Pictures? Hopefully?

So the first series of pictures I have is themed around the Indian religious landscape (Kaitlyn, eat your heart out). It's definitely something which, at least in my experience, is much less common in America than in India. Here, it seems like nearly everywhere we go there's some kind of religious imagery going on. It started off at the Taj Palace Hotel, the 5-star international hotel we stayed at for the first few nights in Delhi. Right there in the lobby, I found this waiting for me:

Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. By far the most common deity I have seen in Jaipur and Delhi, Ganesha is depicted in a different way in nearly every representation. A particularly old statue stands outside our school:

To continue along the representations-of-Ganesha line, there is a pretty large Ganesha temple on the way to school. I didn't try to take a picture of it (it might be considered disrespectful to take pictures inside the actual shrine), but the main idol in there is a huge orange statue - probably about 7 feet tall, 3-4 feet across, and bright orange. It was crazy.


But Ganesh is far from the only religious figure I've encountered while being here. Here are a few other statues seen at various locations (read: mostly outside people's houses. These were major creeping jobs):









Now, part of the reason religious landscape was so interesting to me was definitely the omnipresence of religious iconography. But the other side to religious landscape is the plurality of faiths that exist side by side here. In Kerala, the interplay between Hinduism and Christianity has always struck me as the key religious coexistence. In Jaipur, however, there seem to be many more faiths that interact and often, find a way to mix together. I've seen a lot of Jainist statues, a good amount of Buddhist influence, and solid amounts of Muslim and Christian influence. I want to look into this more as the summer goes on, but here are some preliminary pictures I have:



These three statues (though all of different size, composition, and location) are all Jain (I think). The prevalence of Jainism here is definitely interesting. From my understanding, at least, Jainists were supposed to be very detached from worldly things. But here, there seems to be something of an emphasis placed on the physical representation of Jainism, which seems sort of contradictory. I don't know, maybe I just don't understand Jainism well enough (cue Kaitlyn to the rescue?)



So I'm not entirely sure what the first picture is - I thought it looked like a mosque, but a friend said he was pretty sure it was an orthodox church. Input appreciated. But the second one I'm pretty sure is a mosque. I would write something more here, but it's late and I'm tired and I have so much homework to do (still). More to come later, folks.