A South Indian Journey

by Michael Wood

  Mani’s home village was not far from Mayavaram, twenty-five miles south of Chidambaram. Mani’s father was the headman of the village, a landowner of the Vellala agricultural caste, the same social status as Mala’s father. He had among his cousins an oduvar in the ancient shrine at Sirkali. His early years, from the end of the Second World War until 1951, were spent there; then he lived in Sirkali, where his family had land and the old house and garden of which Bharati had once spoken. It was the time after Independence when the DMK and the Dravidian movement in the south were pushing the causes of Tamil identity and autonomy, anti-Brahminism and atheism. The Vellalas, though, saw themselves as the ‘real Dravidians’, the pure Dravidian community of the soil, repositories of the old values. For this reason, Mani was always a Congress man; he was for Nehru’s vision of a secular India and Indian unity in diversity. Also, I guess, though I never asked him, in some sense for a Gandhian ethic of hard work, self-sufficiency and morality, which fitted with the traditions of his caste.

  Mani was housebound now. Not so long before my visit his sweet old friend, Mr Velu, had died, the man who had always been his guide, taking him to the temple every day without fail. Now Mani had no friend to chat with; he missed his conversation; he missed his trips out to the temple at puja time to listen to the trumpet and the singing of the oduvars. So he sat at home and listened to All India Radio and the BBC World Service. (That summer, like so many Indians, he had avidly followed the South African elections.) But life was increasingly hard for him; especially as all his daughters had gone. Kumar was now living in his grandfather’s house; only Balu slept at home. But he kept strange hours, and could be edgy and difficult as his efforts to get some kind of business going continued to be frustrated. The girls had tried again to persuade their parents to up roots and go to Madras, but still Mala would not leave Nataraja. So, increasingly her husband was forced into his inner world, bounded by that tiny space, in their cell-like room and the little passageway where he put his camp bed out in the heat of the summer to catch the little breeze which came from behind the tank and the latrine in the late afternoons. Now, he had only an awareness of light as against dark, seeing no detail in a land where every detail is meaningful.

  In the alley the moon rose above the roof in a velvet darkness. After the meal Mala and I went to the temple for the last time. The Milky Way arched over the gopuras like a silver aureole. The courtyards were still hot from the day. Ganesh greeted me outside the Kanak Sabha. After our adventures on the video bus he never sees me now without a chortle. He was on duty, so no handshake – that would be ritually polluting. He asked me whether I would like to go inside. There was a little knot of people standing in quiet contemplation. From somewhere in the inner halls came distant Tamil singing. Sound seemed to be not audible but only visible in the movement of flames, flickering on the inside of the roof, the silvered thresholds and the brass utensils. Nataraja was smiling and covered with flowers. The ancient reassuring gesture of the open palm: ‘Fear not; I am here.’ By his side was the curtain sewn with gold leaves which concealed the empty room, god as nothingness. God nowhere but the human heart: the Secret of Chidambaram.

  In front of the silver doors the oduvar arrived, briefcase under his arm. Softly and sweetly he began to sing a famous old song by Appar, the seventh-century Vellala saint, a quintessential Tamil song:

  ‘Why bathe in the Ganga or the Cavery, or take a holy dip at Comari? Why bathe there at the mingling of the seas? Why chant the Vedas, roam the forests and wander through the towns? Why fast and starve, sit staring into the blue? One thing alone will save you: loving our gracious Lord…’

  8

  Madras

  I went back to Madras with Bharati on the Saturday train. That night I had dinner at Ashvin and Prithvi’s. She’s now bureau chief for her magazine; his company is opening up to Germany and the USA. Ashok, their son, is sixteen now, a typical teenager, always on the phone to his friends. Tall and gawky, he paces the living-room in big trainers, with a permanent frown on his face; he is having an awful time with his exams, doing extra homework every night and all day Sundays. With the quota system for Brahmins your results have to be really excellent to guarantee a university place: ‘200 per cent,’ he says ruefully. Their eleven-year-old daughter, Maneka, is assured, ambitious and determined. For them excitement is in the air, all is change now. Rao’s government has lifted many of the restrictions on foreign imports and investments, and foreign TV programmes. But the old stories still get the biggest audiences; the new Krishna soap has even outdone the incredible success of the previous blockbuster soaps, Ramayana and Mahabharata.

