A South Indian Journey

by Michael Wood

  It was not long before we embarked on our first journeys with her through Tamil Nadu. Usually travelling on local buses, we touched on a pattern of life which is invisible in the tourist guidebooks. As we got to know the family better, I became ‘uncle’ to the girls (a catch-all honorific for any adult male who is neither immediate blood kin nor a marriage prospect). We followed Jaya’s progress in Bharata Natyam, dancing in their bare room, ducking under the washing line as she fiercely stamped out the measures with bangled feet. We sat in Brahmins’ houses in Tiruvengadu as they dispensed nostrums for her younger son’s ‘problems’. We were with her at the time of the death of her ‘cousin brother’ (Tamils marry within the family), aged thirty-five. ‘He was the best car mechanic in Chidambaram,’ said a neighbour as we sat comforting the dead man’s mother. ‘A very generous man who never overcharged.’

  Looking back, I realize that we understood very little of what we saw. For quite a while, for example, we never even knew her husband’s name, and we eventually noticed that Mala never used it, under any circumstances. Finally Bharati explained: ‘In traditional Tamil society you will never hear a wife call her husband by name. Only a westernized woman in Madras will say “my husband” but even she will not call him by his name. Mala refers to her husband simply as “he”, in the respectful form. This is the ancient Tamil custom; it is to protect him, for to name him would be inauspicious.’

  At the time I did not understand this wariness (which amounts to a taboo) among Tamils against expression of the emotions. It is not that they don’t believe in love. On the contrary, almost every aspect of their culture testifies to the overwhelming value they assign to it. But that is precisely the point. It is for just that reason that you will never hear a wife call her man by name, or see a husband and wife indulge in overt affection in public, still less praise each other. That would be to court bad luck. Children, too, need to be protected from the inauspicious, and not only from the evil eye but from the eye of love. New babies, for example, must not be looked at with ‘too much love’, or overpraised. Bharati said, ‘A mother’s love is so strong that it must be kept in check; too much can harm a child and too much love tempts fate.’ Love is most powerful and can be most cruel – ‘even for a demon parting is pain,’ it is said. So control of the emotions is a deep cultural trait in a land where auspiciousness is a most fervently sought after, yet a most fragile gift. Never tempt fate. It was another world, which I only very slowly came to understand, even at the simplest level.

  2

  The Astrologer

  One winter we went to stay in Chidambaram for a few weeks. It was the time of the December festival which takes place in hundreds of temples across the south. It is the annual celebration which marks the end of the dark half of the year and the coming of light; the inauspicious time is over. This is the heart of the cool season when mornings are clear and fresh, and the fields soft lilac in the early light. It is a time when outsiders flock into town. Temporary stalls line the streets around the temple; merchants from Maharashtra roll out their bales of cloth, towels, tools, tea sets, toys arid trinkets. This is the ancient round of commercial life in rural India with its small-town entertainments. In the temple courtyard you will see hucksters and fortune-tellers; readers of palms, interpreters of the chirping of lizards; wizards with green parakeets which pick out the cards telling your future; traditional medicine men with dried snakes and mummified bits in bottles, and gruesome phials of oily goo. In Bazaar Street an elephant wandered up and down, batting passers-by on the head and collecting rupees for his skinny young keeper. There was even a snake charmer in the fruit market, prodding an old and bored cobra into a semblance of a show.

  In East Car Street the marriage hall was given over to commerce for the whole month (there being no marriages during the inauspicious time). It was hung with the wares of travelling cloth traders, ladies’ underwear dealers from Lucknow and Bombay, sari salesmen from all over the south, from Kanchi to Trivandrum. Most of them were outsiders, ‘I am the only native of Chidambaram selling in all of East Car Street,’ said a man standing in front of an Aladdin’s cave of shining steel tiffin boxes, iddly steamers and dosa plates.

