A South Indian Journey

by Michael Wood

  ‘Right. Right,’ said Mr Ramasamy. ‘Three hours; leaving at eight o’clock. Take tiffin before we leave.’

  There are two main things for pilgrims to do here: first you walk round the hill on a path called the Giri-Veedhi, a mile-long sandy road dotted with shrines, stone images of the peacock and memorials set up to commemorate wealthy devotees; it is a pleasant walk in the evening under the spreading branches of kadamba trees, Indian oaks. Many bathe too in the sacred river, the Shanmuga. Then you climb the hill. At the big festivals, especially in May, hundreds of thousands do this, many carrying a yoke across their shoulders and pots of milk for lustration. Some, usually young men, go further in self-mortification, piercing their cheeks with a kind of mouth lock, using a little metal spear with Murugan’s leaf-shaped blade: apparently the same ritual as that uncovered by the archaeologists on the coast near Tiruchendur.

  I left my shoes in the temple office cloakroom and started up the 659 steps. On the slopes there are little gardens fed by streams from a perennial spring and shrouded by creepers with mimosa, bougainvillea, white-flowering vines and peacocks. Large signs tell the visitor they are sponsored by the Indian State Bank, the Vijaya Bank, Dindigul, even the Catholic Syrian bank, Dindigul. In leafy glades you catch sight of lifesize tableaux of mythic stories: there are shops, too, for drinks and snacks. Along the path sit the poor and the sick, and the holy renouncers: a line of ash-smeared ascetics with white whiskers.

  From the parapet opens out a view of the great Vyapuri tank, the causeway and the town with all its lights coming on. On top of the hill is an open forecourt where a big crowd had camped out in the balmy light, listening to religious music relayed through loudspeakers; fires were burning at an open-air altar. To the north, the great circle of mountain peaks shaded off one behind the other. Then the sun burst through the clouds, glinting orange on the lake and the flooded paddy over four hundred feet below, far from where we were, in the domain of Murugan, Lord of the Hills.

  The queue for darshan was predictably long: I had taken the precaution of buying a special ticket at the bottom of hill for 10 rupees: to ‘save waiting’ I was told.

  At the top I showed my ticket to a man with an official armband.

  ‘Please wait.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘One or two hours, please.’

  ‘I thought this was a special ticket and I could go straight in.’

  ‘Ah, you need to buy twenty-five-rupee ticket.’

  ‘Fine. Here’s the extra fifteen.’

  ‘Sorry; refund not available; ten-rupee ticket is not valid to exchange. You must pay the total: twenty-five rupees.’ Seeing my face his expression softened. ‘It is very nice; you will be sitting very close to the lord.’

  I sat right by the entrance to the inner sanctum, across which was drawn a black curtain embroidered with the characters OM. I could hardly see a thing in the smoky half-light. Then drums struck up, and the curtain was whipped smartly aside to reveal a doll-like figure in gold garments and scarlet underclothes, a gold cummerbund and a conical gold hat. His smile was decidedly jaunty, like that of Rajini Kanth in the movies. There was so much incense smoke that he appeared to be standing on a golden cloud. It was, I learned, just one of several costume changes Murugan has at different pujas (one, as a girl, is no longer done). We of the twenty-five-rupee tickets sat right in front while the hoi polloi behind the rails were ushered through cheering like a football crowd. When the curtain was drawn open, an old man next to me who had brought his ten-year-old grandson burst into tears. The atmosphere was one of unalloyed pleasure and joy, as if people were sitting in front of a fire which warmed them to their hearts. When puja was over, prasad was handed out for us to drink. As I sat for a few minutes watching this strangely lifelike little face in its smoky golden room, the fat man who had sat next to me taciturn for almost the whole bus journey turned to me with a look of deeply serious happiness: ‘India – best gods.’

  Outside, the sun had set and crowds were promenading around the wide terrace which covers the summit around the shrine; music playing through the loudspeakers added to the holiday atmosphere. The ranges of mountains were now receding into the twilight; over the paddies the light was fading into a misty softness and plumes of smoke were hanging over the fields below.

  ‘You are from which country?’

