Stuff I'll Never Understand

I had two major head scratches this weekend.  First, S and I went to the mall for dinner and a movie, specifically Pizza Hut pizza and the new Iron Man movie.  We couldn’t eat but half of what we ordered, so got it packaged and were on our way to the 4^th floor to see the movie. Then I remembered that I was harassed last time we went to the movies because I had an apple in my purse.  I gave S the pizza and told him it was his turn to shout them down.  As we went into our separate metal detectors and security pat-down lines (women and men) I heard S.’s voice getting louder, telling the person he “…bought the pizza, it belongs to me, I’m not going to eat it now, “.  Then I couldn’t hear because the woman was complaining to me about my camera in my purse, which I dismissed as too bad and moved on, mostly because I had 2 oranges and an apple in my purse that were hidden that I didn’t want her to confiscate.  I told S to ask for the manager, who appeared, calmly took our seat numbers (oh yes, we have assigned seats), and told us our pizza would be delivered to us in our seats.  We went in, totally perplexed, and sure enough, in about 5 minutes an usher walked up to us with our pizza now out of its bag, and on a plastic tray for our eating convenience.  What exactly did that accomplish, we wondered….. The lights went down and we put our pizza back in the box to take home.

Second, I’m in Ajmer and Jodphur this week watching Master Trainers with their trainees, and in Ajmer there is a big-deal tomb of a Muslim saint by the name of Chiste or something like that and the Hindus are keen on this saint as well.  Anyway, everyone said it wasn’t to be missed, so I thought I would take it in before my afternoon meeting to set up for the training.  When we arrived in Ajmer, my driver went to a parking lot (of sorts) and a tuk-tuk driver agreed to take me to the tomb and redeliver me to this same spot. We took a painfully bumpy ride to close to the entrance of the tomb, where I had to surrender my shoes to a friend of his, and get a prayer cap so I could enter the holy area.  Fine.  I had to walk about 2 more blocks before I got inside the huge edifice, and the streets were very hot, even though it was marble.  I wondered if I would burn my feet before I even got there, but I made it inside, and there were areas inside of areas inside of areas.  There were hundreds of people in each area who were making a pilgrimage to this holy site, many buying flowers to offer, or souvenirs of their visit.  I kept walking, looking for the occasional gunny sack on the floor to get some heat relief, and finally I came to the actual tomb entrance.  At the entrance there was a young man with a collection of peacock feathers taped together that he used like a giant fly swatter, only he was swatting people, or rapping them on the head as they passed through the entrance.  I thought it was part of the experience so I stood in line to get my peck, but when he saw me he motioned for me to get out of line.  Perplexed, I did what he said, because there was quite a line in front and in back.  At first I thought he wouldn’t admit me because I was a woman, but other women were walking in.  Next I thought perhaps he wanted me to make a donation to his partner just outside the door, so I went over there, where this fellow was writing out receipts for people making donations (?) but he said something to the fellow at the door and the doorman looked at me and shook his head no and said something.  The receipt guy motioned that he was sorry but I wasn’t getting in.  I stood there a second, wondering if there were another way in, but my feet were still burning so I decided there would be no tomb viewing for me.  My shoulders were covered, my head was covered, and I had on long pants, so I think I wasn’t wearing offensive clothing. Of all the things I didn’t understand, I wish I had understood why people were getting the feather-bonk on the head.  S and Abba went in February and S reported tapping was not a part of his experience.  Hmmmm.  Clueless.