Holy Cow! an Indian Adventure

by Sarah Macdonald

  Velangani is a tiny village with a huge history. In 1560 a shepherd boy saw a lovely lady appear in the sky; she asked him for milk to quench the thirst of her baby Jesus and his pitcher kept filling forever more. A small thatched chapel was built at the site of the miracle. At the end of the sixteenth century the Virgin Mary materialised in front of a lame boy, and he regained the use of his limbs. Another church was built. Then on September 8th 1869 a Portuguese ship sailing from Macao to Goa got caught in a massive storm in the Indian Ocean. The sailors prayed to the Virgin Mary to rescue them; she promptly appeared in the sky, calmed the storm and deposited their wrecked ship on the shores of Velangani. The sailors built a basilica and now every year at this very place their survival is celebrated along with Mary’s birthday three days earlier. The site is renowned for its miracles – ‘Our Lady of Health’ has here cured the sick and the lame, the infertile and the insane.

  At first glance the festival looks like a funfair in a dust bowl. Last week Peter insisted on ringing the local priest here and telling him that his memsahib would be coming and to please look after me. Peter, Rachel, Mary and Abraham are all from Chennai, and this is their favourite place on earth so they are desperate that I enjoy it and am comfortable. When Peter told me he’d made the call I felt embarrassed, but now I’m unbelievably grateful, for the crowds are huge and the dirt is bumpy with the bodies of people sleeping out in the open. Rebecca and I set out to find Peter’s priest, leaving Emma and Matt melting by the overheated Ambassador. Emma’s stricken with shock and Matt stands beside her, his face set in a grimace; infuriated by the bedlam he curses ‘Jesus Christ’ as we abandon them. I turn and tell them not to worry and that we’ll be alright, but I’m not sure they believe me.

  Behind the ferris wheels and rollercoasters, Rebecca and I enter a market of Mary. Her sweet, sad face and sari-clad body appear on sunglasses, thongs, clocks, rings, necklaces, umbrellas, rubber balls and cassettes. There are posters and three-dimensional plastic bubble art of her floating above the sea and tiny little flashing dashboard altars featuring Jesus with a sheep. There are banners proclaiming ‘JESUS IS KING OF THE EARTH’, plastic flowers, inflatable toys, cricket sets, gumball machines and piles of bright purple and green candy. Lost in a sea of kitsch, we look up to get our bearings. Rising above us is a massive gleaming basilica with spires like the masts of ships. The church is so white and clean it looks like a marzipan model or a Disney castle complete with flashing red disco lights and a neon cross. Nearby is a pink ten-feet-high Mary in a sari.

  In a small room beyond the basilica, screeching nuns and devotees surround Father Arun Irudyara. He spots our red-blotched western faces through the crowd, yells us a ‘welcome’ and throws me a key to a church lodging. The crowd suddenly goes quiet, for all know there’s no room at the inn – this tiny town is absolutely jam-packed with people and we have just been given a true blessing. Rebecca and I cheer Peter and his priest as we battle our way back through the wet air and the swarm of thousands and thousands of south Indians. The scale and density of the crowd is extraordinary and things are far less organised and controlled than at the Kumbh Mela. In a way, it’s also more alien. Bobbing above the sea of blue, green, pink and purple silk saris are bright orange bald heads. Men, women, children and babies have shaved their skulls and then painted them with a thick paste of sandalwood. The sight of women without hair is more shocking to me than a sadhu with a penis sword; for an Indian woman, giving her hair to God is an act of incredible devotion and commitment. Rebecca and I take photos of the grinning baldies and they pose proudly in front of giant altars they’ve carried for miles. Saint Anthony stares from a jungle setting, Saint Francis of Assisi is painted pink and blue, the angel Gabriel is decorated with tinsel and Saint Sebastian stands surrounded by flowers. The basilica’s saints are also lined up ready to be carried to the sea for Mary’s birthday party. Endless queues of people wait to kiss statues’ feet and put jasmine around laden necks.

