A South Indian Journey

by Michael Wood

  ‘This is the God of Tamils,’ said the man in front of me as he strained to see the inscrutable face. Then suddenly, as if he had locked on to a beam coming from the eyes of the image, his face was rapt and still amid all the hubbub. He raised his praying hands above his head and spoke some words from an ancient hymn on Murugan: ‘Burning anger is wiped away. Scorched with the spark from your radiant smile, O leader of men with the leaf-shaped spear, lover of Valli the wild huntress.’ He wiped a tear from his eye and turned to me. ‘He is King of the Smile.’

  All around us the energy and emotion was almost explosive, but all of it good-natured. The noise of the crowd filled the ears. On either side of the statue the priests were doling out holy ash into outstretched hands as fast as they could; devotees feverishly mouthed prayers. Pointing out the other statues, Mala tried to explain the main details of the myth – Murugan’s wives, his conquest of the demonic forces, which took place on this spot – at the same time urging me to pray, while also hanging on in front of the image to snatch every last second of direct contact with Murugan’s face – and especially his eyes – before the pressure of the crowd swept her on. In this narrow, dark, hot place the press of the crowd might have been frightening, except that the sense of excitement was quite overwhelming: the dim light, the puja flames, the damp heat, the thick, sweet smell of incense and ghee, the drenching scent of jasmine and marigolds, the sweat of our own half-naked bodies – it all combined in an intoxicating, almost sexual effect.

  When we left the inner sanctum, the old man and his priest friend led us to another part of the temple, in one of the outer corridors, where there is an ancient Vishnu shrine in an underground chamber cut into the rock of the seashore. The image of the god sleeping on the coils of the undying serpent had been much re-carved and retouched but was evidently much older than the mainly seventeenth-century temple buildings (Pallava, according to our friend; that is, eighth century). The existence of a shrine here is known from the oldest surviving Tamil poetry, from two thousand years ago, in which the deity appears as ‘The Red One’, ‘The Spear Bearer’, or ‘The Bringer of Desire’, as well as in the form of Murugan (‘the young, tender one, the youth’). But the Tiruchendur region has yielded still earlier evidence of such a cult in the south: in the 1890s a settlement was excavated on the Tambraparni river which dated from before 1000 BC. Its people were found to have worshipped a male deity whose emblems were the spear and the cock. Intriguingly, the devotees also seem to have worn mouth locks, just as worshippers of Murugan still do, especially at the hill shrine of Palani. So it may well be that the cult of Murugan and his peacock, lord of the hills and mountains, goes back here deep into prehistory.

  The six-day festival at Tiruchendur which climaxes on this day is unique in India in its fastidious adherence to the most ancient Vedic practice. The key event in the ritual takes place in a small room deep inside the temple where the priest burns a hundred and eight different herbs and magical substances – all to avert malaise in the heart and malaise in the cosmos at large, a symbolic renewal of the earth as it were, at the time of year when the monsoon is about to replenish the land. This ritual is accompanied by some of the oldest mantras in Sanskrit, which some scholars now believe to be even older than human speech, mantras whose nearest analogue we now discover is not human speech at all, but birdsong. (Here we may have a clue to the origins of language itself. For if ritual predates language – as it surely must do, since ritual behaviour is known in the animal kingdom – and if mantras are indeed also older than language, then was the first language developed by Homo sapiens for ritual purposes? Curiously enough, this has long been the assertion of the Brahminical tradition in India.)

  As a last kindness the old man now led us to the room where the chief priest was receiving guests. We were ushered in to have his blessing. A tiny man with a gentle smile, he was unshaven and looked worn out, not surprisingly, as he had just completed an arduous six-day ritual cycle in which the slightest mistake in syllable or gesture could cast a shadow over the whole of the proceedings. He had a few words with Mala, who could scarcely contain her excitement at the turn of events, and then he gave us special prasad, vilva leaves and holy ash, along with little wrapped packages from the great fire sacrifice. Last of all we were handed fresh vetilay leaves to chew. I hesitated, but Mala insisted, so I put them in my mouth. Their taste was very sharp and bitter and served as it were to wake us after such an otherworldly experience, reviving us as if from a dream.

