On a Shoestring to Coorg

by Dervla Murphy

  The banquet was served in the garden, under a temporary roof of freshly cut branches, on long trestle tables draped with snowy lengths of cotton. Chinnava’s immediate family waited on us, bearing great cauldrons of delicious food: steamed rice, fried rice, curried mutton, chicken and pork, fluffy idlis, soft rice flour pancakes, fresh coconut chutney, sambhar deliciously tangy with tamarind, fresh curds, spiced cabbage with grated coconut, curried potatoes and beans with hard-boiled eggs. For pudding there were large tumblers of a delectable liquid made from ground rice, jaggery and milk, flavoured with fragrant cardamom and laced with crunchy cashew-nuts; and for dessert there were bananas, oranges, grapes and fresh pineapple chunks. At last we all rose, washed our hands and moved slowly indoors to chew pan and betel-nuts while a swarm of servants descended on the tables to lay them with fresh plantain leaves for the men.

  Betel-leaves and areca-nuts are believed by the Coorgs to be very auspicious and the mixture certainly aids digestion. At all important religious ceremonies and social functions chewing is considered essential and it is so closely associated with happiness and contentment that abstinence from betel is required during mourning periods. The ceremonial giving of a betel-leaf is accepted as an adequate receipt for money or goods, and an exchange of betel leaves, in the course of an agreement involving mutual trust, is regarded as more binding than any signed and witnessed legal document. Obviously this is a relic of the days when most Coorgs, whose own language has no script, were illiterate.

  At four-thirty the party began to break up and, after a prolonged hunt, I found Rachel in the nearby forest with about twenty other junior guests who had been prompted by my daughter to indulge in nefarious activities which did their party clothes no good. On the way home I asked Rachel what game they had been playing: ‘Oh,’ she said unconcernedly, ‘we threw a coconut into the well and fished it up again’; which reply I found not a little unnerving, as many wells are over eighty feet deep.

  Incidentally, Aunty wordlessly registered disapproval today when she saw Rachel dressed for the occasion in that Madrassi outfit made for her by the Ittamozhi tailor’s apprentice. This baffled me, until I realised that the outfit is typical of what little Harijan and low-caste girls wear, not only in Tamil Nadu but here in Coorg. Little high-caste girls, before they graduate to saris at puberty, wear European-style clothes, usually beautifully tailored by mother, aunt or grandmother but modelled exactly on Marks and Spencer’s children’s garments. So poor Rachel’s glad rags – of which she is so proud, and in which she looks so attractive – were today a faux pas of the first order.

  18 February.

  In every Coorg home, from the grandest to the humblest, one notices a photograph or oleograph of Tala Cauvery – the source of Coorg’s sacred river – and Coorgs treat these pictures with as much reverence as though they were statues of a god. So I was very pleased today when invited to visit Tala Cauvery with Tim and Sita.

  Inevitably I felt restless during the twenty-mile drive, which took us almost to the top of a steep, forested mountain, but when we got out of the car our journey seemed well worth while. From this lonely height we were overlooking the whole of South Coorg, stretching away in three directions.

  Unhappily, Tala Cauvery itself is well on the way to being modernised. Crude concrete walls surround the ancient, sacred stone tank beside the even more sacred spring, surmounted by a small shrine, which is the source of Mother Cauvery. Another very old and beautiful shrine, not far away, has been enclosed in a corrugated-iron-roofed cube that looks like a temporary public lavatory hastily erected on an earthquake site. (This is the first piece of corrugated iron I have seen in Coorg.) Beside the temple another ‘lavatory’ is in the process of construction, as are various larger buildings of indeterminate purpose and shocking ugliness; and nothing can be done to halt this despoiling process. As Tim said, ‘In the old days you had thousands of penniless pilgrims walking from all over South and Central India to Tala Cauvery. Now you also have black marketeers and venal government officials sweeping up the new road in their illegally imported Mercedes to try to save their rotten souls by paying lakhs of rupees to the Brahmans. Which is how the temple authorities can afford to ruin the place with all this nonsense.’

