I got the bracelet in India. I thought the 50-rupee red string bracelet (75 cents) would adorn my wrist nicely as a reminder of my trip. Photos could only depict so much, and my memory tends to fade. The bracelet was a rich reminder of the people whose lives I entered briefly and the mark they made on mine. I also figured I deserved to buy myself something special since the end of my trip was a flurry of buying gifts that would suffice for the consumerist nature of the holiday season back in America.<\/p>\n
Symbolism is deeply interwoven into everyday life in India. Houses are often decorated with orange marigolds, tiny temples line roads, and a reverence for nature is felt in the air. When there is a god in essentially everything, it is easy to understand why acts of devotion are pervasive. For Hindus, the red string bracelet is another abstraction of faith, loyalty, and blessings.<\/p>\n
I stepped into the realm of Hindu practice and its manifestation in everyday life. I witnessed its power over followers as they made treks to temples, performed fire sacrifices, and danced with Shiva. India and Hinduism have shown me a world dictated by a different set of gods. It is difficult to see caste and class play such an important role in everyday life and politics, knowing that its basis is from a Vedic text dating thousands of years ago. This seemingly \u201cturned back\u201d on reason is hard to grasp when some of its social effects are so harsh.<\/p>\n
However, living in a world of symbolism and religion for a short amount of time cast new light on my own religious background. Being raised a \u201c\u2018lax-Catholic,\u201d I have seen and experienced a religion that has its own set of dogmatic standards and laws. I have drunk the \u201cblood of Christ\u201d and worn my white virginal dress to communion. I was told a lie that my love for God would save me from condemnation in hell. The logic seemed to be: \u201cif God says you jump, then you jump.\u201d Uneasy with the way God was supposed to dictate my actions and the fatalism that was ruling my life, I abandoned this belief. What world do we live in, where human action is based from a set of divine supernatural powers instead of rationality?<\/p>\n
I have given my red bracelet symbolic meaning. I guess I too have succumbed to making meaning out of this world in my own way, as many do with religion. This bracelet is not in fact a sign of devotion, but rather a reminder of my experience abroad. Religion has offered me nothing but an illogical way of understanding the world. Instead, I look at my bracelet as a reminder of my real lived experience, rather than a supernatural force guiding the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got the bracelet in India. I thought the 50-rupee red string bracelet (75 cents) would adorn my wrist nicely as a reminder of my trip. Photos could only depict so much, and my memory tends to fade. The bracelet was a rich reminder of the people whose lives I entered briefly and the mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[95],"tags":[54,18,109],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":903,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902\/revisions\/903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/chidint\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}