Sadly, this past weekend was our last in Mysore. Of course, we had to live it up. The festivities began with a shopping extravaganza on Friday afternoon. We visited the Cauvery Arts and Crafts Emporium, the Silk Emporium, our three favorite Badsha stores (the family has about 9 stores just in Mysore!), and the Devaraja market. Our favorite shop in the market was the oil and incense shop. Three brothers run the store their grandfather started about 40 years ago. We got to sit and watch the littlest brother roll incense while the middle brother let us smell all of the most popular oils. While we decided on the oils we wanted, we had chai tea with the eldest brother and just chatted for about an hour. After we left notes in their guest book (they have about 15 books all for different countries!), we thanked them and moved on to do some more shopping damage. We finally wrapped up shopping around 8:30 and hit up the delicious buffet at the Southern Star for dinner.
One of the Badsha brothers invited us to the club, High Octane, for a little dancing after dinner. The club was much smaller than I thought, and our group made up about half of the total crowd. The rest of the crowd was comprised of European yoga students and friends of our Badsha boy. The music was a great mix of American and international popular dance music. We danced our little hearts out until the club closed at 11:30 (so early)!
On our Saturday morning tour of the Bylakuppe Tibetan Monastery, we had the opportunity to observe the monks worshipping. There was much chanting, along with percussion and wind-instrument playing. The rhythmic recitation helps the monks memorize the scriptures.
One of the temples boasted larger-than-life gold statues of Buddha's father (left), Buddha (middle), and Buddha's brother (right). Buddha is not wearing a crown like the rest of his family, symbolizing his renunciation of the material life. Instead, he is represented with his begging bowl. Also notice that the Buddha is not a jolly fat fellow that many people associate with the name Buddha. This is a popular Chinese version of Buddha, but it actually makes no sense considering the Buddha begged for his food and led a life of moderation.
In the afternoon, we were given a tour of Infosys, which provides business consulting and technological services to clients on a global scale. The center provides training to new employees in hard skills, such as computer technology, and soft/people skills. Infosys is all-inclusive; there is housing for employees and their families, a grocery store, a gym, a health clinic, bowling alley, the list goes on. The globe-shaped building reminded me of Epcot. Being there was strange, because although it was an amazing complex, it was nothing like India. The style was very Western, and I was also surprised by the fact that it didn't smell like India. This is so hard to describe, but I'll just say that you take for granted the smell of cleaning solution and freshly cut grass until you live without them for a month.
Dr. Rao's godson came to show us some snakes on Sunday morning. He catches snakes that get into sticky situations with people and releases them back into the wild. India has a ton of snakes, and that's important because they help keep the rodent (especially disease-carrying rat) populations down. Some people got to hold the snakes, but no one was allowed to touch the king cobra. Go figure.
Prof. Lubin had to leave on Sunday afternoon, so we threw him a little going-away party. Unfortunately, the cake decorator got a little confused and so the cake said "Happy Birthday" as well. I love how "Have a nice trip" reminds me of Winnie the Pooh's handwriting. Regardless, it tasted delicious.
Zac had befriended some boys in our "neighborhood" and enlisted them to help a small group of us learn cricket. The eldest explained the basics to us, and the younger ones demonstrated his descriptions of various rules and procedures of the game. This picture is of Zac, waiting for the wicket to be reset and the line to be redrawn so that he can bat. Don't get caught outside this line if the keeper has the ball, because he can throw the ball to knock down the wicket and you are out! Unfortunately, I only made one run before this happened to me. My team lost, but before we had to face any further humiliation, it was time for us to leave to go to yoga. Hurrah for clean chakras! After yoga, we ate the Green Hotel and celebrated the last few hours of the weekend at Cafe Coffee Day...the ice-blended coffee is to die for! Sadly, today is Monday and now, I must work on my final papers before leaving for the beach on Thursday!
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