A South Indian Journey

by Michael Wood

  Mr Velu, Mala’s neighbour, came up and joined us. He wore a short-sleeved cotton shirt with a row of biros in his top pocket, and a vesti, the long wrap worn by Tamil men which they lift up and tuck into their front waistband. He used to work in an agricultural office in the north of the state.

  ‘I have retired now since you were last here: I came back here because my daughter works in the Indian bank here – 2200 rupees a month.’

  Like most Indians he was quite unembarrassed about discussing his financial affairs in the greatest detail. ‘I am receiving 1600 rupees pension monthly,’ he volunteered. ‘But food is so much cheaper here in Chidambaram and in the countryside than in Madras – we can feed a household of five for 2000 a month. So here I can save a thousand a month to go towards my daughter’s marriage. Really I came here to live with them. My son is at Annamalai University, my daughter working here; I lost my wife four years ago, you see. I come here every day to the temple. Also I go to read in the university library through the middle of the day when it is hot. What better way to spend the time than to worship god and to read in the library?’

  Behind us the drummer wrapped up his instrument in an old figured cloth, put it in the chest and closed the lid. Then Mala appeared: her oval smiling face, her black hair showing streaks of grey now, but still centre-parted and tightly brushed and plaited with white jasmine at the back. She gave me a slightly bashful smile, hands together, fingertips touching in greeting.

  ‘I received your letter yesterday. Come home for tiffin.’

  We exchanged family news. Jaya was working in Madras now, in a clerical job for a company making coated ribbons for computers. She and Bharati and Sarasu were all sharing a little house out in the suburbs. Kumar had been in Saudi Arabia for three years, but he had not had a happy time; he had been cheated of his rightful money either by his employers or by the agent in Madras – it was a common story. Balu, the black sheep of the family, was still living at home. He was doing a bit of dogsbodying at a video studio which had opened up in Chidambaram and hanging out with wealthier friends who could afford to lounge about all day in Hawaian shirts, quiffing their hair like the latest Tamil movie stars. But he really wanted to get into driving for a living; maybe start with a secondhand auto-rickshaw and move on to his own taxi. As for Mala’s husband Mani, he still sat in the same place near the door, still listening to the main news on All India Radio, keeping up with the world. His sight was gone now but for a blur of light; his main pleasure was going for walks with their neighbour, Mr Velu, who would sit and talk with him in the passageway, and take him by the hand to the temple for the evening puja.

  Mala pored over the pictures of our babies. Was I troubled to have only girls? In Tamil Nadu this was a big problem because of raising the money for dowries – as she was all too well aware. I told her I was delighted. She walked into the kitchen end of the room to make some tea. There was no power, the fan was motionless and the hot stillness of the air was broken only by the distant sound of children playing in the street outside. Mani stared into space. Looking around the bare walls of the room, nothing seemed to have changed since I had first sat here six years before: the wooden bed opposite the door; the Usha sewing-machine with its foot pedal; on the floor the old padlocked metal chest where Mala kept her treasures and secret things. On the walls were still the same old religious calendars; over the bed on a nail was a plastic pilgrim souvenir of Somaskanda – the Saivite Holy Family; lastly a faded black and white picture of the Mother, the strange French woman who had established her ashram at Pondicherry in the 1920s with the Bengali guru Aurobindo. (Mala had stayed there and prayed at his tomb when Mani’s sight failed and she had travelled the length and breadth of Tamil country looking for a reprieve.) Hanging down on a string over the sewing-machine was Mala’s well-thumbed copy of the Panchang, the religious almanac which all traditional Tamils live by, where you will find every eclipse and conjunction, every auspicious and inauspicious day, every religious festival and special puja – the world as seen through Tamil time.

  As we sat there I could feel the heat already soaking into my bones, and that light-headedness which comes with such a sudden and abrupt change in the pace and focus of one’s life. Mala came back with the tea in little stainless steel cups. Then, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, she announced: ‘Goddess Sivakami appeared to me in a dream.’