  The temple priests, the Dikshithars, reckon as many as a quarter of a million people come through the town over the whole month – forty thousand on the big nights – so there is good business to be done. For the priests themselves, festival is a bonanza time. They are unique in India, a hereditary clan who marry endogamously, that is, only within their own kin. One of the last of the independent priesthoods to survive, they have always done things their way. Tenaciously hanging on to their patrimony here, they still administer the great temple by the old rules, even refusing to keep accounts, to the chagrin of the local tax inspector.

  They trace their right to administer Nataraja’s shrine back to the sixth century AD. Since the sixties they have come under increasing fire from the state’s Dravidian nationalist parties with their atheistic, anti-temple and anti-Brahmin manifesto. Many temples have had land and endowments confiscated. But not the Dikshithars. Not long ago they defended their case vigorously in the High Court in Delhi, hiring the best lawyer in India to resist being ‘nationalized’ under the umbrella of the Hindu Board of Charitable Endowments. Citing their sixth-century foundation legend as the basis to their claim, they won.

  They were said to be three thousand strong in ancient times, but today they number about seven hundred, of whom maybe three hundred are working priests who run the temple on a monthly rota. They are famed across the south for their meticulous orthodoxy in the performance of the old rituals; for the special care and sensitivity with which they handle the pujas. For this reason, along with its unique sanctity, the temple is revered across Tamil Nadu, and is still chosen by many Tamils for family rites of passage; indeed even today the visitor may come across an author dedicating the first copy of a new book at Nataraja’s feet. For such people, as for Mala, the Lord of the Dance is still the family deity.

  Maintaining such a vast and ancient place has become more and more expensive. These days, it is rumoured, the Dikshithars are finding it difficult to make ends meet, and many are starting to supplement their income outside; some, it is said, have left altogether. Their changing fortunes have even been the subject of a gloomy feature in one of the big glossy national magazines. In the New Year festival, however, they earn enough for a good many rainy days. It is a round of grand pujas, with gilded palanquins and flurries of trumpets, a blaze of camphor and gusts of incense on the dawn air. There are processions round the town streets with crowds craning on the rooftops; there are recitals of Carnatic music and religious songs; virtuoso nagaswaram – trumpet – and drum duels in the temple courtyard under the night sky.

  The stars of the show, the Dikshithars, are even more punctilious than usual over ritual propriety. Basking in their portable neon spotlights, they turn out resplendent in holy ash, every bob and stripe in place, immaculate in fresh white dhotis, their ritual expertise on view for all to see. In the Golden Hall itself they perform every gesture of the flame with more than usual relish, cosseting and primping their divine patron with mirror, brush and fan like androgynous waiters in a celestial hotel. And outside, though the local bus drivers hoot impatiently half the night in streets blocked by silver carriages, the whole town comes together once more as people of all faiths ring in the new in the time-honoured way.

  That Christmas we often went round to Mala’s house to eat and talk, and to stretch out on the floor with the whole family and snooze when the early afternoon heat was too much to bear. At that time she was trying to finalize the marriage of her oldest daughter Punnidah. By now, as Mala had known us for some years, she treated us a little like family, and she was concerned that we too should do what all good Indian couples did: marry, settle down and have children. It had become a bit of an issue with her: why were we not having children? Especially at our age.

  One afternoon she was sitting with Rebecca si
fting applications from Punnidah’s suitors, solemn-faced engineers from Cuddalore, unsmiling clerks from Mayavaram, all of whom had replied to Mala’s advertisement in her caste marriage magazine. Spread out on the floor were their letters, with photo and curriculum vitae attached. Also enclosed were the horoscopes. These, it transpired, were of crucial importance. Mala would never dream of undertaking any important venture, let alone arranging her children’s marriages, without consulting an astrologer. She obeys the almanac for all her children’s rites of passage, for illness, jobs, even journeys. (Nor is such astrological fatalism confined to traditional people, or to the lower classes. In fact, I know highly educated professional people in Madras who regularly do the same, even for business decisions.)