  Soon after our arrival an elderly priest, stripped to the waist, came panting up the hill, having been summoned by Tim’s ringing of the handsome bronze temple bell. Unlike most temple priests, he was not obese – possibly because of these frequent sprints up a steep slope. However, had he known who was there this morning he might not have bothered to hurry himself because Tim, following in the footsteps of his ancestors, holds strong views on the part money should play in religious ceremonies. He is a man who in his time has given lavishly to schools and hospitals, but today he only spent 5 rupees on his puja.

  The fact that Tim goes to Tala Cauvery as a simple pilgrim made our visit memorable for me. While Sita wandered around nearby, taking photographs, Rachel and I stood beside the little shrine over the spring, watching the pilgrim and the priest. And, as we watched, all the confusion that Hinduism creates in Western minds suddenly cleared away, like our morning mists at Devangeri when the sun has climbed above the palms. A good man was worshipping, with faith. I looked down into the clear, fresh water of the spring-well, where rose petals and coconut shells and red powder and mango leaves floated on the surface, and it all seemed wonderfully simple. Then, as though he could sense my mood, Tim quickly looked up and signed that if I wished I might join him. So Rachel and I received some of the purifying well-water from the priest, drank it, held our hands over the sacred camphor flame of the dish-lamp, and thrice followed Tim as he walked clockwise round the little shrine. And I knew he knew I was not doing this puja to be polite, or for a stunt, any more than I was affecting to be a Hindu.

  We took another road back to Green Hills – a narrow track, inches deep in red dust, which switchbacked through miles of forest before coming to a vast coffee estate surrounding Tim’s Ain Mane. This magnificent house was built towards the end of the eighteenth century and is the most impressive of the many Ain Manes I have seen; its wood carvings are of a fantastic delicacy and intricacy. Three young men greeted us: all were comparatively poor relations who have been enabled to get started on good careers (law, army, university lecturer) because Tim uses some of the income from this estate to support a whole tribe of relatives. The rest goes on maintaining the structure of the Ain Mane, which is at present being discreetly modernised.

  Although our arrival was completely unexpected, Coorg law forbade us to leave without partaking of food and drink; so while the womenfolk put their emergency plans into operation we walked down a long oni, under the shade of gigantic ebony and sandalwood trees, to gaze respectfully at the elaborate tombs of some of Tim’s more illustrious eighteenth-century ancestors. Sita explained that not all Coorgs are cremated: burial is also quite common and children and young unmarried people are always buried, usually on the family estate.

  Here the veranda wall was – as usual – covered in family photographs, some obviously contemporaneous with the invention of photography, and as we enjoyed our thick squares of sweet omelette I found my eye being repeatedly drawn to an enlarged and surprisingly clear portrait of Tim’s grandmother. This splendid but evidently formidable old lady was successfully organising girls’ schools here when Suffragettes were a novelty in Britain. She is largely responsible for the fact that about 73 per cent of Coorg women are literate and have been for a few generations, though the all-India women’s average is 18 per cent – rising to 54 per cent in Kerala and falling to 8 per cent in the densely populated states of U.P. and Bihar.

  Tomorrow we must be at the Machiahs by 8 a.m., when I will be robed in a Coorg sari before we all set off together for the Kodava Samaj – a large, rather dreary edifice on the outskirts of Virajpet. It was specially built some years ago for the holding of marriage ceremonies-cum-wedding parties and has already acquired that shoddy look which marks most newish In
dian public buildings. To have such a building available for the complicated and lavish entertaining of one thousand or more guests is obviously labour-saving, but the older generation complain that the abandoning of private homes for the occasion has meant regrettable changes to the traditional rituals.

  In the arranging of marriages a very important role is played by the family Aruvas. When both sets of parents have come to an informal agreement the girl’s Aruva asks for the boy’s horoscope – or, if there is none, both Aruvas, accompanied by members of both families, go to the temple to ask for God’s blessing on the union. An idol is decorated with white and red flowers, and if a white flower falls during the ceremony this is considered most auspicious, especially if it falls from the idol’s right side. But if a red flower falls some families, even today, will abandon a match simply on the strength of this inauspicious indication. Other families consult an astrologer instead of doing the temple puja and are greatly influenced by his findings; and an astrologer is in every case consulted, during the betrothal party at the girl’s home, to determine the most auspicious date and time for the Muhurtham (marriage). During betrothal parties the Aruvas play leading parts, the girl’s Aruva guaranteeing to keep her safe until the wedding day and receiving from the boy’s Aruva a jewel to mark the betrothal. On the day before the wedding the Aruvas complete all the arrangements for the Muhurtham, supervise dress rehearsals of the ceremony (which rehearsals are part of the ritual), and organise feasts for the neighbouring villagers.

