money = evil, Hari Krishnas = weird

Today Abby, my Persian travel mate left for Goa. This morning, while I was eating breakfast on the terrace of the hotel, this man, Boaz from Israel, said he had arranged a tour for the day around Delhi and would anyone like to join him? I had initially planned on walking around and going to the art gallery today, but it sounded like it could be fun, so I told him I might be interested in going. I decided to go. Delhi is huge, so it is hard to see much without a car. Well, it turns out that Boaz paid way too much for the car hire and then expected me to pay half! Meanwhile, I thought that he was just looking for company on a tour he'd already paid for, but I had thought I would pitch in a bit anyway. Ultimately, it sucked. We had a pretty good day which ended in a bit of a fight. I told him I wouldn't have agreed to come if I thought I was going to have to eat half of his mistake. I mean, the guy is a bit of an idiot!!
Earlier, he wanted to catch a bike rickshaw so I said I would negotiate the price (he was absolutely clueless about these things!). I negotiated 20Rs, and when we got to the site I paid the driver 20Rs. Boaz, the idiot, asked if it was enough and then took the 20 back and gave the driver 50, which he took, happily. I was like, wtf? He didn't understand that I had negotiated this price already... argh. It's so silly really, but it drove me nuts!

But yeah, I'm so frustrated over this simple issue. I still have to give him a bit more money, and here I am feeling angry and spiteful about the whole thing. I hate the way money makes us act.

In other news, I went to this super weird psychedelic show at the Hari Krishna temple in Delhi today. I don't even know how to begin to describe it! It was just totally wild, tacky, a little scary, super cheesy, hilarious fun. Boaz didn't want to see the show because it cost too much, so I did it alone. It was worth the money actually.

It began with a little intro video displayed on 12 tvs which were surrounded by mirrors to make it look like there was a globe of tvs. It was pretty cool actually, even if the graphics on the video were a bit old school. Then you go into this room where there is a life-size figure of Krishna, Arjun and his chariot. [Some of you may know that I am slightly terrified of mannequins, wax figures, any of these sorts of things, so this was actually a bit scary for me.] All these lights start flashing around and a voice booms overhead starting the story of how Krishna convinced Arjun not to fear death and send his troops to war. The next room is like the first, only the figures are behind glass and when you enter a bright light shines on you so that all you can see is your reflection in the glass. Then the loud voice (like god himself!) asks who you see in the reflection. Who are you? Are you your face? Are you your body? Are you your hands? Are you your eyes? etc. Then he asserts that we are not the container of our soul, but that we are our soul. It was rather effective. When the light changes to behind the glass, we see that the figures are actually the stages of life, from baby to skeleton. After this, the most terrifying room of all! A dark room with all these huge scary images, flashing lights and loud, booming scoldings about the motivations in our life. We are either driven by goodness (not scary), passion (a little scary) or ignorance (very scary). The Indian guy, Samir, who was taking me through the Sound & Light tour thought I was funny for being scared, but he stood with me through all the sets, especially this one. There seemed to be a lot of these mannequin rooms and sets, at some point there was also a room where I watched a video on reincarnation (that was good). The show went back and forth telling us about how we should behave in modern day, and back to the story of Arjun and Krishna. From what I understood, it seems that Arjun doesn't know if he should go to war or not. Krishna comes to Arjun on his chariot and tells him not to fear: everyone will die on both sides, except for Arjun, which gives him courage to follow the words of Krishna (weird, no?). The last room is a simple maze of mirrors which I was instructed to walk aimlessly through while listening to the Hari Krishna chant:

Hari Krishna Hari Krishna
Krishna Krishna
Hari Hari
Hari Rama Hari Rama
Rama Rama
Hari Hari

The more I know about Hari Krishnas, the stranger I think they are.