  So the likely son-in-law would immediately have his stars taken to the temple astrologer to be matched with Punnidah’s in an exhaustive search of his character and antecedents; any major incompatibility of the horoscopes would be enough to bring the investigation to a halt. The point, Mala explained, was to find a person compatible not only in birth chart, but in temperament and family background, someone kind and good who would have sufficiently assured career prospects to ensure a stable home for the children. Love was not the first priority; love would grow later if the couple recognized the right spark in each other.

  The dowry system was still firmly followed in all castes. A ‘good’ marriage with an engineer or doctor would cost at least a hundred thousand rupees, maybe several hundred thousand. With four daughters it seemed to me a burdensome way of going about things for someone in Mala’s position, leaving aside the feelings of her daughters. But she disagrees: ‘In your country every other marriage is ending in divorce; this is because of your attitude to love. We do things other way round; here we marry, then get to know and only then fall in love.’

  Then, out of the blue, Rebecca asked Mala whether she could get our horoscopes done too. Would it be possible for her to give our birth dates and times to the astrologer at the temple, in order to see how the Tamils would read our charts? Mala looked across at me, doubtfully. I shrugged my shoulders. It was fine by me. At the time, if you had asked me why, I would have said it was partly just playfulness, partly because we wanted to know more about the way these things are done in Tamil Nadu. I was fascinated by all this, although I had no interest in, or knowledge of, astrology.

  Perhaps, though, there was more to the request than that. For don’t we all sometimes seek some outside validation for our choice of one action over another? Indeed, liberated as we like to think ourselves, do we not yet in some corner of our sceptical minds invest meaning in imaginal worlds which are beyond the reductions of modern science? Even if it goes against our rationally held beliefs? Irrational, I know, but there it is. At any rate, the readings were done, the astrologer was engaged and we went to Mala’s house to meet the Brahmin whom she had asked to interpret our birth charts.

  Earlier in the evening there had been a power cut, and Chidambaram was still blacked out. We picked our way down the darkened lane, and were startled by an invisible but very solid cow outside her door. Mala was sitting by oil-lamp light, the priest next to her, mopping his brow. It was stifling hot in the room and the mosquitoes were having a field day. The priest stood up and smiled, pressing the tips of his fingers lightly together in the gesture of greeting. The charts had been drawn up by the temple astrologer in little booklets of thick, creamy-coloured fibrous paper like the school notebooks you buy in the bazaar, with sewn spines and yellow seal impressions in the corners of the cover. Inside were pages of flowery Tamil script written in light blue ink, with square boxes showing the planetary aspects. It soon became clear that we were to be treated as seriously as any Tamil couple contemplating marriage. Mala, though, was concerned that it was all rather late in the day. After all, the horoscopes could reveal some unforeseen incompatibility which might blight the whole thing. This was something you did at the start, not after some years together. Were we having second thoughts?

  ‘Why do this now?’ she said: ‘You have already been blessed by Lord Nataraja. Look, I just prayed to God and did it, and I’ve been married for thirty years. Leave it too late and you’ll be too old.’

  Her husband muttered in Tamil under his breath. They clearly thought something was amiss.

  We sat down, and at that moment the power came back on and the fan slowly began to turn a few inches above our heads.

  ‘A good omen!’ said the priest with a humorous wink of his eye, waggling his eyebrows. He mopped his glistening brow before beginning. Rajdurai Dikshithar was in early middle age. He had an intelligent and refined face, with a high forehead and neat short hair; he wore a clean white lungi with a purple hem. He spoke good English, but with a rather nervous, rushed delivery which at first made him a little difficult to follow. Brahmins are tolerated rather than loved by the Tamil masses, and as a group the Dikshithars are not universally liked in the town – arrogance and money-grabbing being cited as their main failings – but there were many exceptions, and Rajdurai was one of them.

