Lacan said that “la femme n’existe pas.” In Tamil Nadu, I must say that “l’écrivain n’existe pas.”
Anjali loves to speed on her bike early in the morning. Whenever I rode pillion with her, I’d get a boner. One day, during one such excursion, my erection became very obvious as I was wearing linen trousers. Suddenly, Anjali stopped the bike and said, “Udhaya, time for you to get off. We’ve reached your destination.” I felt very exposed and humiliated.
*Resting form of Lord Vishnu)
6 – Eighteen Steps to Salvation
I think it’s good to observe a fast for one mandala – a period of forty-eight days. Forty-eight days is a long time for a man to forego meat, mead and women. If the fast is broken midway, the devotee should brace himself for Lord Ayyappa’s wrath.
From the age of twelve, I have satisfied my sexual cravings through masturbation. My masturbation days were over once I met Anjali, but how was I going to be able to resist Anjali who was temptation embodied?
I decided to fast for eighteen days and during that period, I was to see a mother in every woman which was going to be one hell of a task for me.
Before I began my fast, I tried to lift Anjali and ended up spraining my hip. Bending or rising sent waves of intense pain through my body. But I was determined to see my fast through even I’d have to crawl up the hill to his abode. Also, I’d received Ayyappa’s call, so ignoring it was out of the question.
I met my gurusamy and wore the garland. He advised me to not submit to the desires of the flesh.
But samy, that’s my life in a nutshell, I thought to myself.
A week before I began my fast, I’d gained some mastery over my body, avoiding all that had to be avoided. Thoughts of meat occasionally tempted me, but once the garland was round my neck, they flew my mind.
Gurusamy had composed a song in honor of Ayyappa. He was illiterate and I wondered how he did it. He told me how.
Ten years ago, he had taken a pledge to observe a fast for one mandala. He was hell bent on writing a song to Ayyappa and wanted the help of the god himself to accomplish this feat. To incur the god’s grace, he went without food for forty-eight days, subsisting on water, milk and fruits and that too only when he was unable to bear the pangs of hunger. He would go to Ayyappa’s temple every day in Mahalingapuram. After placing his pen and paper before the sannidhi, he would circumambulate the temple until he was close to collapsing from exhaustion. When the priest enquired after his curious ritual, he told him that he was keeping the fast.
The priest said, “Do you think this is the krita yug? Don’t you know that we’re living in the kali yug presently? Ayyappa will not reveal himself to you and loose your tongue.”
In spite of the priest’s discouragement, Gurusamy was not disheartened. He continued his fasts and his visits to the temple. After forty days, a Malayali couple came to the temple with their two-year-old child. The child looked at Gurusamy and said, “Ilango, come here!”
The parents were astounded and confused for the voice that came out of the child was that of an adult. A stunned Gurusamy slightly wet his mundu.
The child spoke again: “Dei Ilango, it’s you I’m calling. Bring that paper hither and write down what I say.”
Then, the child, who was yet to say amma and appa, uttered his first word – ulagamellam – and fainted. Ilango, my gurusamy, then proceeded to write his hymn to Ayyappa which begins thus: Ulagamellam unnarule onkiye thazhaikka vendum.
When the garland was round my neck, people started falling at my feet and exclaiming, “Samy, samy!” Trembling, I thought, “I am not a man, but god.”
During the fast, I had to walk barefoot and sleep on the floor; wake up at dawn, have a cold bath and do puja. I was worried about my health and more before I began the fast, but the garland eliminated all my anxieties and turned me into a god. I felt lighter, unburdened. My temptations no longer assailed me. Without them, I felt like a stranger to myself.
Climbing the hill with the irumudi on my head was an experience like no other. At certain moments I felt emotional and wept for never having allowed myself to experience this bliss earlier.
There were eighteen steps that led to the summit of the hill, each with its own special significance. The first represented lust, the second anger, the third greed, the fourth religion, the fifth competition, the sixth dandyism, the seventh arrogance, the eighth ahimsa, the ninth rajasam, the tenth tamasam, the eleventh knowledge, the twelfth mind, the thirteenth body, the fourteenth the mouth, the fifteenth the eye, the sixteenth the ear, the seventeenth the nose and the eighteenth the skin.
