Rain, Words, and Healing Prayer

The rain came last night.

India has three seasons: Winter (November – February), Summer (March – June), and Monsoon (July – October). The Monsoon brings cooler temperatures: it was 105°F yesterday; this morning it was in the low 80s. The only downside is, well, all the rain. And the fact that it's the end of mango season.

Classes are going well. I’m at the institute 9-5. Classes run 11-4, with a lunch break. In the evening, I spend 2-3 more hours studying before dinner. It’s wonderful to feel my Hindi coming back. My listening and reading comprehension is decent. My speaking and vocabulary need improvement. I’m still nervous to speak in class unless we’re discussing something that I’m passionate about, like religion or politics or love.

Tea time between classes

My favorite class is Shabdavali, which means “vocabulary.” The director of the institute teaches that class and we focus on word formation (e.g., prefixes and suffixes) and idioms. Hindi is primarily made up of words of Sanskrit and Persian origin, and I’m quickly realizing how important it is to know the origin of words.

For example, nouns derived from Sanskrit are often turned into adjectives by adding an –i (sukh means “happiness” and sukhi means “happy”), whereas adjectives derived from Persian are often turned into nouns by adding an –i (khush means “happy” and khushi means “happiness”). Hindi also has words derived from Arabic (kitab, “book”), Turkish (top, “cannon”), Portuguese (padri, “priest”), French (sabun, “soap”) Japanese (rickshaw), Chinese (chai) and English (afasar, “officer”).

Have you ever heard that Eskimos have 50 different words for snow? Well, it seems that the Hindi analog is prostitution. I don’t know; maybe English has just as many euphemisms for sex as Hindi does for prostitution? For example, you have to be extremely careful with the verb chalna, to move or go.

Part of the problem is the double meaning of the word kaam: in Sanskrit it means “pleasure” and in Persian it means “work.” So let’s say you wanted to say a place where people work, literally: “work house.” The Sanskrit suffix for house is –alay and the Persian suffix is –ghar. If you said kaam-ghar (Persian kaam + Persian ghar), you’d be fine. But if you said kaam-alay (Persian kaam + Sanskrit alay), people would assume that you were saying “pleasure house” (Sanskrit kaam + Sanskrit alay), i.e., a brothel. Instead, you should use the Sanskrit word for work (kary), so kary-alay. I find this sort of thing fascinating!

St. Andrew's Church, CNI, Jaipur

Perhaps of more interest to non-Hindi speakers: I visited another church last Sunday, St. Andrew's Church. Apart from my mistake of sitting directly beneath one of the loudspeakers, I felt much more comfortable at this church than at the Calvary Bible Church last week. The worship service was very similar to the Lutheran church services in Ranchi that I am used to. Women covered their heads, but there was no sex segregation. Lay members (both male and female) read scripture, led prayer, and presented announcements. There was no communion; they only have it on the first Sunday of the month. The sermon was (only) 35 minutes. The translation of the Lord's Prayer was slightly different from the one the Lutherans in Ranchi used. My Hindi is definitely better than it was 3 years ago in Ranchi. That’s encouraging.

Clock tower of St. Andrew's Church

After the service, an older lay man told me about the history of the church and took me up on the roof to see the church's famous clock tower. He called himself Johnny Mamu, and he was horrified to learn that I was a vegetarian. He tried to convince me that not eating meat was against the Bible – you know, the passage in Acts where Peter has a vision in which God tells him to eat animals traditionally considered unclean. 

People waiting for healing prayer

The man's sister spent a long time after the service performing healing prayers. She was a lay woman, but seemed very well respected in the church. I don't think the Church of North India ordains women yet. Hindus often come to this woman for healing and later choose to be baptized and join the church. About 20 people crowded around her, waiting for their turn, some with small children. Her prayers included frequent repetition of nonsense words. Her voice rose and fell in volume. She didn’t directly touch the person she was praying over – there was a small space between her hands and the other person’s body, as if to leave room for the Holy Spirit. Sometimes she would suddenly raise her voice and speak harshly, as though performing an exorcism. The people seemed to interpret their ailments as caused by evil spirits. This woman’s prayer invoked the Holy Spirit, who then drove out the evil spirits. Often the person she was praying over would sit down suddenly, as though knocked over by the Holy Spirit.

Knocked over by the Holy Spirit

It was interesting to see this sort of prayer happening in a mainline Protestant church like the Church of North India. And to see that it was a woman leading it. 

For my final project at AIIS, I'm going to write about Christians in Jaipur. I'm trying to visit as many different churches as possible. This Sunday I'm planning to visit a Catholic church. Let me know if you have any suggestions of questions I should the people I meet at these churches.