Lately, I've been watching a Discovery Channel series on the Mysteries of Asia, specifically The Lost Temples of India. The specials show the enormous temples that King Rajaraja built in an attempt to stave off being reincarnated as a worm "or worse". They show men whose lives are devoted to the adorning of the many gods they worship here. Their silence a mask of the ancient world, their devotion to piety and tranquility is inspiring though. We're shown a 58-year old man walking the streets, shirtless, in a white skirt-like loin cloth and white and red painted on his forehead with a basket full of flowers to used to adorn statues.
It's a pretty fascinating cultural study, not to mention the section talking about the training of elephants to move 40-ton slabs of granite to create Kind Rajaraja's temples. The trainers, riders seem to be connected to the animals, symbiotic in a way as they apply apply pressure on the stomachs to guide them while riding and different oscillations with their voice as they bathe them in the river. Scrubbing with hand-sized brushes. I'd like that to be me one day. Well...at least for a little while.
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