Glossary of Potentially Unfamiliar-to-the-Western-Ear Terms:

Aranmula: the Keralan village that has become my new home. The Vijnana Kala Vedi Cultural Center, where I’m staying for the initial 3 months of my trip, is situated here.

Chai: Indian term for tea, also the Indian concept of tea—chai starts off in the same way as would your standard cup of tea. Then heaps of sugar and cups of creamy milk are added to the brew. Always tasty and typically served steaming hot in a petite glass cup/a giant shot glass.

Churidar: a knee-length tunic worn by women (mostly the younger population—more elderly women tend to wear saris) in India. Worn with pants and accented with a shawl called a dupatta

Dhoti: a long swath of fabric, most often white but frequently printed with stylishly colorful floral designs, worn by most of the men around Aranmula. Like the sari, this piece of fabric is precariously wrapped, but only around the waist so it resembles a skirt. Or the full-length skirt-like dhoti can be folded and tucked in half so as to resemble what I’m sure my brother would call, “an adult-sized diaper.”

Kallam: (formally known as kallam-eruttu) yet another traditional art form unique to Kerala: something of a Hindu version of Tibetan sand mandalas, these devotional drawings make use of multi-colored rice powder to depict Hindu deities. These elaborate powder paintings take many hours to create and only a few seconds to destroy. They are created and subsequently destroyed as part of pujas or Hindu ceremonies.

Ghat: riverbanks, usually with a set of stairs or an inclined platform leading down to the river. The riverside ghats are quite happening places: along with the temple, the banks of the Pampa are a hub of activity in Aranmula. So what exactly happens along the ghats? People gather, most often in the hours surrounding sunrise and sunset, to bathe, to do laundry, or just to hang out. At first this aspect of Aranmula life seemed to me quite inviting, and it still does as an observer. I was a bit turned off by ghat-side bathing and laundry when I discovered that the sewage of the upriver town of Kozhencherry flows straight into the Pampa.

Kathakali (pronounced Kah-tah-kah-lee): THE traditional art form of Kerala, a form of drama and dance done in Hindu temples, codified roughly 300 years ago. Performances are often commissioned as offerings to a specific Hindu deity and the actors go ahead with the performance regardless of whether there are human spectators or not—the gods are always watching. The average Kathakali presentation begins around 9 PM and will finish up by 5 AM the next morning. Needless to say, the dancers and the musicians accompanying them need to have a lot of stamina. The movements of the dance are relatively slow moving and stately, combining body position, facial expressions, and mudras (hand gestures that carry significant meanings). Actors are dressed in elaborate costumes and their faces are painted to correspond with their character (the hero’s face is always green, the villain is customarily red and black). The stories performed are typically taken from the Ramayana or the Mahabharata (although I was among the audience witnessing the first Kathakali performance ever based on a Bible story: a Christmas-week Kathakali-rendition debut of the birth of Jesus.)

Karnatic (Music): traditional Hindu devotional music, South India style. I started by studying karnatic vocal music and soon after was able to graduate to karnatic violin.

Kerala: a state situated on the southwestern tip of India, the paradise in which I’m spending the first three months of my trip.

Malayalam: the state language of Kerala. Supposedly Malayalam has one of the most complicated syllabic alphabets and grammatical structures of the world’s languages. The term “Malayali” refers to a Malayalam speaker, or in other words, a person from Kerala.

Mudras: hand gestures carrying significant meanings in Indian (mostly Hindu, also Buddhist) arts, both visual (like the mural painting I’m currently studying) performing (commonly used in Kathakali). Yoga makes use of mudras, too.

Sari: most common attire for women around Kerala, consisting of several yards of fabric wound around the waist, tucked into an underskirt, and typically draped over one shoulder (for someone unfamiliar to sari wearing, all these folds and drapes and tucks tend to feel rather precarious). Worn with a tight matching blouse that reaches around the bottom of the ribs. Sari fabric is often brightly colored, but the distinct traditional Kerala-style sari is off-white with gold edging.

Sabarimala Temple Festival and Pilgrimage: Sabarimala is a famous Hindu temple and pilgrimage site located less than 100 km from Aranmula. Dedicated to Lord Ayappa, the son of two male gods Vishnu and Shiva (yes, but the legend of Ayappa’s birth isn’t that messed up: Shiva was at the time assuming his inherent female form, Mohini) and one of the most fervently-followed members of the Hindu pantheon here in Kerala (Ayappa was born in the state of Kerala to take care of a evil sorceress type who was supporting the rule of a terrible tyrant), the temple holds a 41-day festival every year that pilgrims from around Southern India flock to by the millions. This is the most significant pilgrimage site in Kerala, drawing over 4 million annually. But by far mostly men: menstruating women are not allowed to enter the Sabarimala temple. Over the past month, I’ve seen 1000’s of pilgrims (and only 3 little girls and one old woman among them), distinguished by their distinctive attire: dhotis of black or orange (considered sacred for being the colors that show the dirt of Kerala’s roads the least), typically bare feet, and a package carried on the head containing a coconut filled with ghee and other items to symbolically sustain them on their spiritual journey.

Tharayil: the name of the house I’m living in during my stay in Aranmula. Virtually every house I’ve seen around Kerala has a name: strangely, unlike all the other signs and things to read around here, most of the house name’s are written in roman script instead of Malayalam.

Vijnana Kala Vedi (a.k.a. VKV): a cultural school in a Keralan village called Aranmula, the wonderful place where I’m spending the first 3 months of my adventures in India. If you can find the map of India somewhere on this horrendously long blog page, you can locate Aranmula and VKV on the subcontinent’s southwestern tip.

Wallah: a Hindi term for someone who sells a certain good or service. A guy selling chai (tea) is the chai-wallah, someone selling snacks is a snack-wallah, a man soliciting rickshaw rides is a rickshaw-wallah.