  On several points, Coorg marriage laws and traditions diverge from those of most Hindus. Divorce has always been easy to obtain if loss of caste, incompatibility of temperament or a wife’s unfaithfulness could be proved before the village panchayat; but of course a wife can take no action because of her husband’s unfaithfulness, nor can she leave him without his consent. A divorced wife may not keep any of her children over the age of three, and babies or toddlers who accompany her when she leaves home must normally be returned to their father on their third birthday. Should the mother in an exceptional case be able to obtain permanent custody, the children’s links with their father are formally severed and they forfeit their right to any share of his family property. Divorce, however, has always been rare amongst Coorgs, as has polygamy, though a man without a son by his first wife is free to take a second. Alternatively, he can adopt his eldest daughter’s husband (as was also the custom in Tibet), if the young man is willing to forfeit his share of his own family property.

  Child-marriages were never customary here and widows and divorced women have always been permitted to remarry – the former one year after their husband’s death, the latter six months after their divorce. In pre-British days, polyandry was sometimes practised: but the strangest of the six forms of marriage available to a Coorg woman is the Pachchadak Nadapad. This is a temporary marriage, now uncommon though still occasionally resorted to when for some reason no suitable husband can be found to wed an heiress. The young man’s only duty is to beget a child so he retains his right to his own family property, receives no share of his wife’s – apart from food and clothing while he remains with her – and is free to marry another girl whenever he chooses. The children of such marriages can claim maternal property only. Another odd form of ‘marriage’ is the Paithandek Alepa Mangala, a special ceremony to honour a woman who has borne ten healthy children. (Formerly Coorgs considered five sons and five daughters the ideal family: now one of each is the aim.)

  Many university-educated Coorg women continue to work after marriage, if they have already been leading independent professional lives, and many others return to work as teachers, doctors – or whatever – when their children go away to school. Moreover, the women of less well-off families are often on their local panchayat committee, where they take a vigorous part in debates on every aspect of rural development.

  19 February.

  We arrived at the Kodava Samaj in a hired jeep at nine-thirty, Rachel wearing a smartly tailored skirt and blouse, specially made for her by Aunty, and myself gorgeously attired in borrowed plumes and laden with borrowed jewellery. The bridegroom was not due until ten-fifteen, so we had time to study the scene before the crowd gathered.

  The open space in front of the Kodava Samaj had been covered by an awning of bamboo mats and dried plantain fronds, under which 500 metal folding chairs awaited the male guests; within the building, another 500 awaited the female guests. At the far end of the long main hall, on the right as one entered by the central door, was a small carpeted platform under a canopy of white and red cloth, supported by four tall plantain stumps decorated with coconuts, mango garlands, jasmine and various other richly scented cream-coloured blossoms. In the centre of the platform stood two low, three-legged teak stools with a large, shallow, circular wicker basket beside each, and to the left of these stools, as one faced the hall, was a rosewood and brass pedestal lamp, three feet high, which would soon be lit with a flame from the sacred wall-lamp in the bridegroom’s Ain Mane. Near the platform was a door leading to a small room, simply furnished with two single beds and two chairs, where the bridegroom and his closest friends could lunch in private and rest during the afternoon; and at the far end of the hall was a similar room for the bride and her attendants. Opposite the main entrance another door led to the dining hall, which seats 400, and behind that we found the enormous kitchen shed where, at ten o’clock, mountains of chopped vegetables and raw meat loomed in every direction, and rows of colossal cauldrons, attended by battalions of servants, were simmering on gigantic mud stoves.

  ‘It’s like the witches brewing in my book!’ exclaimed Rachel, goggle-eyed. ‘Are the bride and bridegroom very rich?’

  I had wondered the same thing, but in fact neither family is particularly well off, the bride’s father being a retired army major and the bridegroom’s a retired secondary school teacher. For this reason, no alcohol was served: a most sensible decision since drinks for 1,000 guests could have run these families into lifelong debt. And those who wished to have a self-supplied drink before lunch were free to do so without giving offence.