  It was almost time to go. We parted from our guide with effusive thanks. The old man sweetly asked simply that we pray for him and his business. Afterwards we crouched for a while in a quiet corner of the labyrinth around the shrine, our ears still echoing with the noise of the crowds and the distant sound of trumpet and drums. We looked at each other, ash and sweat running down into our eyes. Mala burst out laughing. From somewhere in the depth of the temple, a sudden gust of incense and ghee came on the wind, hot and voluptuous. Her face shone with excitement. ‘We have been very lucky. The future is looking very bright. Many problems will go away.’ For her, it all fitted together – the astrologer’s prediction, my letter, her dream, my coming, the bus breaking down, the old man – everything had led to this auspicious end. Later, when we were back on the, bus, she told the story to her lady friends. As it turned out, most people had managed to get a glimpse of Murugan and everyone was in high spirits. For the next few hours the discomfort of the bus was of no consequence. Even the MGR movie seemed, well, quite good.

  It was after midnight before we reached Cape Comorin. With tired feet we trooped down smoky, dank streets lit by dim little pools of light, the cool sea breeze brushing our cheeks. Mr Ramasamy had not booked anywhere in advance, but in India, even at this hour, finding accommodation for a mere sixty-nine people is usually an easy matter. In the Amurath Pilgrims’ Guest House we laid our pieces of cloth on the stone floor of a communal dormitory, and took turns to splash ourselves with buckets drawn from the hostel tank. Before lights out, Mr Ramasamy picked his way over our prone bodies with orders for tomorrow. A last joke. (Mother-in-law: ‘That was a really funny book you gave me. I nearly died laughing.’ Daughter-in-law: ‘I’m so glad to hear it: why don’t you try reading it again?’) We had three hours until reveille. Tomorrow Cape Comorin and the goddess who resides on the southernmost tip of India. Then nine hours’ drive to the sacred waterfalls at Courtallam. Mala grinned at me across the room and gently nodded her head in amusement. We all slept happy.

  CAPE COMORIN

  Before dawn, in that uncertain time between sleep and waking, I became aware of cool raindrops splashing my face, blown on a fresh breeze through an empty window. I reached out my hand. By my side the floor was wet. Outside there were flashes of lightning and rolling thunder. The monsoon had come. At 4.30, Mr Ramasamy came round clapping his hands like a redcoat at a religious holiday camp: ‘Right, right, right! Time to rise up!’ I pulled my dhoti over my face and pretended not to hear. Mr R was insistent.

  ‘Shake a leg, Mr Michael: two hours to perform ablutions.’ As there were only two loos and two taps, it struck me that this might have been cutting it a little fine. I turned over, discovering new mosquito bites to scratch, and then looked up to see a queue of ladies standing over me, toothbrushes and soap in hand. Mr Ramasamy had clearly already identified me as the potential weak link in tour discipline. ‘Sunrise is at 6.30, Mr Michael. There is no time to lose.’

  *

  The idea was that we should get down to the shore to see the sun rise over the Indian Ocean at the same time as the moon set over the Arabian Sea. We would bathe, worship in the temple, and enjoy what Appar calls ‘the fresh air of Comari’. All that before another long day on the bus. I drank a little tepid water from the bottle, ate an apple and then set off with Mala through the desultory little town. We walked down to the sea along a damp road lined with an untidy sprawl of hostels, cafés and concrete shops selling trinkets and souvenirs: tourist mandapas
fringing a sacred shore. At the end, a rocky promontory opened out in front of us, indented with little coves and beaches, where the traditional eleven holy bathing spots are to be found. Behind us, tall palm trees shook their old heads in the wind, dark green against an indigo cloud bank.