  Those not pushing into or out of the church, or lining up to kiss a saint, are squatting, shopping, cooking or sleeping. The dusty ground is dense with families exhausted from the journey – children and parents sleep soundly, spooning their few possessions with their bodies. The smell of sweat, hair oil, jasmine, petrol, incense, urine and religious fervour is stifling and nauseating. A massive generator chugs black smoke and loudspeakers blast a blancmange of Tamil, Hindi and English sermons about chastity and goodness.

  By the time we find Emma and Matt, they are pressed against the car – limp, ragged, sweaty and speechless. We push them through the crowds and help them climb over rag doll babies and floppy families to get to our cell room at the church building. When we open the creaking door and turn on the single light bulb, the floor moves as cockroaches scatter. It’s then that I realise I’ve made a huge mistake. Rebecca and I are used to India, and are almost unshockable, but for Emma and Matt this is all too much too soon. Matt is concerned about the filth, the lack of sanitation, and the chance of disease. While they were waiting for us a ‘public health officer’ had sprayed them in a cloud of DDT to prevent malaria; it did not make Matt feel any safer. Emma is suffering chemical poisoning, over-heating, dehydration and sensory overload – she also has a bad cold and is covered in a film of sticky black dirt. She shakes with fury like I did after the Rishikesh earthquake.

  ‘What the fuck are they doing? They’re worshipping the Virgin like she’s another god. She’s the bloody mother of Jesus. And why have they shaved their heads? There’s nothing in the Bible about giving God your hair. Christ, this is just berzerk, it’s too bizarre.’

  She begins to sob. I’ve hardly ever seen Emma get upset about anything. I feel terrible.

  Rebecca washes Emma’s feet in cold water, I place a wet towel over her forehead and lie her down on the bed high above the cockroaches while Matt hovers over her hesitantly. Rebecca and I decide to give them some space. We exit and Rebecca heads straight for the Mary market. She is enjoying herself like she’s at a spiritual Big Day Out and can’t get enough photos of the pilgrims and the merchandise. We come back carrying cartloads of kitsch including statues of Our Lady emerging from a pink lotus. She looks like the Hindu goddess Lakshmi but has paler skin and fewer arms; Mary’s sari is golden and she holds a mini Jesus. Emma groans but agrees to come out for the procession.

  Hundreds of men swirl and stink, haul and heave, scream and stagger as they carry the plaster statues to the sea. Screeching generators rock on a sea of backs behind each saint. Our Lady of Velangani towers high into the night. Dressed in a red and gold sari, she is crowned with green and red flashing lights. We join the priests on the balcony of the church office building. Below us the crowd swirls like a whirlpool. Waves of heat rise and swarms of mosquitoes descend as the fireworks explode overhead. Emma is handed a dehydrated baby and as she cradles it and talks to the mother in sign language she looks slightly less shell-shocked. But she still wants to ‘get the hell out of the madness’. I reluctantly agree to leave in the morning.

  We wake up to Tamil hymns and the shouts of ‘alayloolya alaylooolya’ through distorted speakers. An endless spiral of seekers is entering and leaving the basilica and a fat queue of pilgrims reaches to the sea and down the coast. Each squashed, sweating saint-seeker carries an offering – palm leaves or flowers or coconuts or candles shaped to look like whatever body part they want cured. There are red hearts for those with cardiac complications, yellow wax livers for jaundice and green lungs for tuberculosis. The pilgrims will walk to the shrine in the basilica on their knees and place their candles at the Virgin’s feet. If she heals them they will then return to Velangani to present the church with a thank-you – in the form of a solid silver replica of the part that has been cured. We can’t get close enough to see Mary, let alone be cured.

  Rebecca and I return to the church building to bid farewell to our saviour Father Arun. If he hadn’t given us the room I don’t know how I would have coped, much less Emma. Tall, grey a
nd handsome in his white robe, Father Arun is listening and nodding as three women try to one-up each other on Mary sightings.

  ‘I pray, Father, then last night I saw her, Father, she told me my son is good in the Gulf, all is well in the Gulf and today he rings,’ sing-songs a plump Goan in a pink silk sari.

  ‘I saw her, Father, she came to me to tell me I shall have no more money problems,’ adds a woman in purple.

  ‘I saw her too, Father,’ nods her friend.

  ‘And me,’ pipes up a younger woman not wanting to be outdone.

