A South Indian Journey

by Michael Wood

  The tale takes place in the city of Kaveripatanam, which stood here before it was washed away by the sea or covered in dunes. The ‘emporion Khaberis’, as Pliny and Ptolemy called it, was celebrated in the Tamil epics as ‘The city of Puhar, which equalled heaven in its fame and the Serpent World in its pleasures’, a town crammed with foreign merchandise which came by ship and caravan – ‘Himalayan gold, pearls from the south seas, red coral of the Bay of Bengal, the produce of Ganga and Cavery, grain from Ceylon and the rarest luxuries of Burma’.

  Excavations here have given colour to this picture, turning up imported wine from Kos and Knidos, and jars of Spanish olive oil. On this beach merchants from Alexandria barbecued kebabs and downed sulphurous plonk from the Cyclades as they drew up their profit and loss in pepper, cloves, pearls, Chinese silk, coral, spikenard, antimony, red and yellow orpiment and Argaritid muslins. All this was eighteen centuries before the first British ship, the Honourable East India Company’s Globe, edged its way along this coast looking for safe anchorage on the surf-beaten strand of the Coromandel, that endless shore of pale sunburnt sand dotted with purple sandflowers and fishing villages. And that was in 1611, such a short time ago in the life of this land and its people: a blink in the eye of Brahma.

  We sat on the beach where the breakers throw up fragments of Chinese porcelain, Roman glass and Company rupees rubbed smooth and faint by the waves which swirl amid the sea shells in a pearly phosphorescence. We watched the light change from opal into gold while urchin boys charged their scraggy ponies bareback up the dunes and smoke wafted under our noses from the vendors of chick-peas and sweetcorn. We met a wandering sadhu, in saffron cloth, with trident, flag and thick-rimmed spectacles: a sweet-spoken, balding man who had worked for Viyella and seen Nehru in Tanjore in 1957. He spoke about the beauty of English in which, just as in Sanskrit, ‘one may say many things nobly and affectionately’. This was his cue to recite Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man; having fulfilled his duties as a householder, he said, he was now in the last stage, not second childishness but an explorer, a world renouncer. ‘My life is satisfied. After death, who knows? I have found salvation in living life.’

  As we spoke, a coach party of young girls rushed across the beach laughing, to dip their toes in the water while the wind picked up the edges of their saris. One of them, in sky blue and gold, slipped in the undertow and stumbled into the foam, to the merriment of her friends. As the sun set, Mala bathed, lit her little lamp and let it go. Then she stood up, pushed back her wet hair, and stared out to sea, out to the point where the turbid brown flow of the sacred Cavery runs into the sparkling blue of the Bay of Bengal.

  Part Three

  THE TIME OF RIPE HEAT

  7

  Chidambaram

  Two years later I went back to Chidambaram, a few days before the full moon in Chitra month, which straddles April and May in the Western calendar. Right in the middle of the heat. The train down was a baking oven. Children’s holidays had just started and everyone was off on their summer break, so there was no space at the Hotel Tamil Nadu. The best I could find was a bare room in lodgings overlooking the temple gardens. There I sweltered through the stifling nights of the hot season, waking before dawn to monkeys chattering at my window. Outside was a townscape of terracotta roofs and temple palms. Just below my room was a little brick-paved yard with an old whitewashed wall which enclosed a well and a flower garden. There, each morning, in the ethereal time after first light as the bells rang out from the temple, a young woman in a top of brightest summer blue would come to pick a basket of marigolds, an old man drew water in a wooden bucket and a little boy brushed his teeth with a neem twig. This blissful time lasts only an hour or so; then the heat clamps down on the streets. By nine the sweat runs in pools in the eye sockets and your shirt is wringing. It was not the ideal time to visit the south. But to one born and raised in the cold north, it felt like being close to some hot fecund essence of existence itself.