  Sivakami is the name of the Great Goddess, Siva’s consort, here in Chidambaram. Like all such manifestations of divinity in India, she has many guises. She is most famous for her terrifying aspects, like the omnipresent Kali whose chthonic powers must always be propitiated, especially by men, who from time immemorial in India have both feared and worshipped the primal female power. At Cape Comorin the goddess is enshrined as the ever-auspicious virgin, the Devi; she is the ‘love-eyed’ at Kanchi, the ‘one who cools’ disease at Samayapuram, and the giver of children at Madurai. Nowhere on earth as in India, and nowhere in India as in the south, are the powers of the Great Mother still accorded such wide reverence: and this, paradoxically, despite the pervasive discrimination and violence here against women, and especially female children. Here in Chidambaram, Mala’s favourite incarnation of the goddess, Sivakami, is ‘she who is beloved of Siva’, mother, wife and lover; the embodiment of benign, auspicious and healthy female power. She has her own shrine within the temple, an exquisite and unspoiled twelfth-century building in honey-coloured stone. Sivakami is like an inner voice to Mala, a guardian angel; and she never omits to pray to the goddess every day.

  ‘Sivakami came two weeks ago. She spoke to me and told me I must go to Tiruchendur for Skanda Shashti. This time of the year is the main festival at Tiruchendur. The whole thing lasts twelve days: sixth day symbolizes triumph of good over evil. On this day, called Soora Samharam, there is very big puja there for Lord Murugan. Also there is a very big festival on the beach. This is next Saturday. It is very beautiful, a very lucky time. There is a pilgrim bus tour going there from Chidambaram. You are coming?’

  It did not sound like a question. Mala had not forgotten our meeting with Rajdurai Dikshithar four years ago, when my horoscope had been read. This was the very journey he had foreseen for me, written in the charts of the temple astrologer at Chidambaram; one day, he had said, I would return to go on pilgrimage to Tiruchendur. Rajdurai’s words had been the last thing on my mind coming out from London for a short stay. I had just planned to sit still, meet friends and take stock of any life. I had not the slightest wish to go careering the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu on a bus tour. Tiruchendur, I had thought, I would visit one day in the future, at my leisure, preferably ensconced in the back of an Ambassador car with Rebecca and the girls, with a few nice hotels to look forward to. As far as Mala was concerned, though, the moment had arrived.

  ‘We go in three days’ time, on Friday night; come back early Tuesday. Visit twelve big temples, many pujas. Many holy baths in the sea and sacred waterfalls. Cost is 200 rupees. I have already asked the organizer to keep a seat for you, as the trip will be sold out. The bus will be leaving at nine from the Vinayaka shrine at the junction of North and East Car Street. Come to my house for tiffin at eight.’

  I could hardly have refused.

  THE LORD OF HEALING

  We had three days free before the big journey. Mala is not the sort to let the time go by unfilled. The next morning she suggested we make a trip to the famous shrine at Vaithisvarancoil. We could go there to do a puja before the pilgrimage, and then meet Mala’s daughter Punnidah and her husband and baby at Mayavaram at about 8.30. Vaithisvarancoil was the first place Rajdurai Dikshithar had told me to visit on my pilgrimage. It seemed a good way to start.

  At about three in the afternoon, with the sun slanting over the flower stalls, we walked to the bus station. There are other shrines which Mala prefers, but she goes to Vaithisvarancoil every month to do puja and pray for her family. The bus takes you over the wide Kollidam branch of the Cavery river and into the delta: a fert
ile land of rice paddies fringed with forests of acacia and palmyra palms. At this time of day it is nothing short of gorgeous, when the heat fades and the sea breeze comes up. Then the landscape becomes suffused with a golden light and the colours stand out with dazzling intensity. You pass tanks carpeted with purple lilies, clumps of banana and bamboo, and little painted shrines in the fields; in the paddies the new rice sparkles in the sunlight. It is a time when everyone comes out into the village streets to enjoy the air and talk with friends.

  I sat on the men’s side of the bus. As far as the Kollidam bridge my companion was a rather serious young man doing a degree at Annamalai University: a BA in tourism. A sign of the times indeed, as Rao’s government loosens the fetters of forty odd years of Nehru’s socialism and lets in foreign companies and investment. Everyone is hot on tourism these days: potentially a big business here, as it has been up north on the Delhi–Agra–Rajasthan circuit.

