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A few weeks ago I
accompanied my students on a field trip to Akshardam Temple, a well-known
complex playfully known to some as “Hindu Disneyland.” Why, one might ask, is
Akshardam deserving of such an odd nickname? The temple is located east of
Delhi, on the other side of the Yamuna River, and was completed several years
ago. Over 7,000 artisans were commissioned to create this beautiful but
extremely ostentatious display of pious devotion, dedicated to a guru who lived
in the 18th century. In addition to the temple, the site has several
attractions that clearly illustrate the association with Disneyland. Field trips here are called “picnics” and the only reason
I knew there was one is that my kids started asking me whether or not I was
going several days before the scheduled trip. The whole of the 6th,
7th, and 8th grades were going, so it’s a good thing my
students like me and asked me to come, because otherwise no one would have mentioned
it to me and I would have arrived at school to teach empty rooms. When I asked
the principal the day before whether or not I could go, he stared at me blankly
and nodded his head, though it’s highly possible he had no idea what I was
talking about. In any case, I showed up Friday morning to many excited
children. Please note that with 90-120 students per grade, this picnic was no
small undertaking. Shortly after the children arrived, four large buses pulled
in front of the school. They were coach buses, much nicer than the regular
school buses that take kids to and from school, because I’m pretty sure there
were doubts about whether or not those decrepit vehicles could make it as far
as the temple. But I digress. The kids started lining up according to their
class, with monitors walking down and counting them, seeing how many were
present and absent. At first the scene was orderly, with designated teachers
calling the students one by one to board the bus, making sure they knew which
kids were there. I boarded the bus with Shruti, one of the teachers I’m close
with who sits in the same staff room as me. She is the class teacher for 7C, a
class that has a ton of personality, which I love, but can be difficult to
manage sometimes. I sat beside Shruti in the front, classes 7C and 7B
energetically bouncing and squawking around us. Our bus was full, with many
students sitting three to a seat clearly meant for two, but they shuffled and
made it work. Looking outside, I saw that the other buses were equally full,
and also that 8C, being the last numerically and alphabetically, had yet to
make it onto a bus. Before I knew it, the girls of that class were boarding our
bus, crowding it so much that every seat had three children and some had four.
Not exactly the stringent seatbelt requirement of the US. It didn’t really
matter, though, because as soon as the doors were closed, half the kids started
walking around, sharing the ample snacks they had brought for the trip and
insisting that Shruti and I have some. In seeing the way both kids and adults
eat in such a communal way, freely taking from others’ plates and expecting
others to do the same, that this is not necessarily seen as ‘sharing’ but
rather as belonging to everyone in the first place. Believe me when I say that
these kids do not share easily. When I place markers on the table for an art
project, you’d think I was giving rations to famine survivors by the way they
elbow each other out and hoard the colors. And yet, when it comes to food,
there is no such reservation in offering and receiving. In any case, it seems that, for my students,
the eating experience is not complete if I have not partaken with them. A
steady stream of children approached me at the front of the bus bearing chips,
bhujia, spiced nuts, and other snack food, pleading, “Ma’am, you try, just one,
please.” On the occasions when they offered something I really did not want to
eat, they would just keep pleading until I eventually took and ate the
proffered item. The other noteworthy thing that happened on the bus was the
singing. I know those of us from the US will remember a few rounds of 99
bottles or even some camp songs sung on the occasional bus journey. This was
nothing of that sort. This was 70+ children all singing Hindi pop music at the
top of their lungs, each child knowing every word and inflection, the boys
getting especially into the choral aspect. It was a sight (and sound!) to
behold.
We arrived at the temple at around 9:00, at which point
all the kids got into their lines again, monitors straightening the rows and
teachers counting. There was an attempted bombing at Akshardam a few years ago,
so security there is RIDICULOUS. No one is allowed to bring phones, cameras or
electronics of any kind, and if you think you can hide these items in a secret
pocket—guess again. The security guards open every pocket of every purse, pants
and jacket before frisking you so thoroughly it makes you feel uncomfortable.
After all the kids and teachers were through, the lines were made again and we
waited for a while because that’s what you do in India. We walked into the big
reception hall where several other school groups of comparable sizes were also
sitting, and had morning prayer. We led our group afterwards to a small
auditorium, and proceeded to watch a video introducing the guru to whom the
temple is dedicated. I thought we would then leave the building and see the
temple, but in fact the building was a complex, which I later found out was called the Hall of Values, in which you go from room to
room, hearing about the guru’s life and work.
