MovieChat Forums > The Man Who Knew Infinity (2016) Discussion > Forbidden to cross the sea

Forbidden to cross the sea

posted 9 years ago by anthonylchamberlain
1 reply | jump to latest

I did not understand why it was forbidden for Raman-noodle to cross the sea. There were some Indians sitting next to me so I asked one and he said "I don't know. Ask my dad" (I shoulda known a young kid would not know;-). Anyway his dad told me that since Brahmans are at the top of the caste system, they can not cross the sea because everywhere else is "impure". Someone else ytold me it was sometimes even true for rivers.

What I did not understand was whether it was crossing water that was bad (sea, river) or just leaving India (or their particular area of India) in general.

[–] indranee19 9 years ago

I will answer your question and ignore your idiotic "raman-noodle" reference to nothing and no one. 

The lore was about crossing "Kala Pani", which translates to "black water". It refers to the sea (which was mainly the Arabian Sea or the Indian Ocean as that was the route most seafaring ships would take in order to get to Europe or Africa. The idea lay in the belief that once you do that, you will no longer be able to carry out the rituals of the caste to which you belong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kala_pani_(taboo)

Obviously, many people ignored this warning, including the famous and revered Vivekananda for his much-talked about journey to the Chicago conference at the Parliament of the World's Religions in 1893 -- and he was not "cast out" (pun intended).

If you have a difficult time understanding this, try to compare it to the garlic ritual used in old Europe to keep vampires out. People had wierd beliefs all over the world, not just in a land now known as India. 

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Fear not for the future; weep not for the past -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
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