  Things were moving and changing now, even in Chidambaram. Everywhere on the rooftops there were TV aerials, and even the odd satellite dish. In Mala’s house all was still in place – the beds, the metal box, the religious calendars, the Panchang, the picture of the Mother, but here too there was now a small black and white Philips TV in the corner. There were Tamil programmes from Madras, but reception was poor, despite a new relay station in Kumbakonam. We watched the memorial show to the former pontiff of Kanchi, who had recently died in his hundredth year, the most revered religious figure in Hinduism, some said the greatest spiritual figure of this century. He was already famed India-wide for his wisdom some sixty years ago when he met the English writer Paul Brunton, a story told in Brunton’s book A Search in Secret India. Now the tiny bespectacled mummy was being lowered upright into a pit of salt through a drizzle of static, Sanskrit mantras breaking up in the ether.

  Reception was perfect, however, for the Hindi Metro channel, all pop music and action adventure. In the songs you could hear Heavy Metal electric guitar chords, reggae and even rap. The light entertainment programmes included games, quizzes and even a blind-date show.

  There had been an outcry in Tamil Nadu when the new government channels were launched two years before, for Hindi language programmes had been foisted on them – a sore point in a state where there has been a long battle to keep Tamil as the first language and English, not Hindi, as second. It has been a continuing struggle since Lord Macaulay made English the official language of India, and the language for all higher education, on 7 March 1835: a fatal moment in Indian cultural history. Till then there had long been a pluralistic society in the north, which had always been open to foreign influences. (Persian was still the official language of government at that moment.) But in the south, with its deep continuities, for it had largely escaped the Muslim impact, it was another story. Until the nineteenth century Tamil cultural distinctiveness was preserved more successfully than in most other regions of India. Since then, there has been long exposure of the middle (and now lower) classes to Western influences and European and English culture. No doubt beneficial from some points of view, this could hardly be good for the creative preservation of the indigenous cultural literary heritage. But many foresaw that the arrival of TV and mass communications would deal the profoundest blow to the continuance of the old in the new.

  The Tamils won the first battle of the TV age, as they did in the Education Acts and government decrees after Independence. Now they have their own daytime programme in Tamil, but they still go to Delhi for the national news at nine and then take Hindi programmes for the rest of the evening. It is also fertile territory for the satellite companies broadcasting Tamil channels from Hong Kong, Manila and Malaysia. Consumerism and world culture have suddenly come pouring into the living-rooms of the biggest middle class in the world, even in the south. And despite their traditional upbringing, Mala’s children were ambitious to be a part of it.

  Sitting watching trousered girls disco-dancing in a hair shampoo commercial in Hindi, it was hard to remember that not so many years ago we had sat in this same room watching fourteen-year-old Jaya dancing Bharata Natyam by lamplight. It had been one of Rajiv Gandhi’s big ideas, to get a television set into every household in India. Only then, he thought, would India modernize. Now it has started. ‘Reception is not yet reaching the villages here in Tamil Nadu,’ said Mani. ‘But it will come and then all will change.’ TV shows don’t have to be in thrall to the ancient taboos; international culture is open to all now and the values of the old world are bound to be rejected by a sizeable group of the young within a single generation.

  In the morning Mala’s oldest son Kumar came round to my hotel. He had now been back from Saudi for a few months. It had been a very unpleasant (and, one suspected, hurtful) experience, though one common to many from the subcontinent who go to work as guest workers in the Gulf. The promised money had been halved; food and extras deducted. The Saudis, he felt, had been undisguised in their racism towa
rds their Asian workforce. Kumar had not been among the worst treated. Working as a stockman in a warehouse for a pharmacy, he had some status (he speaks excellent English and therefore could take responsibility for the stores). Others, though, were virtually bonded labourers. He had met one older Tamil there who had had so many deductions he had received only his keep – no pay – for two years. ‘He will be lucky just to get home after four or five years, never mind make any money,’ said Kumar. It was a shock to hear such a gentle and mild-mannered man speak the way he did, but like the rest of his family, Kumar is very honest and straightforward.

  ‘In Saudi there was such hostility to us Hindus. When we arrived, we had our religious pictures confiscated. No puja was allowed – they do not allow temples or churches of any other religion on their soil.’

  ‘So where did you pray?’

  ‘Most people did not pray.’