  Coming back from the kitchen we stood in the doorway and looked around the huge hall, brilliantly lit by clear golden sunshine. I have already described the simple splendour of the Kupya – the Coorg man’s costume – but we had not previously seen a gathering of women in all their traditional glory and this was such an overwhelming vision that even Rachel remained speechless for half a minute. Here were hundreds of glossy raven heads and golden-skinned arms and faces, and shimmering gowns and fluttering veils, and glittering, gleaming, glowing gold and silver ornaments – studded with rubies, emeralds or diamonds – and, standing in that doorway, I was mesmerised by the ever-changing pattern of saris and jewels, blending and contrasting, as little groups strolled up and down the hall, or stood animatedly chatting. There were so many rich materials, their colours and shades beyond counting – pale blue, rosy pink, old gold, turquoise, silver-grey, lime green, primrose yellow, sapphire, crimson, smoky blue, russet, dove-grey, flame red, deep purple – and here and there the pure white of a widow’s sari, adding an effective touch of elegant austerity.

  I failed to recognise several elderly neighbours who were wearing the Coorg veil, now no longer in everyday use. This is a large kerchief, of which one end encircles the forehead with those two corners tied at the nape of the neck, so that the rest gracefully drapes the shoulders. The fine features with which Providence – or Mother Cauvery – has endowed most Coorgs are thus emphasised, and one wonders why such a simple aid to beauty has fallen out of fashion.

  At ten-fifteen a distant throbbing of drums announced the imminent arrival of Ponnappa, the bridegroom. (Here Ponnappas are as thick on the ground as Murphys in Ireland.) I hurried out to watch the procession and found that Rachel, quite beside herself with excitement, had joined a group of Ponnappa’s small nieces and was enthusiastically dancing in the middle of the road, to the huge amusement of the watching crowd. And indeed t
he bridegroom presented a spectacle romantic enough to make any Irish girl lose her head. He wore a dazzling white Kupya, a broad crimson silk sash, a flat-topped white and gold turban, a short ivory-handled dagger in a silver and gold ornamental scabbard, a heavy golden-sheathed sword, a solid gold bangle and a necklace of alternate gold and coral beads. In his right hand he carried a long staff of intricately carved rosewood, decorated with silver rings and bells and known as the Gejje Thandu. Formerly, if the bridegroom fell ill at the eleventh hour, this staff was accepted as his substitute and the ceremony was performed without him. To complete the picture, as Ponnappa walked slowly up the road his best man held a crimson-and-gold-tasselled white umbrella over his head.

  A chair draped with crimson cloth had been placed in the centre of the road – weddings take precedence over traffic – and along the verge a dozen four-foot-high plantain stumps, each decorated with a flower, had been embedded in the ground. When the bridegroom had seated himself, and been surrounded by merrily playing musicians, his Aruva offered clear water from a pitcher, and a betel-nut, to a small group of relatives and close friends who in times past would have brought with them meat, rice, plantains, and their own drummers and trumpeters. Then the Aruva handed the bridegroom’s sword to one of this group, who was supposed to cut each plantain stump with a single stroke while praying to the village God. (He succeeded in cleanly cutting only four; obviously Coorgs are not what they were.) This custom is said to be of Kshatria origin and to symbolise the winning of a bride through superior physical strength, skill and courage.

  When we returned to the hall for the Dampathi Muhurtham the pedestal lamp and several dish-lamps had been lit on the platform and a large basket of rice stood ready near the stools for the giving of blessings. First the groom was led to the right-hand stool and then Nalini, the bride, who had arrived by a side entrance while we were watching the plantain cutting, took her place beside him. Dressed all in red, she looked, poor girl, very pale and tense. It was now time for each guest to ascend the platform individually, sprinkle rice on the couple, bless them, and drop a few rupees into one of the baskets. This part of the ceremony is initiated by the bride’s mother. Standing before the groom, she tosses a handful of auspicious rice over his head and shoulders while invoking the blessings of God, gives him milk to drink from a spouted silver vessel and presents him with the Pombana – a gold coin which, being a mother’s gift, is considered most precious and treasured throughout the couple’s life. The women guests ascend the platform first and then, when the men form their long queue – the only orderly queue I have ever seen in India – the women move into the dining hall for lunch.