  Out in the sea, just beyond the southernmost point of the land, are two rocks half-submerged by the waves; these are the Pitru and Matru tirthas: they are reachable at low water along a path of iron poles linked by chains which were negotiated by the women slowly and gingerly, soaked to the skin as the swell slapped them in the face and tugged at their feet. These rocks mark the symbolic – and actual – limit of India, the holy land which stretches from this point two thousand miles northwards to the snowy peaks of Kashmir and the primeval wastes of Kailash and Manasarovar.

  Every religious Hindu will come here once in a lifetime to take a holy bath and to make offerings to the memory of his mother, father and ancestors. Left to itself this would truly have been a divine spot, but like all famous sacred places it has gathered a wealth of unsightly accretions over time. On the beach the Indian government has constructed a large concrete ‘Gandhi mandapa’ to commemorate the place where the ashes of the ‘Father of the Nation’, the Mahatma, rested before they were consigned to the waves here. On an offshore island there is a memorial to the Hindu nationalist Swami Vivekananda, which rather resembles Bombay’s Victoria railway terminus. It commemorates what is viewed here as a signal moment in the history of modern India.

  On Christmas Day 1892 Vivekananda swam to the island to spend the night meditating on Mother India and the validity of her Great Tradition in the face of the challenge of modernity. Here he resolved ‘to dedicate himself to the service of the Motherland and to spread the message of the Vedas’. So inspired, the next year he spoke at the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, affirming the unity of all religion, as Gandhi would do after him, and, unlikely as it may seem now, announced that it was for America now ‘to proclaim to all quarters of the globe that the Lord is in every faith’. At root, though, was the Swami’s conviction that India’s ancient traditions could be a vehicle for spiritual and cultural renovation in the future; an idea which it would seem is now being definitively rejected by the middle classes of Bombay and Delhi.

  Above the beach were the old walls of the shrine: a massively built squat rectangle of Weathered granite daubed with faded white and crimson stripes, the old colours of the deity: red for Siva, white for the goddess – the primary colours of life. You will still see natural stones painted like this out in the countryside, some the size of a house, and though it is difficult to prove, this custom must be prehistoric. We sat by the sea under heavy cloud, waiting for dawn, but never glimpsed the sun. At seven we went up to the gate for the first puja. By then a long queue stretched round the walls, poor people from the villages, many in loincloth, singlet and bare feet, some with shaved head plastered with bright yellow sandal paste, all coming to make a vow to the goddess; people who had probably come on a ten-rupee country bus trip from Tinnevelly or Trivandrum rather than a video bus from further afield.

  The temple is one of the most famous of the sacred places of the Hindus, but is simple, bare and functional. Behind a big wooden gate is a sparse outer courtyard empty of ornament and swept by the sea breezes. Beyond is an inner enclosure with a covered colonnade around the central shrine. No subtlety of religious pageant here, no elaborate play for our entertainment. They wake the goddess up with conch shell and trumpet. She stands alone behind a curtain in the sanctum, holding a rosary, an ancient black stone idol with a white face like a Japanese Noh dancer. This is rare. Southern goddesses are usually dark, black, blue or green like Minakshi; but the Devi here is the Virgin, her face ‘lovely as the moon’ as it says in the Mahabharata. Her whiteness signifies the retention of female power, so her energy, her sakti, can overcome all evil: ‘Marvellous in her serenity and beneficence’, according to the pilgrims’ guide I bought at Higginbotham’s station bookstall at Trichy Junction.

  Comari is one of the few places south of the Deccan which appear in the list of India’s sacred sites in the Mahabharata, a list which may go back to the middle of the first millennium BC, and which in any case preserves a very archaic sense of her sacred geography. The ancient temple to the Devi was mentioned over two thousand years ago by the Greek geographers, starting with Eratosthenes. In a first-century Greek merchant’s manual there is this fascinating note: ‘Those who wish to consecrate the closing part of their lives to religion come here and bathe and vow themselves to celibacy. This is also done by women, for they say that the goddess dwelt here and bathed.’