I understood how the things we smelled influenced our mind, temperament and thought in these eighteen days.
“All that which gives off a rotten odor should not be smelled,” Gurusamy explained. “Menstrual fluid, feces, urine, corpses, meat. Enjoy instead the fragrance of all that’s aromatic and dear to god – flowers, camphor, incense, kumkum, sacred ash and the like.”
I remembered how, in western countries, people lit scented candles – a different fragrance depending on the mood, the time of day and the activity being performed.
I felt my mind being washed clean as the fragrance of the ghee lamps and camphor enveloped me. I realized that faith and devotion had nothing to do with standing before a temple and making demands. Faith was a profound experience, like the experience I was having at that moment.
In Indian philosophy, the number eighteen assumes a special significance. There are eighteen Maha Puranas, eighteen parvas in Bharat, and eighteen mountains surrounding Sabarimala. The Gita has eighteen chapters and the significance of each step on the mountain can be explained using the Gita.
While returning from the darshan, the gurusamy told me this story. This was not the gurusamy who had put the garland on me but one who had tied me the irumudi and his six year old grandson had also accompanied him. They had been present in Sabarimala in January 2011 when hundreds of people lost their lives and thousands were injured in the stampede that happened at Pullumedu in the Uppuparai area. Whenever I think of Ayyappan, I hear the pitiful cries of the injured and the screams of the dying which rent the air that day, he reminisced. As he searched for his grandson he had to keep dragging aside the dead bodies he stumbled on. He could not understand why such a gruesome tragedy had befallen people in a sacred place though he felt that human greed was to some extent responsible. When people tried to take shelter in some of the shops in the vicinity, to escape the stampede, the shopkeepers had chased them away with sticks. The sound of the chenda which I had heard during the padipuja rang once again in my ears.
Chapter Eighteen
(Not So) Love(ly) Letters
Dear Udhaya,
Learn to expect the occasional tomato, egg, slipper and letter from Kokkarakko just like you do the bouquets, the heart-shaped candies and your other mushy, lipstick-sealed, tear-stained letters from your Lady Readers.
Allow me to explain something to you: I am not someone whose existence is confined to the innards of the Marginal Man; I am a presence outside the novel, an onlooker, seeing all as it unfolds. But Anjali is a round character in the novel.
Apart from being the writer, Udhaya, you double as a character. Your task is doubly burdensome.
Now let’s talk about the credibility of your source. You have thus far written of events that featured your presence – at the center, in the sidelines, in the shadows. And here in this novel, for the very first time, you leave the witness stand, choosing instead to record the testimony of a woman as she would have you believe it. As a character in the novel, you are free to believe what you will of what she tells you, but as a writer, did you ever ponder the reliability of her claims before you reproduced them?
All women seem to be wired the same absurd way. Their whole lives are squandered in the endless and fruitless search for a hero, and in this respect,
their hearts are like compasses with a lousy sense of direction. In my opinion, the things women do in the name of love boil down to some strain of mental illness.
Moving on…
I’ve been dying to ask, Udhaya. Why does every woman who loved you have only tales of woe to tell? I invite you to bare the truth to your readers. Is it your peculiar misfortune that such woeful women always fall to your lot?
I have read of how, after you married Perundevi, and before she became celibate, your boisterous writer-friends would come to the house at unearthly hours, all boozed up, to drink a little more with you. Simpering, you would bid them welcome. Like a saint suffering in silence, Perundevi would drag her weary feet to the kitchen and cook for them with burning, sleep-wanting eyes. Had Perundevi written this story, the fame you are now basking in would be swallowed by hers. Because you wrote the story, it didn’t find many takers. Can readers like myself, familiar with that story, participate in Anjali’s tale of sorrow?