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| Hall of Values |
All of the explanations were in
Hindi, so I understood very little, which made the spectacle that much more
interesting. Each room was comprised of a diorama-like scene in front of rows
of seats. The scenes each depicted a part of this guru’s life journey, and were
made of life-sized robotic people, á la the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at,
you guessed it, Disneyland. Each robot had a small range of motion and they
acted out various life events that were important in this person’s life,
including conversations between robots. One of the scenes took place in a
thunderstorm, and the effects included flashing lights, realistic thunder
sounds, and actual water that rained down on the scene. The last room of the
tour was about the importance and techniques of incorporating Hindi practices
into your every day life. One such area had a barnyard scene with
larger-than-life cutouts of animals. The animals had speech bubbles, such as a
hen with chicks saying, “We don't eat their babies so why do they eat ours?” a
cow declaring, “I give you my milk but it’s not enough; you must take my meat
too?” and a lion stating, “I have fangs and claws for eating meat. You don't,
yet you eat my food.” Guess what that diorama was advocating! I found the whole
thing pretty tacky, but the kids loved it!
They kept asking me if I liked it, and when I said , “of course! Do you?” They
would reply, “Ma’am, it’s so beautiful! Isn’t it beautiful??” Their enthusiasm
made the whole experience so enjoyable for me…at one point one of my sixth
grade girls came up and held my hand, walking with me from room to room for a
while.
The
next stop on our temple tour was an IMAX film about the life of the guru as a
child, and how he came to be a spiritual leader. Having stayed up fairly late
the night before, and not understanding almost any of the film’s Hindi
narration, I tried my best to keep my eyes open but eventually fell asleep. I
was sitting next to Geetanjali, an 8th grade girl that I LOVE (even
though she told me last week in all seriousness that I looked fat). For the
first few minutes after I fell asleep she kept nudging me awake, saying “Ma’am,
the movie!” and I would open my eyes for a minute, responding, “yes, I’m
listening I’m just closing my eyes,” before succumbing to the fatigue. I have
no idea how long I slept but remember waking up about two minutes before the
end of the film and looking frantically for the ticket to the next attraction
that I had been holding in my hand, before the girl on my other side graciously
handed it to me. When the film ended, we filed outside into the sunshine, at
which point every child seemed to need to ask individually how I enjoyed the
movie. When I started to say how lovely I thought it was, Geetanjali would
appear out of nowhere to rectify my lie, saying, “Ma’am fell asleep.” At first
I tried to deny it but then I just told her to stop blowing up my spot by
telling on me.
The last, and indeed most spectacular(ly
over-the-top) activity before seeing the temple itself was a mystical boat ride
through Vedic India. The introductory plaque in English and Hindi said
something along the lines of, and I’m paraphrasing here, “India is the greatest
country and culture in the world and we were accurately measuring the distance
between planets when Europeans were eating sand and each other during the
Middle Ages and prehistory.” The wooden boats, shaped like peacocks, complete
with peacock-head helms, had several rows of four seats each, and ran on a
track through a “river” surrounded by more robot scenes. Picture the “It’s a
Small World” ride but with the aim of teaching Hindu-Indian superiority rather
than about the loveliness of geographic diversity. Mechanical people were
arranged in scenes portraying the ins and outs of Vedic life in India, from
medicine to blacksmithing to education. The second part of the ride showed all
the great Indian scholars, sages and otherwise high achievers, such as the
“Inventor of Astronomy” and the “Greatest Epic Writer in History.” There was
Hindi narration that I would have loved to understand, but alas, my language
skills continue to fail me. Once again, the kids were entranced while I was
left wondering why no anthropological studies have been done on this overt
display of Hindu chauvinism.
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| Boat Ride/It's A Small (Indian) World |
Our
last and most hurried stop was the temple itself, a massive display of the
extraordinary talents and dedication of India’s many fine craftsmen still in
practice. The white marble temple sits on an enormous platform of red
sandstone, bordered by detailed bas relief frescoes of elephant herds. The
inside of the temple is completely white, and every inch of the ceiling and
walls are covered with the most intricately carved patterns I’ve ever seen.
