St. Aloysius is a religious college with a chapel painted by Antonio Moscheni in the late 1800’s. Pictures are not allowed inside, so we only have the beautiful pale blue exterior of the chapel here.
But inside, the chapel is an homage to a huge artistic talent and his Jesuit religion. Moscheni painted the entire chapel (and I mean entire, there is barely a single surface that isn’t painted) with frescoes and oil on canvas in only 2 years. He was a talented painter who studied art under masters, but then went to Rome to study the masterpieces of the Vatican. Here he took the religious oath in the Society of Jesus and renounced his career calling. The religious supervisors knew of his talent, and not wanting to waste it, sent Moscheni out to paint different churches and chapels. Which is how he came to Mangalore to paint the St. Aloysius chapel.
It is an incredible place, and the talent and dedication it took to do this are mind boggling. There are saints painted around the ceiling of the nave, the story of the Virgin Mary on the left aisle and Mary and Joseph on the right aisle. It’s all so much to take in, and the fact that he did it so rapidly. We only wish we could have documented it somehow. Guess we should have bought the postcards! Oh well, next time.
After our much too quick visit here, we are whisked off to the Ocean Pearl hotel for our buffet lunch. We are the last bus to arrive – because we did our entire tour first – but the food is still plentiful, if not a little disappointing. It’s all a little too western, but it’s good western-ish food, and there is beer – Kingfisher beer - so there are no complaints here!
Plus, the absolute best thing about the lunch is dessert – it’s Jelabi! Just like in the movie The Lion. I’d been wanting to try it ever since we saw the movie on the plane – but hadn’t seen it anywhere – until now. And they are fabulous – it’s pure sugar, but it is oh so good sugar – melted and made syrupy, then mixed in this case with a little orange flavoring and cooled to form the delicious little curlicue circles. Alongside strawberry ice cream, and we’re good to go.
After lunch, we head back to the ship, with Sandra up front giving us a lesson on how to wrap a sari – that girl is too cute!
Then she asks if we want to go to the fish market, and of course we do – but of course the rest of the bus doesn’t – they just want to get back to the ship. We’re done arguing and beating our heads up against the wall of unadventurous travelers, so we just tell them to do whatever, we’re obviously outnumbered. After that, we spend most of our time on the way back watching the traffic, and marveling at the murals painted along the way – each with some sort of an educational message – they are great: TV hurts your brain, books fighting back, digital age holds you prisoner. Pretty incisive and interesting.
Finally back to the ship, those intrepid travelers rush off the bus, happy to be back in the cocoon. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
No comments:
Post a Comment