  ‘It’s terrible,’ said Ashvin. ‘But viewing figures are 200 million.’ (Of course there are many more TVs now than in the late eighties when the Ramayana broke the world’s TV box-office viewing figures.) ‘And – wait for it – it’s sponsored by Proctor and Gamble, or some other foreign firm. There’s internationalism for you!’

  Change has arrived. The younger generation eat meat; they don’t cook it in the home, but they eat it in trendy restaurants. They know all the international trade marks: they want Nike shoes and Benetton shirts. They are now into the consumer revolution and there is no doubt it will transform the country. Even Hollywood is in now; they are showing US movies dubbed in Hindi.

  Maneka is an ardent film fan: she loved Jurassic Park, which had already been running for weeks in Madras in English and Hindi.

  ‘It is wonderful,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen it three times. Best film ever made.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kamala. ‘My near neighbours in Mylapore have just been on pilgrimage to Tirupati to see Lord Venkateshwara. They came back with the whole works; they had shaved their heads to give their hair to the god, scalps plastered with sandal paste, the kids too. And when they arrived back home the kids were wearing Jurassic Park hats! There it is in one image: tonsures and Dinomania! There you have the new India.’

  Kamala is ever the optimist: ‘Contradictions like this have always existed side by side in India. India is always able to assimilate, and it will again; it will simply metamorphose into some new form as wonderful and various as it always was! The people have common sense.’

  ‘Just look what happened after Ayodhya,’ she continued. ‘When you were here last, prospects were really gloomy. Now things have stabilized. After the Ayodhya mosque was destroyed by the fanatics in December ’92, there was great panic and worry, shame and self-examination in the newspapers. We all were terrified of the Muslim backlash. But the horrors we feared have been averted. After the Bombay bombings people realized this couldn’t go on. Everyone is so money-minded these days they realized it would ruin things for everyone.’

  So was there still a place for the old ideal, for Nehru and Gandhi’s vision of India?

  Ashvin shook his head. ‘Look, let’s be honest about it. Gandhi sold this image of eternal India: ahimsa, non-violence, and all that. But India is one of the most violent societies in the world. I’m not sure that Gandhi didn’t resurrect something that was an aberration in our history and make it appear the norm. It was an ideal, not the reality.’

  ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘it was more than that?’

  ‘Anyway, that’s all history now. Gandhi was wily, canny; this was his great quality. He understood the people. He focused the message which was right for the time. But it’s one thing to fight a liberation struggle, to fight against the oppressor. You have to define yourself clearly, say what you are fighting for. Gandhi did this, defined us in terms of an image which we liked – and of course you Westerners liked it too. But fifty years on the message is more complicated. All their debates in the Anand Bhavan are irrelevant now. Nehru is irrelevant now. No one talks about him any more. The socialist-type experiment took us in the wrong direction. It delayed the growth of the country for much of the last fifty years. But it’s over now. Material improvement is the only answer for India. People want to get on. None of us are Gandhians now.’

  As I
was leaving Prithvi was thoughtful. She had been doing a lot of travelling recently, to the States, Europe and the Pacific rim; she would be off again in a week or two. ‘You know, it has made me think a lot about Tamil Nadu; I really think it is one of the best places in the world one could live. Maybe we were so impressed by things Western we didn’t see what was under our noses. We have everything here. I just hope the kids think so too when they grow up.’

  My taxi was outside, so we said our goodbyes.

  ‘What about your Brahmin’s thread, Ash?’ I asked.

  ‘Still in the drawer.’

  ‘Made that trip down south yet?’

  He laughed: ‘Not yet. But I haven’t forgotten. I will go to Tiruvidaimarudur. One day.’

