Mahirāvani

We’re five days into the Rickshaw Run, and we decided this morning at the start of what would be a long but fascinating drive, to come up with a name for our rickshaw. We figured that would give us someone else to talk to, and a way to verbally and respectfully encourage the beast up hills and down valleys and across rivers.

What to name the thing? We’ve gone with an Italian / Sicilian type of theme, so we started thinking about some sort of Italian name. Joe suggested it be a female name, kind of like how people name boats with female names. Had to be someone important, or regal. Only a name with royal heritage connected to it was worthy of hauling our asses over hill and dale in India on this insane adventure.

We did some research and landed on a Sicilian queen. Specifically, Constance of Sicily (Reghina Costanza in Italian), who was the reigning Queen of Sicily from 1194 - 1198, jointly with her spouse for three years, and then with her infant son Frederick II, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor in 1198. Constanza was the heiress of the Norman kings of Sicily. She was also the Holy Roman Empress and later Dowager by marriage to Henry VI, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor.

Constanza’s life was filled with political intrigue, power struggles and ultimately triumph. I’m not sure if anyone has made a movie or written a historical fiction novel about her, but someone should. If you’re interested, read about her on Wikipedia. Fascinating. She was so important to Sicilian history and so famous that in the Divine Comedy, Dante places Constance in Paradise:

"This other radiance that shows itself
to you at my right hand, a brightness kindled
by all the light that fills our heaven - she

has understood what I have said: she was
a sister, and from her head, too, by force,
the shadow of the sacred veil was taken.

But though she had been turned back to the world
against her will, against all honest practice,
the veil upon her heart was never loosed.

This is the splendor of the great Costanza,
who from the Swabians' second gust engendered
the one who was their third and final power."

— Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto III, lines 109-120, Mandelbaum translation

Reghina Costanza. So fitting. Too long to say over and over again, so we’ve named her “Gina”.

We drove through hill country today, ascending to who knows how many meters in elevation through spectacular mountainous countrysides. On the way, Joe saw a roadside shop selling the type of colorful pompons that you see on Sicilian donkey carts, which he had been looking for. Turns out they were being crafted by blind and disabled people who were living at a special school for blind and disabled kids in the middle of the mountains that we ultimately had a tour of. Stay tuned for that story in a future post.

Anyways, Gina is pretty decked out. I’m sure we’ll find more stuff to adorn her with as the journey continues.Read more