  Father Arun nods calmly. He is used to tales of divine visitations, they happen here all the time. He doesn’t even mind that the Vatican doesn’t take his flock seriously enough to investigate. Nor does he care that most of the people here are Hindus who seem to be worshipping Mary like she is just another goddess.

  ‘Hinduism’s cultural bindings don’t change our religion. Externally these people are Hindus but internally they are Christians. They are not prepared to accept Jesus alone as a God like I do, but God is not going to condemn them,’ he says with a beatific smile. I like his style.

  ‘Do you think there are real miracles?’ I ask.

  ‘There are so many miracles and so many graces. A boy falling between the train and the track near here reported a lady rescuing him. A nut farmer who follows Sai Baba prayed in America to win a court case and, after a lady appeared in the courtroom, he did. He flew straight to Chennai and came here saying it was divine intervention. I don’t give credit to apparitions but something has happened. I don’t know how God works.’

  God is working better here than in the west. Father Arun shyly and slyly reminds me that India is now exporting priests to cover shortfalls in Australia and America. Perhaps the future for Christianity lies here in a church that has had more faithful visits in a day than the average Sydney chapel would see in a year.

  We bid farewell to the priest; Emma and Matt leave in relief, Rebecca looks back laughing and I’m quietly impressed. The Indian reinterpretation of Christianity has made the Jesus and Mary gang more attractive to me. For the first time I can see that Christianity can be a dynamic, living faith that can evolve and spread without interference from a human hierarchy. Here in Velangani, Christianity is at its best – sharing, ritualistic, democratic, forgiving and female. Seeing half a million people visit a large porcelain doll in a sari is strangely uplifting. Perhaps Christianity has got something to give the world apart from Easter eggs, the Osmonds, and guilt. For the first time I see the faith, divinity and goodness in the faith of my forefathers.

  I spend the sweaty, back-breaking, terrifying return taxi ride grinning inanely. As the roadside sellers slash a coconut and give me a straw, I toast my future with the warm sweet liquid. By absolving my anger about Christianity I have cleared the last obstacle that stood blocking my readiness for faith. I realise I don’t have to be a Christian who follows the church, or a Buddhist nun in robes, or a convert to Judaism or Islam or Sikhism. I can be a believer in something bigger than what I can touch. I can make a leap of faith to a higher power in a way that’s appropriate to my culture but not be imprisoned by it.

  We drive north to Pondicherry, a small coastal town that’s a former French colony. The whitewashed homes are stained, the bougainvillea binds to crumbled walls and the charm of the past is for sale in the antique shops. We find a sanctuary by the sea – a guest house that’s run by followers of another saintly mother. The Mother of Pondicherry was a Russian born in Paris who came to India in the fifties and became a follower of Sri Aurobindo – a freedom fighter turned holy man. When he lapsed into a samadhi (the state of blissful silence and awareness), Mother took over the ashram until she died in the seventies. Images of the holy duo stare down at us from every wall – an Indian man with kind eyes and a long silver beard, and a stern, regal-looking woman wearing heavy kohl eyeliner and wonderful shawls. This Mother of Pondicherry was an aesthetic ascetic who believed art and style could manifest the beauty of living and the universe. Rebecca, an artist herself, is captivated by this idea; she loves the sculptures of gods and goddesses, the clean lines of the architecture, the simplicity of the buildings and the lack of clutter. We share a room that looks out over a grey sea and a beautiful garden with palms, ponds and stone statues garlanded with deep red hibiscus and pink frangipanis. A mongoose runs around in the lengthening shadows, frogs croak and ducks criss-cross the paths. As the sea and the sky turn pink, other guests run along raised concrete beams, jump from raised rock ledges and leap small ponds of floating lotus flowers as they take the ashram exercise course. This place has style and grace – it’s a sanctuary for our frazzled souls.

