Mohamed's birthday

On the spur of the moment I decided to take an auto rickshaw tour of some of the more famous caves in and around Kanhangod. I have the time and money to spend and the caves sounded intriguing. I got picked up from the Annanda Ashram at 8:30 am.

An interesting side note: Lately I've been sleeping like I've been shot in the head. My alarm doesn't wake me up. The guy who brings tea and coffee to your room at 6 am and pounds on your door doesn't wake me up. I managed to drag myself out of bed at 7:30 am. Just barely in time for breakfast.

Anyways, as we were driving through the town of Kanhangod I noticed a lot of green streamers. My driver told me that it was in celebration of Mohammed's birthday. Like Christmas for Christians. I didn't think much of it at the time.

However, when we were stopped by a crowd of Muslim men, I began to think about it a little more. Images of Muslims firing guns off in celebration of 9/11 flashed through my mind. India has always seemed pretty safe to me. There is a bit of tension (Ok, a lot of tension) in the north, but down south everyone seems to just get along fairly well.

So, I was nervous. I almost asked my driver to just keep going and not stop for them. But you know maybe then they would have blown us up or something.

They surrounded the vehicle and...

… began forcing juice on us. Oh no. My worst nightmare. Too sweet, artificial juice. Please spare me. Over the course of the next two hours we were accosted three times. They almost threw juice and other treats upon us. They were stopping all the traffic. The mood was ecstatic and celebratory. These men (about my age) were the same age as the young men blowing themselves up in Iraq. Here, instead of blowing up vehicles, they were showering us, a Hindu and a white man, with prassad (holy gifts) from Mohamed.

It was pretty amazing. Later I watched a parade. Hundreds of immaculately dressed Muslim men marched through the streets singing and dancing. There were a lot of spectators, however, being the only white guy there I drew a lot of attention. A lot of good attention. They waved, signaled for me to take photos of them and asked my name. It was pretty amazing.

I've heard, from many different people, that Islam is fundamentally violent. That it truly does encourage killing in Allah's name. I refuse to believe that. It doesn't seem possible to me. There are a lot of killing going on in the name of Allah. But, there is a lot of killing going on in the name of capitalism.

And, at the same time that Muslims in south India were giving me juice, Muslims in Iraq were killing American soldiers. And, at the same time that I was taking photos of laughing Muslims in South India, American soldiers were shooting Muslims in Iraq.

What a crazy, flip flopping, thought provoking world.