  ‘We have many excellent things for the foreign visitor in Tamil Nadu but facilities need to be upgraded,’ he said, and proceeded to fire questions at me with a fierce look of concentration, as if this were a test interview and his course supervisor were breathing over his shoulder.

  ‘So, first, what is your opinion of the touristic facilities here? Transport, hotels, communications, infrastructure? Starting with Chidambaram. Please enumerate.’

  ‘Er…’

  ‘Please be frank.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘It is not five-star Taj type, am I right?’

  Now it has to be said that the hotels in Chidambaram have not elicited uniform enthusiasm: ‘the low point of our trip,’ wrote one respondent in the latest trendy handbook; ‘stay in another town,’ said another, curtly. Western-style tourism here is a new phenomenon; as recently as 1977, an Indian guidebook recommended the visitor try, in descending order, the railway retiring room, the public works department inspection bungalow, or private lodgings and choultries for pilgrims: ‘Nadar’s choultry’, it says, ‘is neat and tidy; advance reservation can be made with the choultry manager. Provisions can be obtained in the bazaar.’

  Not exactly the Hilton, then. But that was what appealed to me about it: you weren’t stuck in the dreadful uniformity of international hotels. They ignored all that here; it was part of an older pattern of long-distance travel. And though a couple of modern hotels have been built since then, they have not yet really abandoned the old way of doing things. Take the Hotel Tamil Nadu in Railway Feeder Road. ‘Five-star Taj type’ it is not; I have seen the staff drive some guests (especially impatient north Indians) up the wall with their opaque smiles and their dedicated lack of purpose. But it is comfortable and clean, and works perfectly well. In fact (I confess) it is one of my favourite hotels in all India, but I could not begin to explain why. I could see I was beginning to disappoint my friend, who had clearly thought that, as far as Western tourism was concerned, I was the horse’s mouth.

  ‘Our new chief minister, Dr Jayalalitha, has big plans for the state. She has designated several new tourist zones in Tamil Nadu. Chidambaram is one of these, and Mahabalipuram too. At Tranquebar also there will be a new tourist hotel built by the Taj chain, converting the old Danish Fort on the seashore. Also plans are afoot to construct a highway from Madras down to Cape Comorin; a 500-mile dual-carriageway coastal road which will open up all of Tamil Nadu to tourism.’

  My heart sank, though I did not say so. The times, after all, are there to be moved with, and I could think of no one in Chidambaram who would not welcome a new injection of investment into the town, and that included the temple priests. My companion was now in full flow.

  ‘There are also many opportunities for touristic and folkloric performance here, such as they have with the Thrissur Pooram festival at Trichur in Kerala. Next year there will be one hundred elephants taking part in the changing of the multi-coloured parasols. It is a magnificent spectacle which draws people from far and wide; now there are many similar possibilities being mooted here. For example, a dance festival inside the Nataraja temple to bring international artists and tourists to Chidambaram, put the City of the Cosmic Dance on the world map. What is your opinion of the touristic potential of this?’

  My heart sank again, though I tried to smile enthusiastically. The writing is on the wall; no doubt the packaging of culture for tourists will come here too. And all will welcome it. For a time, at least.

  The future minister of tourism shook hands stiffly when he got down at the Kollidam bridge, a perplexed look on his face; I could see I had been a let-down. No sooner had he gone than another young man took his place; he was almost beside himself with glee.

  ‘What is your native land?’

  ‘England. London. And yours?’

  ‘Here in Sirkali. What is your job in England?’

  ‘I work for the BBC’ (It seemed the most convenient way to describe a life in TV.)

  ‘What is your salary?’ (Indians, as I have said already, are completely uninhibited about discussing the minutiae of their financial arrangements with total strangers, a habit which some might find excruciating. I was evasive.

  ‘You are working here?’ I asked.

  ‘Since Christmas I have been working in Saudi. I have just returned for a holiday for two weeks.’