  He was in his thirties. Handsome face, square jaw, honest, open face, short, curly black hair, moustache, kind eyes: friendly but guarded.

  ‘I am Christian. My name is Salvin. Same as your archbishop.’

  ‘Salvin?’ I said, and had to think for a moment before I cottoned on: ‘Ah yes, Selwyn. Catholic, Syrian, C of E? Evangelical?’ I asked, trying to be heedful of the diversity of any Indian religion. Even with Christianity these days in India one has to be a little careful: as the Catholics turn against Syrians in Kerala; and Pentacostalists and Evangelicals against everybody everywhere.

  ‘Protestant.’

  ‘Ah, me too,’ I said, surprising myself.

  He turned out to be a telecommunications engineer from Madurai working in Palani. ‘So you have seen Lord Murugan,’ he said pointing to the blobs of sandal paste on my shirt.

  He told me the story of the idol in the Murugan shrine. According to legend it is made of the nine poisons: special herbal medicines amalgamated into a wax-like substance over a thousand years ago by a mysterious magician, a Siddha (the sect still exists by the way). His name was Bhoga; he disappeared into a cave under the hill, where he will reappear like Merlin at the end of the Kali Yuga, this declining aeon of ours whose end is now in Hindu terms imminent (i.e. in a mere few hundred thousand years).

  ‘So you’ve seen Lord Murugan here, Selwyn?’ I said, slightly surprised; he was Christian, after all.

  ‘Many times. I work here in Palani you see. Lord Murugan is the most popular of the Tamil gods,’ he continued, and then added: ‘I have great faith in Lord Jesus.’

  How welcoming Indian religion is, I thought. Here naturally, Jesus is another Indian god. For Selwyn perhaps he is more efficacious than Murugan, personally he is more drawn to him; but to have faith in him was to deny neither the existence nor the power of Murugan. You can see them arm in arm on pilgrim posters and murals in Madras. Despite periods of persecution under the likes of Malik Kafur and Aurangzeb, Indians lack our ideological baggage from inquisitions and crusades; the point of view of the man and woman in the street is ecumenical. Selwyn in fact happily goes between the Catholic shrine at Velankanni, Murugan of Palani and Muslim Nagore. Perhaps, I reflected, Indian Christians and Muslims are in a sense Hindus too, in that whatever faith Indian people follow, their mode of worship remains Indian. It is an old adage: Hinduism is India and India is Hinduism. Best gods indeed!

  Though he had never been out of the south, Selwyn was well read and widely informed about the world. He was also a real believer in Gandhi, the first I had met to hold firmly to Gandhi’s ideas on non-violence and the unity of all religions. These days young Hindus never speak of him, but for Selwyn Gandhi was still the key. Look at the events in South Africa, he said. Mandela’s success proved that Gandhi’s principle of non-violence was still valid. ‘He is the greatest man alive: he forgave his enemies, you see.’

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Forty-four. And you?’

  ‘Thirty-four. You look younger. And I older. Look at my face. I look older than you, I think. This is living in a poor country.’ He smiled as if embarrassed. ‘You are married?’

  ‘Yes, I have two little daughters. You?’

  ‘I have been married for two years. My wife Sundari works in local government. She is Christian too. We do not yet have children.’ There was disappointment in his eyes. ‘We have little time together you see: I am six days a week in Palani, then one day in Madurai. At present we are saving, both working. I have applied for a transfer to Madurai, but not yet successfully; it is hard to live apart like this.’

  Somewhere in the cou
rtyard I could hear Mr Ramasamy calling us all together. I left Selwyn sitting on the parapet looking out to the mountains with songs still drifting from the loudspeakers. At the top of the steps a great crowd sat around the flaming altar while the temple elephant tapped tonsured children on the head; a couple from Coimbatore waved goodbye. We had reached the end of our pilgrimage and I think felt very heartily, as Mala would say. We had a group photo taken by a bank manager from Bangalore. ‘So you see, Mr Michael, this is the joy of pilgrimage: the companionship, the doing it together,’ said Mr Ramasamy, beaming: ‘Now I ask you this: would you have had so much fun if you had gone privately with a driver in an A/C Ambassador car?’