  ‘We are idol worshippers to them, unbelievers and inferior people. You felt some of them in their hearts actually desired to kill a Hindu. If they were alone in the desert with you they would like to do it and then boast of it to their people. But they treated Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis just as badly. I came back with 1000 rupees in my pocket. That’s all. After nearly three years! At least maybe I learned how to be strong.’

  When he came back to Chidambaram he stayed in his grandfather’s house for a while, and licked his wounds. Then after a few months doing bits of work here and there, he raised the money to start a small business, a general shop selling Surf, carbolic soap, razor blades, Medimix Ayurvedic soap; batteries, soft drinks, bits and pieces. It cost him 20,000 rupees for the stock and the lease, and he borrowed the money from the family. He bought wholesale in town and sold for a few paise more out in the suburbs. It was a long day with a break over noon. The best business was early, between 6 and 8.30. At mid-morning we rode over on our bicycles.

  The shop was in a rather unprepossessing area of the town. To get there you cycled down back lanes and muddy hollows away from South Car Street to a swampy area on the southern outskirts. A Vellala suburb, like the quarter where Mala lives. Here some new squat concrete flat blocks have been erected; some are not yet finished, though they are already taking on the look of ruins after a year or two’s exposure to tropical heat and monsoon storms. The shop stands alone in an open space of bare earth between houses. Next to it there’s a tiny Siva temple with a thatched forecourt sheltering a chirpy little Nandi.

  We drank soft drinks, eyes narrowed with the fierce light coming up off the beaten track beyond the shade of his awning. By eleven it was not exactly bustling, but Kumar seemed content with progress. He looked trim and fit, wearing tie-dyed blue slacks and a crisply ironed navy-blue cotton shirt which showed off his beautiful dark skin; he sported a trim moustache and a red tilak dot between his smiling eyes. When I first met him, when he was a teenager, he had always seemed very diffident, somewhat suppressed, maybe even depressed. But I was mistaken. He is a very thoughtful person, extremely observant; there is little he misses. Maybe what I thought I saw back then was to do with the crises of his youth and adolescence, ‘family problems’, as his mother would say, especially the disaster of his father losing his sight. But now he was confident and patient. He had a plan of action which he was going to follow through.

  ‘Eventually I would like to get a shop in one of the main streets, in the middle of Chidambaram. But investment there, for lease and stock, would be about six thousand dollars, more than one hundred thousand rupees – maybe two even. But I hope to do this. First I must build up this local business here in Sakti Nagar. Keep a clear mind. Watch the detail. In two years I will be strong. Then I can go bigger,’ He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card carrying his name and his aunt’s address.

  ‘Also I am acting as an agent dealer for a new cleaning powder. It is newly come to Tamil Nadu so it is not yet well known. It’s a little like Vim. I am operating from my aunt’s house in SPG Street, taking orders and delivering it personally. In time I will get a phone. Then maybe even a fax. But a fax is 40,000 rupees, and at the moment I am not big enough to need one. For the moment this will do. It is going well so far.’ He smiled again his rather shy, winning smile. ‘And after the time in Saudi I am so glad to be back here in my motherland.’

  That May the whole of the state seemed to be on the move; the hottest month is the time of the biggest temple festivals in Tamil Nadu, and from the grandest to the smallest there are special celebrations, with processions, recitals and grand pujas. Every railway station and bus stand was covered with coloured posters giving details of the main events. These were gatherings on the scale of the great medieval fairs: a million outsiders were expected in Madurai to celebrate the sacred marriage; at Tiruvarur eight thousand people would be needed just to pull the temple car. Going down south the trains and buses were crammed with pilgrims. On the roads we saw walkers everywhere: At Vaithisvarancoil I met a man from a merchant family who had walked 150 miles from Karaikudi with his children, in a party of around sixty. ‘This is the tradition among our community for the last two centuries or so,’ he said. ‘We walk by night, starting at dusk and stopping each morning towards dawn, resting through the heat of the day wherever we find shade.