  9

  Taramani Sunday

  Mala’s daughters’ house is in Taramani, south Madras, a dusty new suburb over the Adyar river behind the ITT campus. Brick and cement dust swirling; there is new building everywhere. Five years ago it was fields with thatched houses; people grazed cows here and there was no bus link. Now there are streets of two-storey concrete houses in between the clusters of thatch. The cows, goats and bullocks are still there, tethered by the bus stand, picking their way round the pan and beedi store, and there are still beaten dirt roads, thick mud in winter, iron hard now. The girls live in the back part of a house and the landlady lives in the front with her old mother – they seem kind and friendly, and treat the girls like daughters. ‘It is safe and secure here,’ said Bharati, ‘for three unmarried girls in a rough area.’ They have a loo/washroom, a kitchen and a living-room, maybe ten feet by twenty, with a door which leads out on to the little balustraded yard. In the yard is a defunct water pump around which the household pile their water cans, jugs and buckets ready for the thrice-weekly water carrier from Madras. Unless you are rich, water shortages are a fact of life in Madras: only that week there had been stories of a cholera outbreak near here caused by illicit tapping of the main municipal water pipes. (The last outbreak in 1992 in Madras had been caused for the first time in the world by a new strain of bacteria for which there was no vaccine. Fortunately it had been contained.)

  ‘We have taps, but they don’t work,’ said Bharati. ‘The better class of people, they can just pay 150 rupees and buy a whole water van. We pay 4 rupees for the driver to fill our cans.’

  In Chidambaram there was no shortage of tanks and wells and the water never ran out. Here you were quickly made aware that even having a bath or shower wasted water.

  ‘It is the biggest problem with life in Madras,’ said Jaya.

  We sat down on the floor to eat.

  Sarasu was reflective and hardly spoke. Her marriage plans had been on and off for three years. She had liked several of the men, but the horoscopes had not been good. Now the chart was fine but the prospective husband was in finance and Sarasu was worried because his family, though of the same caste, were of higher social status and would expect too much, despite her good job. I guessed she was also concerned about the demands in cash on her mother. ‘It is the custom for the bride’s family to give some gold to the boy’s family along with the other parts of the dowry,’ said Bharati. ‘They want at least 45,000 rupees (£1000) plus 25,000 rupees in other gifts – scooter or whatever. Then there are the marriage costs, which must be born by the bride’s family; the boy’s family are insisting they want the marriage in Madras and mother wishes to hold it in Chidambaram. Hire of the marriage hall in Chidambaram costs 4000 rupees; in Madras it is nearly double; and where the cost of food for upwards of 600 people is 25,000 in Chidambaram; it is 50,000 in Madras. The whole will cost at least 100,000 rupees.’

  Sarasu’s concern was understandable. There had been other boys she had liked better, Moreover, Rajdurai had told Mala that Sarasu must marry by the following spring while the signs were auspicious for the wedding; otherwise things would best be put off for four years. At her age, with two younger sisters who also had to marry, this was out of the question. That kind of pressure seemed the worst thing of all, though I suspect that, underneath, Rajdurai, who is a kindly soul, was perhaps trying to encourage Sarasu to make a choice after so many delays.

  Playing devil’s advocate, I said why not break out altogether? Reject the idea of arranged marriages? With the amount of money invested in their dowries they could start a business together, open a shop. The three of them were so bright and personable, they would be bound to be a success. Then if they wished to marry, they could do it on their own terms; men would be queueing up to marry them for themselves. Their talent and their careers would be their dowries. My suggestion was greeted with polite laughs but no takers.

  ‘Some people don’t follow the horoscopes,’ said Bharati. ‘Some don’t even marry in the same caste any more. Of course this happens more in Madras; you would not find it in the countryside or in a small town like Chidambaram. But here love marriages are becoming more common between different castes, as inevitably in modern society there is much more opportunity to meet and befriend people of different communities. And of course women are far more numerous in employment. We have friends of different castes and religions in the same firm. Now you even hear of marriage between Brahmin and lower castes. But not with us. Our community marries within the caste – Pillai or Vellala. You see, we are the traditional agricultural caste. One of our names means “do harm to no one”. Along with the Brahmins and the Aiyangars (Vaishnavas) we kill nothing and we only try to do good. Others kill; lower castes and even some middle castes. We never will. Things are changing now, I admit. Even some Brahmins are seduced by Western ways. They will eat meat now. Perhaps not cook it at home, but they will eat it out at restaurants. They start to like it.’ (Her eyebrows raised at the very thought of it.) ‘You can see this happening. We have Brahmin friends at work and we see. Now in all this I think in time the dowry will change. More and more women have good jobs – look at the three of us. Still, I have a friend who is a doctor. She has very high earning potential. Even so, her father-in-law – whose son was an only child, an engineer – wanted a dowry from her family.’

