Nommer les Laurentides, La petite histoire des cantons du nord
Naming the Laurentians, A History of Place Names “Up-North” is now available in French as “Nommer les Laurentides, La petite histoire des cantons du nord”
Finally the translation of my book ‘Naming the Laurentians' is ready. The Ste Agathe Heritage Committee, together with the Direction de la culture of the town, have graciously arranged to host the initial launch, which will take place at the Gaston Miron Municipal Library, 83 rue St. Vincent in Ste. Agathe des Monts at 5:00 pm on Friday, September 26, 2008 as part of the Journées de la culture events.
Subsequent scheduled events:
Bibliothèque municipale de Ste Lucie, 2057 Chemin des Hauteurs, Ste. Lucie des Laurentides on Saturday, October 25, 2008 at 11:00 AM.
Bibliothèque municipale de Val David, 1355 rue de l'Académie, Val David on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 at 7:00 PM.
We have also scheduled a large event for the lower Laurentians at the Prévost community centre, 794, rue Maple, Prévost, for November 13, 2008 at 7:30 PM.
As soon as the details of other venues are firmed up they will be posted here, so please revisit this site for events in Montreal and elsewhere.
Enfin, après plusieurs délais, il me fait plaisir de vous annoncer la parution de Nommer les Laurentides : La petite histoire des cantons du nord.
Le lancement officiel aura lieu à la Bibliothèque municipale Gaston-Miron à Ste-Agathe-des-Monts le 26 septembre 2008 à 17h, dans le cadre des Journées de la Culture et grâce à l'instigation du comité du Patrimoine et du Service de la culture de Ste-Agathe-des-Monts. Il sera suivi d'un série d'événements, y compris une conférence à au Centre communautaire de Prévost, 794, rue Maple, Prévost le 13 novembre 2008 à 19h30.
Des autres événements actuellement organisés auront lieux au :
Bibliothèque municipale de Ste Lucie, 2057 Chemin des Hauteurs, Ste. Lucie des Laurentides samedi le 25 octobre 2008 à 11h00.
Bibliothèque municipale de Val David, 1355 rue de l'Académie, Val David, mercredi le 29 octobre 2008 à 19h00
Aussitôt que des autres événements à Montéal ainsi que dans les Laurentides sont confirmés, ils seront inscrits ici. Prière de revenir sur le site pour voir leurs détails.
Communiqué de presse :
COMMUNIQUÉ
Pour publication immédiate
LE LIVRE DE JOSEPH GRAHAM
NOMMER LES LAURENTIDES: LA PETITE HISTOIRE DES CANTONS DU NORD
SERA LANCÉ À LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE MUNICIPALE GASTON-MIRON
DANS LE CADRE DES JOURNÉES DE LA CULTURE
Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, le 3 septembre 2008.- Ayant connu un succès remarquable dans sa version anglaise, le livre de Joseph Graham sur l'histoire des Laurentides est maintenant disponible en français. Publié en 2005 sous le titre Naming the Laurentians: A history of place names up north, le livre a vite grimpé au palmarès des best-sellers de la Gazette, où il s'est maintenu pendant12 semaines.
Le lancement officiel de la version française aura lieu à la bibliothèque municipale Gaston Miron, au 83 rue Saint-Vincent à Ste-Agathe-des-Monts, le vendredi 26 septembre à 17 heures, dans le cadre des Journées de la Culture. Suivra une série de conférences et de séances de signature dans les bibliothèques et sociétés historiques de la région, ainsi qu'à Montréal plus tard cet automne.
Nommer les Laurentides: La petite histoire des cantons du nord, traduit par Michelle Tisseyre, accompagné d'une préface par l'anthropologue sociale Pierre Anctil et entièrement illustré de cartes géographiques et de cartes postales d'époque, est un recueil fascinant qui raconte d'où viennent les noms de lieux tels que la rivière du Nord, le canton d'Abercrombie, Ivry-sur-le-lac, le chemin Renaud à Ste-Agathe, et même le Québec et le Canada. Ce faisant, il effectue un survol de la géologie et de la topographie de la région, remonte à sa préhistoire et à l'arrivée des premiers Amérindiens, explore la période de la colonisation par les Anglais et les Français, et trace l'évolution des Laurentides jusqu'à leur transformation par l'avènement du ski en destination favorite des sportifs, des villégiateurs et des touristes
Joseph Graham vit dans les Laurentides depuis près d'un demi-siècle et y a fait sa marque comme historien de la région et défenseur infatigable du patrimoine. Cofondateur du Comité du patrimoine de Ste-Agathe, il a, entre autres, piloté le projet qui a permis de préserver la gare de Ste-Agathe. Depuis de nombreuses années, d'abord dans le Doncaster Ballyhoo, le bulletin de sa compagnie, et ensuite par sa chronique mensuelle dans Main Street, le magazine anglophone des Laurentides, Joseph Graham n'a cessé d'explorer et de documenter l'histoire des Laurentides dans un style accessible et haut en couleur.