  ‘How did you find it in Saudi?’

  A delighted smile enveloped his face. ‘Very nice. I am working as a carpenter. BSc qualified. I am receiving two thousand rials per month, not including food, lodging and laundry, which my employers are also providing.’

  That was over five hundred dollars. Over fifteen thousand rupees. For an ordinary Tamil it was a simply fabulous sum. He told me his story. He was not married, and he had already saved several thousand dollars in just ten months. As the story progressed he squealed with delight and squeezed my hand, refusing to let go till we reached Sirkali, chortling with happiness at his good fortune. He was plump, with the smoothest of skins; he had a little moustache in the style cultivated by the latest Tamil movie stars. He wore Nike sports shoes, neatly cut slacks, a T-shirt with a golf pro logo on it, and on his wrist (as he did not neglect to show me) a gold watch, ‘eighteen carat’.

  At Sirkali he gave my hand one last squeeze and bounced off, light footed, giving me a cheery wave as he disappeared into the crowds around the bazaar. His delight at being a success in his own land was a pleasure to behold. What a contrast with Mala’s son Kumar, who was working as a warehouse supervisor and storeman in a pharmacy in Buraidh; his promised income of 160 dollars had turned out to be only half that, after deductions made for food and washing. Judging by his last letter, he would be lucky to come back with any savings at all.

  Beyond Sirkali the flat green landscape of paddies and palms stretches away eastwards to the sea and south across the delta. You can see the temple towers, the gopuras, of Vaithisvarancoil, from two or three miles away. The bus dropped us off at the side of the temple soon after four. A wide sandy lane surrounds the outer walls of the temple precinct where the huge wooden cars are pulled during the annual festivals. Along the lane are the priests’ houses, with their pillared fronts, terracotta roofs and plastered walls, painted with the red and white stripes which always signify a Saivite temple. On the south side the lane was lined with stalls strung with streamers and flags. Mala marched up and down looking for the best price for coconuts and bananas for puja. While she bargained, I had a cup of tea in the Kumaran Vegetarian Hotel, a cavernous tea shop with an old pendulum clock and a big wooden dresser where a pan of incense wafted smoke under a row of deities and portraits of the Gandhi family. We left our shoes in the shop where Mala bought all the other bits and pieces necessary for puja – camphor, vilva leaves, and fruit. Then we turned into the wide approach which leads up to the temple gate.

  The temple at Vaithisvarancoil is dedicated to Siva as Lord of Healing, literally ‘The Lord who is our Physician’ and is very popular among Tamils, especially those suffering from disease, sickness and mental trouble. It
is widely believed that Siva will cure even incurable diseases here. People also come here to fulfil vows or perform the rituals for young children. (This was where Mala had wanted to bring our daughter for her first birthday, for the first giving of rice.) It is one of the famous shrines sung by the Tamil Saivite saints in the Tevaram, so it must have been in existence at least by the seventh century AD. Then Appar came here to hymn ‘the Lord of a thousand names, Lord of mantras, tantras and healing potions, who by his grace cures our incurable disease’ – the disease which Appar makes a metaphor for existence itself.

  The shrine has a beautiful colonnaded tank whose waters are believed to have curative powers; it has an ancient and sacred neem tree whose leaves and bark have medicinal qualities; the food offerings prepared in the temple kitchens and given at puja are also thought to be beneficial to health. Off the beaten track as far as the tourist is concerned, you will find it in no Western guidebook, but to the Tamils it is a loved and famous spot.

  Vaithisvarancoil is also a good place to get an idea of the classic layout of the Tamil temple. Past the pilgrim stalls you come to the main gate, a pyramidal tower whose weathered sculptures tower over the surrounding town and countryside. This is the gopura, one of the most characteristic features of the Tamil landscape, so well known that it has become the badge of the state government. The word simply means ‘gateway’. In early southern architecture, the tower over the central shrine was the main feature and the gates were small. But in the tenth century, gate towers became more prominent and soon rose over 150 feet, fantastical pyramids teeming with brightly coloured statues of gods and spirits, as garishly coloured as the pediments of ancient Greek temples.