  We took nine hours back to Chidambaram; it had all been a bit of a whirlwind, and it was over so quickly. I couldn’t sleep. Mr Subrahmaniam, the tax inspector, and I sat together. Now and then he interrupted the conversation to point out of the window to something quite invisible in the darkness, for all I knew miles away, but clearly to him vividly present, exerting a spiritual force field which could easily be felt on the bus. Passing the island of Sriringam, for instance, he told me the story of a secret garden there, many acres in extent, surrounded by high granite walls:

  ‘There only the flowers sacred to Ranganatha are grown. These are then plucked and woven into garlands by special celibate priests. No one else may ever enter that garden,’ he said. ‘Even those who carry the garlands must tie a cloth around the nose so that they may not accidentally smell the fragrance before it is offered up to the god.’

  His eyes lit up. Mr Subrahmaniam, as I knew by now, had both a subtle grasp of the higher flights of abstract thought and a childlike love of spectacle and mystery; needless to say this appealed to me greatly. In the early hours as we nodded in the glow of the red night light, he became more reflective.

  ‘Pilgrimages like this take place at the time of great natural phenomena, full moons, eclipses, the ends and beginnings of the cycles of heaven. To be there on such occasions, you feel a part of it. Part of Nature. Part of human society, of civilization. This is what it means to belong to a tradition.

  ‘Now here this tradition has a very special quality. It is a memorizing tradition. And memorizing gives certain very important things: a tremendous command of the language; a refinement of expression; a vision of poetic imagery which has survived many centuries. And in this tradition, what are the things which are valued as great? Sound, meaning, images, landscape, myths and stories, but also values, attitudes to life and respect for tradition itself.

  ‘This is being lost now. This is true all over the world, of course; I know, as we read in our newspapers. Traditional societies are being replaced. Tamil Nadu, I am sure, is not peculiar in this, although I have never travelled beyond it. But Tamil Nadu had a very deep commitment to it, and it survived even to the end of the twentieth century. But now it is on the way out. I think the damage has been done now. Traditional scholars are no longer being trained in the old ways, only in Western method. Temples have lost individual traditions which went back nearly two thousand years. Also, a memorizing culture needs time and who these days has time; where in the next generation will there be young people who want to devote the time to learn all this? When it is lost you cannot get it back.’

  ‘But don’t the politicians say now they want to revive it?’

  He smiled sadly. ‘Ah. But they no longer know what it is.’

  Dawn came with smoky lilac mist around Sirkali. The bus arrived back at Chidambaram around five. The streets were still dark as we came up East Car Street and stopped by the Ganesh statue outside Minakshi’s aunt’s house. Mala and her neighbours did a quick prayer at the little locked grille where the oil-lamp was burning low. It was still dark as our tired band trooped home to prepare for work: Mr Subrahmaniam to the local tax office, Ganesh and Raja to the temple, Mr Ramasamy to school. He was looking ragged and unshaven.

  ‘So, back to school this morning then, Mr Ramasamy?’

  ‘Yes. Out of the frying-pan, Mr Michael. Good training, you see. Handling busload of pilgrims or class full of children. Same, same.’ He grinned.

  ‘So what next?’

  ‘We go to Tiruvannamalai next month: only one night, 110 rupees. But next year I am planning a big pilgrimage for Sivaratri festival: we will be going from Chidambaram to Kashi, Benares, in north India. And many other places: Haridwar, Rishikesh, Gaya, the Sangam at Allahabad. It will take two weeks: super-de-luxe bus, no hard seats like these, reclining chairs: cushioned seats.’

  ‘So you are not planning to renounce the world just yet?’

  ‘Ha! I am expanding. This will be the best yet: 2200 rupees, two meals daily included.’

  ‘What about accommodation?

  ‘No accommodation.’ He laughed. ‘This will be provided free by various adinams: Tirupannandal, Dharamapuram. They provide food and lodging at Benares in choultries for the Tamil pilgrims. Everyone makes only the donation he can afford.’

  ‘And movies too?’

  ‘A galaxy of stars. By next year maybe even Hollywood movies dubbed in Tamil. Spielberg! So get your booking in soon, Mr Michael. Book now to avoid disappointment!’

