Encountering Indian Culture

I have been talking about Japan, China, and here in San Francisco in this blog. In my past experience. I also visited several countries where not so many people were visiting that time. All the trip, I enjoyed. I liked to visit countries where I had not visited. Visiting new countries excited me.

In 1996, I was in charge of Business Development in Emerging Market and visited several countries. Countries I visited were "Vietnam", "Burma", and "India". Especially I have strong impression and earnestness on India. "Vietnam" and "Burma" were somewhat familiar and could feel these countries to be close to my own original culture. But India was different. Different in many ways and all of my memories are nice and fresh. For the purpose of formation of Joint Venture between my then employer and Indian company, I visited Mumbai 6 times in 1996 and had lots of activities with my Indian friends.

Siva's Cow, Nandi
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One day after business was over early, around 4:00 pm, my Indian friends took me to hotel, they gave me Indian traditional clothes, asked me to put them on, and took them to "Siva" temple. "Siva" is the highest ranked god among hundreds of gods Indian Religion, "Hindu". Wearing Indian traditional clothes, I walked into the temple. I thought I knew how to walk into a temple. I saw small tower in front of main building of the temple. Since there were long line of people going through the tower, I tried to pass the tower and walk directly to temple's main building. My Indian friends stopped me before temple people approaching to stop me, and directed me to line at the end of people's long line. I frowned and asked why.

The tower was Siva's Transportation Aid Cow's tower and the Cow himself is God. The god's name is "Nandi". "Nandi" is not just "Siva" transportation aid, but watch people and select who can walk to "Siva" main temple to see Siva. Nandi plays musical instrument when Siva dances.

It was nice experience and it was quite impressive experience. The English "Holly Cow" might have come from Nandi. All the cultures have different customs and interpretation of life. That makes visit so interesting!

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Shaw Funami
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