  So, as Indian shrines go, it is one of the earliest on record, and its early references invite questions: How old is the idea of India as a holy land? And who originated it? ‘Aryans’ or ‘Dravidians’? Did Bronze Age sea-going merchants gain a sense of the shape and size of the subcontinent, from the Himalayas to the Cape? When we look at yogic gods in Indus seals, or Mesolithic dancing gods with tridents, it is hard not to think that the roots of Indian religion are earlier by far than her civilization.

  After the puja we strolled down to the shore and bought some sea shells from vendors on the beach, little conches which are used by sadhus as talismans. Then we breakfasted in a café. I ate alone. A soggy dosa (there’s tourism for you). Mala revealed that as part of her pilgrimage vow, she and her friends on the bus were fasting for the duration. She would only take some warm milk. Then we went shopping. My old sandals had finally broken and I looked for some flipflops, but Mala would not allow me to pay thirty rupees: ‘too costly’ she said with a frown.

  Later we took the boat to Vivekananda’s island across a 200–yard stretch of choppy sea. The sun was now starting to break through the banks of cloud. Up the coast was a big fishing port with a huge Christian church, its spire a gleaming white against a backdrop of damp green hills. Comari district has been a stronghold of Catholicism since Xavier’s mission in the 1550s – though the Catholic fishermen still revere the Devi and participate enthusiastically in her festivals.

  We sat for a while on the beach with one of Mala’s friends, Mrs Vaideyen, a thin bird-like lady in her seventies with a lovely face and a big open toothy smile: she was still very beautiful. She wore a thin crimson sari, a Kashmir shawl and an old orange balaclava. She lived in Madras now near her grown-up children, having moved there after her husband died a couple of years earlier. She had come back down to Chidambaram to travel with old friends and neighbours on the Murugan pilgrimage.

  As we talked I realized that I had met her late husband, a tall, distinguished, grey-haired man, who had been a schoolteacher. We had met one night some years before at Chidambaram’s winter festival when he had stopped in South Car Street to teach us the opening verse of Manikavasagar’s ‘Maidens’ song’. He had died the next year, she said, aged seventy-eight.

  ‘He had been helping organize a special puja at Sirkali. He was rushing back and forwards every day when he had a heart attack, but when it began he still had time to put the ash on his forehead and to pray. He had the name Siva on his lips when he died.’

  She opened her hands and shrugged her shoulders, raising her eyes heavenward; this had been a blessing.

  ‘He was a primary teacher, but his great love was the Tevaram: he knew all the poems off by heart. He used to say that these songs were the heart of Tamil culture. In retirement he used to offer classes after school by the south gopura to any of the town’s children whose families were interested in continuing the tradition.

  ‘He learned them from the class of people here who sing in Tamilian, the oduvars, the traditional poets of the Tamil lands. They are secular people, non-Brahmins, and you may still find them at places such as Sirkali, near Chidambaram. There the temple offered free instruction to popularize the Tevaram; my husband used to take the bus after school on Fridays and sit at their feet. Over the years he learned them all; many thousands of verses.’

  I
told her how her husband taught Rebecca and me a verse of Manikavasagar. She smiled. ‘He was his favourite poet. He used to say: “No one sheds tears over the Sanskrit Vedas, but you have a heart of stone if you are not moved by Manikavasagar, wherever you come from.” This was why he wanted to teach the children when he retired. He saw this as a religious duty. So the poems would be passed on to the young.

  ‘We were a like-minded couple.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘When our children married and settled down, when we had discharged our duties as householders and parents, we set out on a great adventure. It had always been my husband’s ambition to visit all the sites in the sacred journeys of the Tevaram: there are 274 of them. This we set out to do and over many years we did it. All except Kailash in Tibet and the two shrines in Sri Lanka. And in each place we stood together before the shrine of the god and sang the hymn which the saints had composed about that place.’

  She smiled as if it had been plain sailing. Then she coughed and pulled her old orange balaclava over her head. She was feverish and after early rain the morning was still not hot. How many now, I wondered, would follow in her footsteps?