A writer is the foremost of all things in this world that are not understood or deliberately misunderstood. To understand Dostoevsky, one has to be like Dostoevsky, or try to at least. Take the case of those who call you a psychotic sleazebag. It is the likes of them who would accuse Dostoevsky of pimping in White Nights.
Look, I go by an alias, but in your novel, you have aliased my alias, twice removing me from reality. Forgive me then if I fail to recognize myself on your pages. In your novel, Anjali’s story falls flat. You have homogenized everyone who is part of her story – they are all evil, and they are all her enemies. You threw her smack-dab in the center of a miserable world. You could have cut the poor woman some slack for Christ’s sake!
It’s not as easy to be your friend as it is for me to be your reader. Now read me carefully: what I am saying now does not count as criticism, but advice, as it is coming from me before the publication of your novel. Should it have come after, it would rightly be criticism.
As I have already mentioned, I remain a character outside the novel while Anjali is a character within it. I strongly condemn your discussions of the novel with Anjali during which she convinced you to modify hither and reword thither. I call this unethical. You are defacing postmodernism. You ended your Ayyappan story with the lamenting and mourning of the dying. So, why this rose-tinted Mills and Boon affair to rescue a damsel in distress? Bluntly speaking, you have become compassionate despite being the one who insisted that a writer should be as merciful as the Black Death. Now you are losing your senses. Let me remind you that a woman brought sin into the world, that the most beautiful Greek woman left chaos in her wake, that France was lost by a woman, etc. But for some reason, I half-expected you to flip because of a woman, you who have been alone all your life.
I take it that the climax of this novel will take place after its publication and will serve as the opening of your next novel.
Yours truly,
Kokkarakko
October 9, 2011
Kokkarakko,
I am writing to make two things clear to you:
1. Since you often remark that you exist “outside the novel,” I have fleshed you out in it. Now, you will find yourself inside it, not a mere name tucked away in a bottom-right corner, but a central character.
2. Though our views be in diametrical opposition, you should have noticed that, on occasion, our thoughts flow in the same direction.
Udhaya
Chapter Nineteen
Ask for an Idli, Get a Spiritual Discourse
There was this one time I was traveling by train.
I don’t enjoy train-travel at all. In the first class coaches, no one talks to anyone. Do you know what it’s like if someone starts talking to you? It’s like having your bag-covered face repeatedly punched. What I mean to say is: you’ll be assaulted by the common man’s stupidity.
The second class coaches are like slave ships bound for America which is why I never travel second class.
Humans are not packed like sardines in the first class compartments, but to make up for the lack of humans, you have cockroaches that scurry about as you eat, waterless toilets and retards who loudly murdered English. As the coaches are air-conditioned, all the windows are closed and nuisances who bawl into their phones will mercilessly murder your eardrums.
I felt I wouldn’t be able to write this novel at home. In the mornings, I had to walk, meditate and perform puja; then, I had to eat breakfast at some restaurant and I had to wander around looking for a suitable one. Rayar Café was perpetually crowded and Saravana Bhavan’s idlis were like soggy leaves. Worse, the sambar and the chutney were insipid. And there were spoons to eat idlies! Can anyone eat idli with spoon? What a shame! It’s a pity to taste such pathetic idlis. Only in Vellore, Tirunelveli and Madurai will you taste the true Tamil idli.
Three identifiers of the Tamil idli:
1. When you press it with your finger, it shouldn’t get dimpled.
2. It should be as soft as a baby’s bottom and it shouldn’t stick to the fingers.
3. It should be round, not flat.
As the perfect idli cannot be found in Chennai, I resigned myself to eating soggy Saravana Bhavan idlis. If I went to another restaurant hoping for better idlis, I was served with disappointment. Their idlis disintegrate if you press them too hard.
Idlis never fail to remind me of my mother. For forty years – from the time she was twenty to the time she was sixty – she made idlis every single day for her six children, her husband and herself. She had to grind the batter in a huge mortar called the kodakkal. Women these days will have to go to the gym just to be able to lift that grinding stone. When I think of my mother, I see her grinding rice in the kodakkal with the heavy grinding stone. When grinding the urad dal, she used her left hand to push the mushy batter to the sides of the kodakkal so that it would be ground smooth.