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| Crazy carvings inside... |
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| I wasn't kidding about the glitz. |
Each ceiling, pillar and room is different, and flanked by enormous wooden
doors covered with similarly complex handwork. The center of each room was
occupied by different idols of gods, in displays as glittery, shiny and tacky
as the artisanal craftsmanship was impressive. As I was walking from the ride
to the temple, Ghozia, an 8th grade girl with a good head on her
shoulders and a very genuine demeanor, started chatting with me. In class, I
try to speak only English, to get them used to speaking even if they don’t know
all the words. But at Akshardam I felt I could be a bit more casual, and tried out
my Hindi with them more than I usually do. Most of the kids were shocked that I
knew any Hindi at all, let alone enough to get by. Ghozia saw how hard I was
trying and was so supportive of my learning, speaking slowly, repeating
herself, and chastising the other kids who said that I couldn’t understand
anything she was saying. “Ma’am speaks Hindi!” she would say. At some point she
took my hand, and we enjoyed the walk to the temple together. After we had
paused to take off our shoes before entering, she stood waiting for me and then
stuck out her hand again, as if to say, “Aren’t you forgetting something?” It
was so nice to be able to have so much one-on-one time not just with her, but
with several students throughout the day.
My
students were so lovely that day. Not once did I hear a single kid complain
about anything. For anyone that has
ever been on a field trip as a child or an adult, I would venture to say that a
day on a field trip without complaining is as rare and precious as Indian
traffic without honking, as a tropical vacation without sunburn. The children
were so genuinely excited to be there, to be having fun and treated to this
trip. Their expressions of happiness at my presence made me feel so joyful and
privileged to know them. It was for this
reason that the attitude of the gym teacher toward me was so jarring. [**Quick background which has no immediate
relevance to the Akshardam expedition: For those of you who may not know me
well, I never was the sporty type. Quite the contrary, nothing at school filled
me with more dread and loathing than physical education. When we would go to
the weight room, I would sneak in my crocheting and hide in the corner,
knotting away. I was always in the last three to finish the mile run, and I
remember thinking after the two-mile run in ninth grade that I would die from
exploding lungs. And what always added insult to injury was the attitude of the
gym teachers that “anyone can do it,” and “there are no winners and losers,”
when there are clear victories and failures, and we were being asked to perform
tasks that required a very specific skill set that some people are naturally
gifted in while others are not. I personally am fairly good at learning
languages. But I’m not going to teach someone for whom language acquisition is
especially difficult and say, “you’re just not trying hard enough,” which is
EXACTLY what gym teachers say. Anywho, in conclusion, I am not a fan of PE in
general and have a real aversion to many of the gym teachers I have met in my life,
Ms. Marsella of Clear View excluded. That being said, I have a particular
vendetta against the gym teacher at my school here, who is the general
disciplinarian of the place, meaning that he is the one called in (or barging
in, as in my case) to smack the children. In my opinion, he seems to take a
perverse pleasure in slapping and making kids afraid of him, and has never been
particularly respectful of me. On several occasions when I have chosen to take
a class outside, he has sent kids to tell me that he says I’m not allowed to be
on the playground at that time for no apparent reason, to which I reply, “Well,
if he feels strongly enough about it, he can come tell me himself.”**]
Before
we boarded the buses to go home, the kids of course had to line up by class
again so they could be counted. Though
this sounds like a simple and logical task, it was complicated by the fact that
no one person was doing the counting. Each class had the monitors count, and
then some of the classes the teachers would count as well. Everyone was moving
around so every number was different and it took forever. The teacher of 8C was
nowhere to be found and the kids had already counted themselves, but the gym
teacher, stupid clipboard in hand, kept repeating that he was missing numbers
for 7A and 8C. Several times I told him the count until finally I yelled to be
heard, “8C pura hai!” which means all
of 8C was there. Even then I had to say it several times before he paid
attention to me, at which point he made fun of my accent by repeating the
phrase in a stereotypical American accent, and continued talking that way,
cracking up all the kids and making me look like an idiot. And that’s when I
dropkicked him. Just kidding.
The
bus ride home was fairly uneventful, other than the tons of food being forced
into my face by my eager students and more singing. When we pulled up to the
school, the kids let out a massive cheer at least as big as the one they yelled
when we left. I had a great day and was so happy to have been able to accompany
them. Some questions that were raised for me by this trip
include the following:
- What is communicated to students by the fact that the one field trip of the semester was to an overtly religious site whose mission is to educate and reinforce notions about the Hindu faith?
- How did the non-Hindu students feel about this trip? How did their parents feel? How would I feel as a child if I had gone on a field trip that was so overtly Christian?
- Do my kids enjoy me in class as much as they did at Akshardam?
- Could it have touched my lil’ heart more that a thirteen year old wanting to walk around holding my hand? (Answer: no).
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