for anyone- it is beautiful and at monsoon time you can also easily witness the raw power of the swirling sea) and as usual, demanding action. Any early morning or afternoon in Gokarna you can see groups of pigrims wading up to their knees in the sea, fully dressed, saris, blue jeans and slacks, some cupping their hands, pouring the water overhead and on upturned faces, expressions of closed eye fervent devotion or sometimes shock as unfamiliar sea-water in all of its soft foamy saltiness touches their head for the first time.


Gokarna, Karnataka, India, June 17, 2001

After my orgy of eating everything under the sun (including several fish dishes and plates of spicy small clams) yesterday I spent the morning here giving birth to loads of squirty poop. Passed the rest of the day post partum in different dispassionate poses on the bed reading three books I picked up from the guesthouse kitchen: Stephen Vinczey's "In Praise Of Older Women," which basically details this Chzek studs' adventures, Ayn Rand's "The Romantic Manifesto" where she mounts the usual argument that art should be better than real life, and Paul Theroux's measuredly acerbic "Sir Vidia's Shadow" about the real life rise and fall of his freindship with V.S. Naipaul. Napped and contemplated a swim and my next geographic move. Seemed to gravitate away from Bangalore - a severe switch. Perhaps I might try phoning my parents with a callback in that case - its been 5.5 days now with no contact - they may fret.

Met a group of eighteensomething girls here at the end of a several week stint volunteering in Tamil Nadu (organized through some NGO organization in the UK) yesterday at a restaurant. One girl stated that she discovered that she learned something from volunteering in Tamil Nadu: "I can make new friends. I don't have to keep my old friends out of fear - I can be away from my boyfreind and still love him, I learned about my own preferences, learned who I am and am not compatible livemates with." During this conversation another girl in the group from Wales who wants to be more intellectual keeps levering the conversation level upwards. Control. "Now I am completely secure in my opinion," the other girl continues. Pretty good stuff, she should work here for free - look what India has given her, its tangible - I think the people her NGO helps would be hard pressed to offer up similar proofs of progress.