I also remember her grinding the ingredients for chutneys and gravies on a flat stone with a cylindrical pestle that had to be rolled back and forth. She saw wet grinders and mixers only when she was sixty.
Perundevi hated the wet grinder as she felt it was a waste of time to wash and clean it. Besides, she didn’t have the time or the physical strength to take on more work than she’d already burdened herself with. She could have ground idli batter for us in the mixer, but she preferred to buy it readymade from a shop.
“One should control one’s cravings. One should not become a slave of food. There are so many higher things in life. Think, Udhaya! How did we come into existence? What is the purpose of our birth? What form will we take when we are reborn? If you ask me, I don’t want any more births. If one’s soul can merge with the paramatma which is both light and sound, then why do we need rebirth? Why do we even need this birth? Are we here just to eat and reproduce like animals? Are we mere sothupindams? We can find God everywhere every day. God isn’t somewhere in a palace on a cloud. He’s within you, Udhaya. Why do you refuse to acknowledge the presence of the divine within yourself? You’d rather just waste your life with drinking and merrymaking. Worldly pleasures have enslaved you, but they are not immortal. You are, because your soul is indestructible which is why you are free. Are you not aware of this freedom? Do you not see the light of God? Do you not hear its music which has traveled across worlds just to seek you out? Why do you act blind and deaf when you have eyes to see and ears to hear, Udhaya? Allow that light to penetrate you and cleanse you of your impurities. I tell you this in your best interest and with firm conviction.
“I was telling you about the indestructibility of the soul, wasn’t I? The soul is beyond time. This brings us to the question: what is time?
“1,728,000 years made up the Kritayug; 1,296,000 years made up the Tretayug, 864,000 years made up the Dwaparayug and 432,000 years make up the Kaliyug.
“If you will notice, there are interesting facts in these figures.
“Two kal
iyugs make a dwaparayug, three kaliyugs make a tretayug, a kaliyug and a dwaparayug together make a tretayug, four kaliyugs make a kritayug, a kaliyug and a tretayug make a kritayug.
“When these four yugas are combined, they make a mahayug or a chaturyug. A manvanthiram is made up of twelve mahayugs. A kalpam is made up of fourteen manvanthirams. There are thirty kalpas: Vamadeva, Sveta-Varaha, Neelalohita, Rathantara, Raurava, Deva, Vrhat, Kandarpa, Sadya, Ishana, Tamah, Sarasvata, Udana, Garuda, Kaurma, Narasimha, Samana, Agneya, Soma, Manava, Tatpuman, Vaikuntha, Lakshmi, Savitri, Aghora, Varaha, Vairaja, Gauri, Maheshvara and Pitr.
“This is not some concocted story, Udhaya. Sages calculated all of this thousands of years ago. Even Aryabhatta corroborates it. Their calculations are so accurate that we know exactly when kaliyug began and what will follow it. Look at where you stand in this limitless expanse of time, Udhaya. Again I tell you with complete certainty: your soul is indestructible. Don’t trap yourself within the impurities of this kaliyug and worsen your karmic consequences. The soul takes eight hundred and forty thousand births in total, but this is just an approximate figure. The Buddha attained enlightenment only during his last birth. Our souls have more power than a million suns. If you use this power to burn away your karmic consequences, you will never have to be born again. You can liberate yourself from the cycle of birth and death. Then, you will come face to face with the divine light, you will hear the music of this universe.”
Dear Reader, this was the discourse Perundevi had subjected me to when, one day, after my morning walk to burn my body fat, I made the mistake of telling her, “Perundevi, I’m hungry. Give me some idlis.” She’d been sweeping the garden and she didn’t even pause to put the broom aside. On hearing her discourse, I almost fell unconscious. In my dazed state, I thought I saw a great light before my eyes. I still wonder whether it was the result of her philosophical and numerical sermon or my hunger pangs. That day, I firmly resolved to never speak of idlis to Perundevi again.
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