Nommer les Laurentides: La petite histoire des cantons du nord, Les Éditions Main Street Inc. ISBN 978-0-9739586-1-4 $28.00
- 30 -
Source: Brygitte Foisy, Directrice du service de la culture, (819) 326-4595, poste 3322
A rough translation follows:
NOMMER LES LAURENTIDES: LA PETITE HISTOIRE DES CANTONS DU NORD
WILL BE LAUNCHED AT THE GASTON-MIRON MUNICIPAL LIBRARY DURING AN ANNUAL EVENT CALLED « JOURNÉES DE LA CULTURE. »
After it's remarkable success in English, Joseph Graham's book of Laurentian history is now available in French. Nommer les Laurentides: La petite histoire des cantons du nord spent 12 weeks on The Gazette's best-seller list when it was published in English as Naming the Laurentians: A history of place names up north. Faithfully translated by Michelle Tisseyre, graced with an introduction by well-known historian Pierre Anctil, and fully illustrated with maps as well as antique postcards, this fascinating book tells the stories of how places in the Laurentians came to be named. Including the North River, the canton of Abercrombie, Ivry-sur-le-Lac, Chemin Renaud in Ste-Agathe, and even the names of Canada and Quebec, this book delves into the history behind the names. It ranges from pre-history through the aboriginal first residents, the colonial eras of French and English settlement, to the more recent early recreational period.
Joseph Graham, who grew up in the Laurentians, has been involved in protecting and promoting the history of the region for many years. A co-founder of the Comité du patrimoine de Ste-Agathe, he piloted the project that saved the railroad station. First in his company newsletter, the Doncaster Ballyhoo, then in a monthly column in the Laurentians' English-language newsmagazine Main Street, Joseph Graham has been writing the history of the Laurentians in a lively and accessible style for many years.
The official launch will take place at the Gaston Miron Municipal Library, 83 rue St. Vincent in Ste-Agathe-des-Monts at 5:00 pm on Friday, September 26 as part of the Journées de la culture events. It will be followed through the autumn by a series of conferences and presentations at libraries and historical societies across the Laurentians an in Montreal.
Nommer les Laurentides: La petite histoire des cantons du nord, Les Éditions Main Street Inc. ISBN 978-0-9739586-1-4 $28.00
You can also contact :
Sheila Eskenazi
819-326-4963
Posted by joseph. Permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 14:22 on
September 06, 2008
A Leader with a Vision
I listened to Stephane Dion being interviewed on the radio this morning. He was on a telephone and fairly hard to understand, but listening carefully I heard a sincere man talking, expressing a vision for our country.
No-one knows where, or when, a leader with a vision will arrive on the public stage. It is not what the leader looks like or sounds like, nor where he hails from. It is the vision – what he says – that matters.
Intelligent Canadians know that our country is rudderless since Mulroney sold us down the river to earn himself a place in the international oligarchy. Dion's vision, which he calls the Green Shift, is a first step for Canadians to take forward into the problems that will confront our world in the 21st century. The alternative is the continued watering – and dumbing – down of our country, the spectre of leaders who try to appear to be at the head of the crowd or who encourage the basest, lowest common fears and play on them.
By Joseph Graham
Posted by joseph. Permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 21:16 on
June 24, 2008
Zimbabwe Election and Our Early Days
Morgan Chanderai's withdrawal from the race for the presidency of Zimbabwe, citing the escalating violence that incumbent president Robert Mugabe has directed against the opposition brings to mind Louis Hippolyte La Fontaine's withdrawal from the election in Canada in 1841. He cited the very same reasons.
The monstrous Governor Thomson (Lord Sydenham) was determined to assure that the English vote would dominate. Throughout Lower Canada, Canada East, he gerrymandered ridings and made sure that the polling offices would be located as far as possible from French-dominated towns if English ones were available. The elections, held in March 1841, proved to be violent and the army showed up only when English or Tory candidates were threatened. In the French riding of Terrebonne, the polls were set up at New Glasgow, a small, unrepresentative English town, and when La Fontaine and his supporters arrived to declare their vote, a mob confronted them. La Fontaine, the incumbent when the Assembly was dissolved, realised that the situation would rapidly degenerate into a violent confrontation. He announced he was withdrawing from the election. A quick search of history reveals that he was listed as defeated in Terrebonne.
Mugabe will no doubt declare the same about Chanderai.
Has our current government voiced an opinion about this nightmare? If it has, I haven't heard it.
By Joseph Graham
Posted by joseph. Permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 21:50 on
June 23, 2008
History Interpreted
This article interprets history in a distorted manner. This Quebec journalist sees Pauline Marois as leading Quebec to assimilation because she advocated more English be taught in French elementary and high schools.
