Cow Cow protection is the gift of Hinduism to the world. Hinduism will endure only so long as there are Hindus to protect the cow. –Mahatma Gandhi The white Mercedes taxi nudges the soiled, underfed, spotted white calf out of the way en route to the 5-star Hotel in the cantonment sector erected by the […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 22, 2015
Untouchable Barefoot, she enters my room and lies in bed next to me on my left side. I hear the soft jingle of the cheap bracelets about her wrists and ankles. Predawn dark, I am just awake from a dream or sequence of dreams: Donkeys–they seem to have been abused–a mother and foal edging ahead […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 20, 2015
Buddha Earth Sitting straightbacked and composed, eyes partially closed, under the imposing fig tree in Bodhgaya, Siddhartha Gautama is menaced by Mara, lord of strife and covetousness, who attempts through deceptions to unseat Siddhartha. That Siddhartha is sitting steadfastly on Mother Earth rather than gazing heavenward poses a special threat to Mara. After attempting without […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 19, 2015
Terror Mama donkey and her foal, both beat-up looking, move deliberately through the impossible traffic. Sacred underfed cows and starving dogs one sees everywhere in India, but donkeys, like horses and sheep, are seen much less often. Inquiring Hindus wonder why the capitalist globe responds with collective outrage when Paris is assaulted by alleged Muslim […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 17, 2015
Ganges Dawn Predawn, everyone’s awake, Kashi’s jumping. Excluding the homeless thousands who are unawake. I’m walking cautiously to the ghats in the semi-dark through littered streets, trying to distinguish trash from cardboard and newspaper humps of low-castes sleeping, groaning while sleeping. Do they dream while they sleep? Is it a collective dream? Has their 2000-years […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 15, 2015
Tulsi Ghat, Benares Sunday, 11/15/15, late afternoon Untouchables with mobiles. Cluster of dusky underfed humans, 20 or more, barefoot, rags on their heads or faces glide by noiselessly, except for three or four on their mobiles shouting into the phones in Hindi. Self-confessed electronic utopian, Indian PM Modi, envisions a “digital India.” The resident macaque […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 14, 2015
Acid A 23-year-old Russian tourist sustained severe burns on her face and neck after a man whose marriage proposal she allegedly spurned attacked her with acid Friday morning in Varanasi. Police said the tourist, Daya Yurieva, arrived in Varanasi five days ago and was a paying guest at the Hriday Lal Srivastva “Homestay,” in the […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 14, 2015
Shiva Kashi Kashi is said to be Lord Shiva’s city. Shiva destroys to recreate. Shiva defies categories of pure / impure, auspicious / inauspicious. Shiva is beautiful and terrifying, anointing his body with fragrant sandalwood and with the gray ash of the cremated. Shiva is fearsomely ascetic and boundlessly passionate. It is said that in […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 13, 2015
Monkeys As India launches an $18 billion plan to expand the information “revolution” to its provinces, many of the problems it faces are holdovers from the past–electricity shortages, congested cities, an exponentially increasing population, resurgence of infectious diseases–and monkeys. The clash between the old world and the new has come sharply into focus in the […]
Harold Jaffe’s Dispatches from India – November 12, 2015
Leper Every Diwali (one of India’s major holidays comparable to Xmas), Bhupendra Mahapatra and eight other residents of his colony knock on people’s doors in the early morning hoping to get alms. It is a familiar exercise for these and more residents of Premnagar Kushtrogi Kalyan Samiti, who formerly suffered from leprosy. They visit virtually […]