  His story was a rather sad one. Ten or twelve years ago, his wife had died in childbirth. The little girl survived and now lived with her mother’s parents; but for Rajdurai, the death of his wife meant he could no longer do puja in the Nataraja temple, for in order to perform the rituals, the priests must be married; the death of one’s spouse meant one was no longer auspicious, no longer ritually pure, and these old rules were still zealously maintained by the Dikshithar community. The major source of Rajdurai’s earnings had gone. He now lived in his father’s house on East Car Street, and those of his parishioners who were fond of him made a point of putting other work his way. He was considered to be a reliable interpreter of horoscopes, and a sympathetic one too, which was no small matter in an interpretative art so finely shaded in its nuances. Mala at any rate trusted and liked him, and usually consulted him on family matters; he was to be her guide over the impending marriage of her daughters. Mala plied us with tea and vegetables fried in batter, and Rajdurai began by perusing the charts for a few moments in silence. Then in Tamil he asked Mala a question about our religion. She replied, ‘Christian.’ (There was nothing strange in that – Rajdurai’s clients include Hindus, Christians and Muslims.)

  He started by running down some basics.

  ‘In Tamil Nadu, horoscope is essential for life. Birth, marriage, building a house, buying a wedding sari, starting a new job: for all we make a horoscope. All politicians will consult astrologer before elections. You see, we believe planets are major influence on life. Now, in personal horoscope everyone has natal star. In Tamil astrology the star under which you were born is very important. You both share the same star: Arbitam, the twenty-seventh and last of the important stars to the Tamil astrology.’

  He ran through some of the main features of our charts: my sun was very good, Rebecca’s moon the same; and our suns and moons were conjunct, which apparently was both extraordinary and very auspicious.

  Mala beamed as she scooped rice on to my plate: ‘Eat, eat.’ (My protestations would invariably be met with: ‘You are too thin.’)

  Rajdurai continued. ‘My Mars, and Rebecca’s Venus were strong; my Jupiter particularly important. (As in Western astrology, the Tamils see Jupiter as to do with religion, love of knowledge, travel, philosophy, exaltedness, spiritual gnosis.) But most prominent was Rebecca’s Saturn, and this was of great concern to Rajdurai.

  ‘Saturn is a great malefic to the Tamils: by nature he is arrogant and ill-omened. His blessings are overwhelming but his wrath can create untold misery. Consequently he is universally worshipped, though more out of fear than, reverence, and he has to be propitiated before all others. At Tirunallar near Karaikkal there is an ancient Saturn temple which is visited by people from all over Tamil Nadu, indeed by Tamils from all over south Asia; the temple is dedicated to Lord Siva but Saturn has a place inside the outer wall of the temple. Here, the legend says, Saturn was made powerless when King Nala to
ok refuge with Siva when Saturn wanted to destroy him. It will be necessary for you to go to him to make the appropriate offerings.’

  Saturn is about hard lessons, hard grind, hard work, obsessive even; there is a sense with people touched by Saturn that things can never be relied on to remain good, that happiness is transitory and that things may always turn against you. All of this was over my head, but Rebecca, who is a psychologist, follows Carl Jung in thinking that the symbols of astrology – the sun for example, the moon, Saturn, the Lion – are so ingrained in us that they have a meaning which resonates in the unconscious even when formal religious belief is no more. And of course they are woven into the archetypal patterns which inform our art and poetry as well as our religion, whether in the hands of the Tamil Kampan or the English Shakespeare – and so they are still a means to enchantment, even if you believe that the fault lies not in our stars but ourselves.

  Which is all well and good, of course, but to Mala these are tangible forces for good and ill that can wreck your life, and have to be acted on or disregarded at your peril. This is one dimension of the unseen powers for which she marks out the kolam on her doorstep every morning. And when you have four daughters with back-breaking dowries to pay, and intractable astrological injunctions to obey, it is easy to see how such invisible forces can become all too concrete and may conspire against you. For her, Saturn is nothing if not a real presence.