  We spend a few days playing cards, staring at the sea, reading and resting. Then we are finally ready to go back into the real world. One morning we find a French cafe with checked tablecloths, a thatched palm roof and slow lazy fans. The four of us squeal with joy at the menus and order croissants and chocolate pastries, baguettes and proper coffee. Emma and Matt smile happily, Rebecca declares she is ‘loving it’. We feel a sense of unity now because of our shared hardship in Velangani and are buoyed by the familiar luxuries and the space and light around the sea. The world seems shiny and new and beautiful. I feel the touch of grace. But delivered to the table with our delicacies is a devastating weapon of misery. The waiter throws down an English-language newspaper with a shaky shot of two buildings burning like match-sticks.

  ‘Look what those filthy Muslims have done now, we Hindus told you they couldn’t be trusted.’

  It’s September 12th.

  I feel the buds of belief and faith leave my body in the exhalation of swear words. Shock and then fury take their place. If God exists, he’s dead to me. As we read, rigid and silent, I feel the return of familiar cynicism and a new depth of hopelessness. I take off the plastic Virgin Mary necklace I’d bought as a tribute to my new respect for Christianity, feeling foolish for wearing the trinket and believing in goodness. My flimsy faith was too small and too weak to withstand this battering. How could Yahweh create such dreadful beings as we? How could Allah let murderers into heaven as martyrs? What kind of bad karma meant people could deserve to die like that? Where was the Sikh’s spiritual strength to withstand hatred? The Buddhist focus on non-violence and happiness seems naive, the Parsis push for survival useless. If Sai Baba could take the moon from the sky, why didn’t he stop this? Where was the love of the Holy Mothers? The human race seems headed for self-destruction.

  But as we stumble through the day, stunned, set-faced and grim, I realise I feel differently about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon than I did about equally stupid and tragic events of the past such as Tienanmen Square, Rwanda, Bosnia and the Gulf War. Then, anger, righteousness and hatred swelled in bitter bile, consuming and paralysing me with hopelessness. Today, the knot of anger moves slowly down from my heart to sit in the pit of my stomach. Now sadness swells in my chest. I’ve always seen anger as strong and sadness as weak, but now sorrow seems stronger than fury. It’s less likely to spread the energy of hate, an energy that must have consumed those terrorists. If I can be strong enough to use my Buddhist training by not giving into anger, then I become less like them; I can help stop the cycle of hatred and violence. I realise life is precious and tenuous and I need to focus on what I do believe in and what sustains me: my family, my husband, my friends and the lotus people – those who grow tall and beautiful above the muck and mud of humanity.

  Emma, Matt, Rebecca and I now feel the world has changed forever. But India seems not to have noticed. Indians live in a land that’s always been outside the bubble of safety that has now burst in the west. In a land used to death, disaster and disease life goes on as normal. Black-skinned beggars still watch us with white weeping eyes, women still sit outside our hotel to wail as we walk out, the rickshaw drivers still beep and beg us to get in. The relentless search for food, shelter and survival goes on. It’s so surreal we begin to lose our grip.
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  In the evening we are walking home and a leper stumbles from the shadows and makes a strange yelping sound. We quicken our pace and he limps behind us trailing a stump where his foot once was; a slipper around the raw flesh slaps against the pavement and he groans as it hits. Somehow he gains ground. We quicken our pace again. I look back at the sounds of the slap, stumble and groan – he has stumps for arms, one eye is falling out and he has no tongue. I mutter, ‘I feel like I’m in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” film clip.’ Matt recalls the Monty Python scene where the legless, armless knight keeps pushing for a fight. Suddenly we all start laughing. It sounds cruel and crass, and it is, but we are not laughing with joy, we are all cried out and nothing seems real. Within seconds Rebecca stops. She yells ‘fuuuuuuuck’ at the world and the beggar and at us. She wheels, turns and tries to give the man some money. He has no hands so she shoves it in his pocket.

  In the morning we awake sadder than before, older than yesterday and exhausted by living. We want to stop the world and get off. And for once we can. Up the road and inland from Pondicherry is an alternative world – Auroville – a community created under the Mother of Pondicherry’s guidance in the sixties as a peaceful and harmonious space where people could be free to fulfil their artistic or practical potential. Fifteen hundred people from twenty-two nationalities now live together there without dogma, rules or ritual, just the desire to understand consciousness. A friend of a Sydney friend grew up there and I ring his dad, Johnny, who invites us to his home.