  6

  Journey into the Delta

  THE CYCLONE

  So by a circuitous route, and quite unplanned, I went to Tiruchendur, just as Rajdurai Dikshithar had said I would. When I had come to Tamil Nadu I had had no intention of making the journey laid out for me in Rajdurai’s horoscope. But now, after my adventures on Mr Ramasamy’s video bus, I felt compelled to complete it: to visit Jupiter at the Sun temple at Suryanarcoil, and especially, as Rajdurai was so insistent, to see Saturn at Tirunallar. Mala was tied up on family business for a few days, so I decided to get the train south and go alone up the Cavery river. Later we would go together to Tirunallar. But at that moment my plans were interrupted.

  It was seven at night and I was sitting in the tea stall in East Car Street when the cyclone came. Suddenly a huge black cloud came over from the south-east and rolled up the sky like a blind up a window; then came flashes of lightning so tremendous that the night sky over the town momentarily turned day blue. By the time I got back to the bus stand, there was a sea of mud, and in VGP Street the auto-rickshaws were up to their axles in water. Frogs roared outside my room all night, almost drowning out the late show at the Marriappar Cinema.

  By the morning the water in the canal was rising fast: up the ghats by the bridge where the poor shanty-dwellers wash their clothes, covering the steps and rising inexorably towards the earth levee on which their grass houses stand. In Bazaar Street drenched Muslim ladies hurried by under veils; scavenger dogs and bedraggled hogs scuffled by the hackney carriage stand, where a lone horse stood stock still, stupefied, ankle deep in muddy water, eyes lowered, water dripping off its abused back.

  Outside Mala’s room the passage was soon an inch deep in water and the street was flooded from her wall to her neighbour’s porch. Water dripped through a gap in the roof tiles. Everything was wet: strings of damp clothes hung across the room. Even the animals were coming in for shelter. Every so often Mala got up to shoo frogs away, for ‘wherever they are the snakes will follow’.

  Through the afternoon the rain still poured, rain as I have never seen it. Outside Mala’s room the water was now up to the door sill; frogs, lizards and rats huddled under the eaves. A goat was bleating in the alley. By six the downpour had abated enough for us to go to the temple. That night Jupiter was changing station, and it was an important astral date for Tamils; despite the atrocious weather there were big crowds in the temple. In the great north corridor they gathered by the black-faced Dakshinamurthi, pouring offerings of ghee into a big metal bowl, which flamed up in the gloom, gilding their faces. Near by a press of people filed round the planetary shrines, nine squat black statues all freshly decked in clean bright wraps and flowers; Saturn, as always, was heaped. As the main puja took place, torrential rain began falling again, like a curtain outside the colonnades, streamin
g in a neon-lit waterfall off the golden roof of the sanctum.

  All the time the rain seemed to be growing in strength. Then the power failed. The entire town was now blacked out, for the whole night as it turned out. And in that magical time the temple was returned to its ancient presence: the immense halls lit only by oil-lamps. At Dakshinamurthi the faces of the crowd were lit only by the flickering bowl of fire, the granite columns touched a warm golden colour in the light of the flames. A vision of ancient days. Behind the shrine there is a hundred-yard-long back corridor which is normally closed; here are kept sixty-three stone statues of the saints, ancient icons rubbed oily dark with soot and ghee, inscrutable little black sprites. Tonight the corridor was open, pitch black apart from tiny lamps glowing at the feet of the big three saints. It was a delicious sensation to feel one’s way past them in the vast echoing colonnade as squeaking bats fluttered and dipped around one’s head; tip-toeing as it were through the secret memory rooms of Chidambaram. By eight the rain was a deluge, even dripping through cracks between the granite slabs of the roof. Outside the sanctum were jostling troops of black umbrellas. Rain, darkness, oil-lamps, trumpets: the modern world was erased.

  In a lull I made a break for the gate but the downpour grew again in intensity. As I fumbled with the key of my bike in East Car Street, I heard a shout: ‘Hello! Hello! Poor wretch that bides the pelting of this pitiless storm! Michael! Come in! Where are you going in all this wet?’