  ‘We do about forty kilometres a night,’ he said. ‘Then we make camp, sing old hymns of the Tevaram, sleep a little. We stay at Vaithisvarancoil three or four days over the full moon, and then leave on the Friday. I work for the Indian Overseas Bank as an officer in Madras. This time is a lovely communal event; we go back reinvigorated after brief experience of another world.’

  Back in Chidambaram I took a bicycle out to Killai on Sea through paddies burned brown by the scorching sun. There used to be a road lined with coconut trees from the temple to this spot, where they took Nataraja in procession on the festival day in Masi month, bathed him in the sea and gave him a rest in the hall on the beach, letting him enjoy the sea air. This custom only stopped fifteen years ago. This was the edge of Nataraja’s domain. Until the nineteenth century the sacred land of Chidambaram extended between the two rivers and eastwards to the coast. You go out past the rice mills at Manallur, where Mala’s father farmed paddy. You reach the sea at Pichavaram, close to Killai: local tradition says this was where Manikavasagar, the poet-saint, lived. The sea has now retreated. Salt flats, mangrove swamps, a big silted creek. There’s an old brick-lined tank here with a great banyan – perhaps a descendant of the one mentioned in an inscription on the temple walls, in April 1128, ‘giving shade to the pilgrims under its spreading crown’. The mandapa built anew that year is still here, though decrepit now and hung with creepers. A solitary spiny palm. A creek with beached boats made of split logs roped together. On a sandbar between a lagoon and a line of pounding surf, there is a fishing village of grass huts. Near by there are salt pans stirred in slow motion by men with long poles of bamboo, naked but for white turbans and loincloths, bodies black as ebony. Back at Killai, a sadhu sitting in the mandapa stares out to sea. He’s walking to Cape Comorin.

  Friday is a special puja night in Siva temples, and the last Friday I was there was a particularly festive day, following the full moon, with all the children on holiday. Thousands crammed the temple. The light was soft at six o’clock, the pavement still hot on one’s bare feet. In the courtyard inside the East Gate, two women were brushing the flagstones with twig brooms. Before the entrance a crowd of people sat talking in the long covered walkway built eight hundred years ago by Kulottunga II to give shade to devotees. On the steps of the tank some bathers were hanging out their wet wraps; others were reading in the paved areas around the cloister; by the gate a couple of old sadhus in saffron waited for gifts; there was a man playing a flute outside the goddess shrine. The last sunlight glinted on the golden roof, throwing into relief the tracery of ancient inscriptions in flowery Tamil script; like faint, snaking wave marks on windblown sand they record the names of the old kings and benefactors, celebrating not victory in war
but gifts of flowers and lamps, a garden of coco palms, milk for schoolchildren, the endowment of the shrine by the sea at Killai with its freshwater tank and its banyan tree.

  That evening the sun sank into a small patch of cloud over the palm forests behind the Sivakami shrine. Then the temple’s great bell began to ring; flights of swallows wheeled and swooped around the gopuras, and as the sun vanished, a warm wind came up, gusting gently across the courtyard, rushing through the East Gate, hurrying birds and people with it as the last chimes died away for the beginning of puja.

  The TV was on when I got to Mala’s for supper. We ate dosai and talked about the future: for India, for the Tamil country and for the family. They were not DMK people, despite everything; they had never been MGR people, though MGR was still popular in the villages among ‘uneducated people’. Father shook his head: Nehru, Indira, Sanjay, Rajiv, he enunciated, their names with a sense of respect and regret. A boy at Independence, he had grown up believing in their noble ideals. For him, the Gandhi dynasty represented the true direction for India; they were people worthy of admiration and loyalty, and their deaths represented the passing of an era, a period in his lifetime indeed. Of course it was still possible, Bharati chipped in, that Rajiv’s daughter Priyanka might succeed in due course. The magazines were full of speculation, although she is said not to wish to follow in her father’s footsteps. Many, though, still saw Rao as a caretaker rill the crown returned. Mani was not convinced. The time had gone. Nehru’s secular India, the India he had grown up and lived through, was coming to an end, and a new India emerging. One he didn’t like as much, even if it was truer to itself.