  We talked about their jobs. They all work six-day weeks. Working presumably also to save money towards their own dowries. Sarasu has a clerical job at a wholesale company which sell TVs and fridges, a big business now as the middle-class consumer boom takes off in Madras. Their Philips TV, and the one Mala has in Chidambaram, she got on discount from the company. She is out by 7.30 and gets back 9.30 at night. She turned down one good marriage prospect because, among other things, he insisted she should carry on working, when she had hoped to start a family straight away. Bharati is at a firm making transistors for TVs; she had a technical job at first (after technical college), and has been promoted to a supervisory position. Jaya is in a clerical job for a company manufacturing coated ribbons for computers (another growth industry in the Madras of the nineties). They go to work together each day, leaving home at eight o’clock and getting back after six.

  ‘There’s a small shop over the road where we can leave our orders for vegetables and basics and collect them at night. In the evenings we just stay in and watch TV, prepare food, talk. Sundays we have off. We get up lazily, very late; wash our saris, prepare food, clean the house, take everything down off the shelves and clean.’

  The kitchen was about twelve feet by five: on the floor was a basket of purple onions, some vegetables, a bag of rice, pans and other utensils. By the door was a puja shelf – a small space cleared between the herbs and spices – with a lamp, incense, little cardboard box of camphor, and a row of pictures, which I asked the girls to explain.

  Goddesses were the most prominent: Minakshi, Kamakshi and Thiruverkoddu Amman, all protectors of women. There were two or three pictures of Bhuvaneswari, a form of Sakti, ‘who remains unmarried’, hence the blood-red sari; they also had Lakshmi and Saraswati. (‘She is for better education and knowledge,’ explained Sarasu.) There were two pictures of the Mother of Auroville. The others were Ganesh, of course, an
d a small Venkateshwara: as a Saivite family they are not particularly devoted to the Lord of Tirupati, who is an incarnation of Vishnu, though he reaches across castes, sects and even religions as the most popular and efficacious bringer of money and financial success in all south Asia. His is the world’s richest shrine outside the Vatican, but he is an impersonal and distant deity compared with the old goddesses of the Tamil country.

  Sarasu brought the food and we sat on the floor to eat. They still follow the old observances, even in the middle of the city. Each night when they get back from work they light the lamp for Lakshmi in the front room; and as they haven’t got a back door, they close the door to the washroom and light a lamp in the puja place. And in the morning they make a little kolam on the front step.

  As Bharati saw it, the way forward was to take the best of the modern and keep the best of the past. But this was coloured by an absolute commitment to traditional Tamil culture. And at the heart of this idea, it seemed, was a moral system exemplified by the values of their caste, of ‘our community’, which were seen as supportive and enriching. To a casual observer it might have seemed they were trapped in a system which denied them freedom, condemning them to act out its rules even when meaning was visibly draining from them and all around them people were adopting different values. But for them the caste was a system of mutual support, despite rules – such as dowry – which they acknowledged were oppressive.

  In Madras their social life revolved around connections with the community: Jay a showed me photos of her dancing at the community hall – not a public performance, but one for their community association. They would never say so, but I sensed that they feel morally superior to the Brahmins – scrupulously honest where the Brahmins had too much opportunity for hypocrisy, in business, religion and even diet. They all knew Brahmins in Madras who have become Western consumers, not only of electronics and sportswear, but also in their eating habits. To them this was simply not acceptable. It went against all the norms of traditional society, of which they saw their caste as the true exemplars. Brahmins might have higher status in the real world of business, commerce, marriage and so on, but they themselves were the real Tamil caste of the soil. Their grandfather’s house in Chidambaram, built 125 years ago by his grandfather, was a symbol and they were proud of that.