Lorre Weidlich -- Hyde Park Foreign Affairs Desk

This is the latest in an on-going series of reports by Hyde Park's well traveled friend and neighbor, Lorre Weidlich.

    India is known as the country of a festival a day. On any given day, somewhere in India, there is a festival. Unfortunately, in Bangalore, most festivals are celebrated with little public fan-fare. Not so everywhere in India. Pushkaram is a public festival, celebrated once a year at one of the twelve sacred rivers in India. This year it was celebrated at the Godavari River in the state of Andhra Pradesh, north of Karnataka where I live. The Godavari is one of India's major rivers, rivaling America's Mississippi River. It originates in the west, in Maharashtra, and flows across the country to the Bay of Bengal. The bridge that crosses it at Rajahmundry is one of India's longest.

DrakshaRaman Lord Siva temple

    My friend Jagadish is an Andhrite and a practicing Hindu, and he asked me to join his family for their Pushkaram pilgrimage. We left Bangalore on Thursday afternoon for the overnight train ride to Rajahmundry. Because most of the conversation on the train was in Telegu, I was able to join in only occasionally. The next morning, as the train passed through Vijayawada, SriArchala conversed in Telegu via cell phone with her paternal grandmother, who was to join us for the return trip. Her conversation caused everyone around to laugh except me, until someone translated. She had told her grandmother to learn English quickly because I didn't know any Telegu.

    In Rajahmundry, we were met by Venkata Swamy, Shailaja's father, a high-ranking official in the Department of Endowments of Andhra Pradesh. His position ensured me of a hotel room: he told the hotel that he needed a room for someone who had come all the way from the US to bathe in the Godavari River. As we piled into the government-provided vehicle, a journalist talked to us briefly in Telegu. He wanted to interview me the following day, after I had seen the festival. I had not realized that I would be a local celebrity!

    During the two days that followed, my celebrity status was confirmed. I thought I caught a glimpse of a Westerner at my hotel, and the local paper had a story about a Frenchman filming the festival. They could have been one and the same. Other than that, I appeared to be the only Westerner in a city of roughly 20,000, with a daily crowd of at least 1,000,000 pilgrims. When I ordered breakfast from room service, the woman who took my order said, "Welcome to India". The man who delivered my order gave me a speech about how big-hearted Americans were. Then he waited expectantly.

    That day we visited several temples outside Rajahmundry. The most significant was the DrakshaRaman Lord Siva temple. It had a story: Ravana (the demon of Ramayana fame) asked Siva to occupy him, as his atman (soul). Siva did so, making Ravana powerful. When Ravana was finally destroyed, the atman fell to earth in four pieces, one piece at the location of this temple. That piece grew into a lingam¹. The lingam stopped growing at 14 feet after Siva was convinced that if it kept growing, no one would be able to see the end of it. We began at the top of the 14-foot lingam and made our way to its base, from one shrine to the next.

    Visiting a Hindu temple involves moving from shrine to shrine, making an offering at each one. At each one, the priest performs pooja (worship). Pooja consists of different elements including, commonly, the ringing of a bell by the priest; repeating the words of the priest; being given fruit or flowers which