Posted by joseph. Permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 15:46 on
March 31, 2008
Bloc acting like a Federal Party
This article was recently published in the Montreal Gazette and, according to the Liberals, the bill could threaten English Quebecers' rights to be heard in English in the criminal courts. The NDP and the Conservatives see nothing wrong with it, but both the Bloc and the Liberals object. Could the Bloc be behaving federally? Certainly it does not seem likely that they would oppose English being heard in French in Quebec criminal cases, so they must be responding to the mirror problem of French speakers losing access to French in criminal courts outside Quebec -- outside of a jurisdiction that they say they exist to renounce.
Posted by joseph. Permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 15:46 on
February 09, 2008
South India, January 2007
January 6
The flight from London to Chennai took 10½ hours. We had the pleasure of
sharing our row on the plane with a British-Indian woman who was coming ‘home’
to see family. She told us we would really enjoy Goa. In retrospect, she may
have said this because Goa has westernized in a sad way,and she may have
thought the familiarity would be exciting.
Looking down upon Tamil Nadu from the window of the plane it was clear that
this sount-east Indian state was not familiar territory. While there were many
lights on the ground below, it was far from the busy, bright scenes of the
Western cities that we know. Once on the ground, getting through immigration
was remarkably easy and there were no hassles from enthusiastic porters or
others. We soon saw a serious-looking young man with a neatly trimmed moustache
holding a sign with my name on it. I waved to him, and he soon met us along
with another man who was the agent for Discovery Tours. It was already after
2:00 AM and we were soon in a clean, white SUV listening to the musical
exchange of dialogue between our two new acquaintances. Words and phrases
seemed to finish in a long series of repeated syllables drawn ticklishly from
throat to ear like a series of identical marbles. The agent informed us that we
would go straight to the hotel in Mahabalipuram (also called Mamallapuram)
where we would settle up. This would take him out of his way,with a 90-minute
drive to and from the hotel and an additional trip back to the hotel for the
driver. I offered to settle up right away, and he was very obliged, but at no
time did he suggest we do so. He and the driver were perfectly willing to make
the trips and seemed sincerely surprised and grateful. We left him at his house
and headed off, with the driver, who told us his name is John Paul, clearly
concerned that he may not actually know the way to the highway without the
agent. We were to discover that John Paul has a modest opinion of his
abilities. He asked me a little shyly if it would be all right if he stopped to
ask directions. By this point I was sitting in the front with him and of course
consented, but no sooner had I done so than he saw what he was looking for and
we set off upon a quiet highway.
John Paul
The signage was in an unrecognizable mixture of scripts combined with
English ones calling out to us. Once on the flat, well-built, empty road, the
diesel engine purred along carrying us at around 60 km/hr with evidence that
the Bay of Bengal was just a ways off to our left. While we saw some other
traffic--even at that time of night-- and the occasional domestic animal at the
roadside, the trip was without incident and we began to learn a lot about the
region from John Paul. He talked comfortably with a healthy dose of cynicism
about Tamil Nadu, politics, and life in general. A quiet man who was willing to
drive in silence, he gave thought to our questions and answered them clearly.
Around 3:30 AM, we arrived at the Ideal Beach Resort, a welcome place to recover
from a long flight. Naturally, we had to wake people up, but we were soon in a
lovely room with two large single beds. We never used the second one.
Entrance to our room
After the constant noise of the plane, we turned off everything mechanical
and went to sleep resigned to some strange noises were eminating from behind
our bathroom wall. In time we would leqarn that night noises were unavoidable
and often unexplainable. When we awoke, it was not late, and were eager to
explore. Breakfast was the first adventure, and we were soon tasting tomato and
cucumber curries with dosa (a thin pancake painted with egg).
Altaf Chapri, one of the owners of DIscovery Journeys, had told us that our
first stay would be at a quality beach resort where we would stay for two
nights, giving us a chance to catch our breath. He did not exaggerate. The
beach, quiet despite the busy season, equipped for relaxation with hammocks
strung between palm trees overlooking the water, a lunch bar, and a team of
stewards to hand us towels, deliver drinks and rake the beach. We were soon
swimming in the Bay of Bengal. Off to the side, there were a series of fishing
boats, and we could see that, other than the resort, the beach was used
actively the way it probably has been used for generations. It was not a band
of rich estates, but just a normal looking series of fields and simple homes
with only the occasional exception that spoke perhaps of a future of vacation
homes.
Fishing boats off the beach
The Front Desk employee had told me that I had a safe in the room, but I
could not make it work. He promised that someone would come by right away to
check it. After a long wait in my room, watching the sunny day drift by, I
returned to the desk. He responded to my mild frustration with a strange
headshake that we learned is a significant expression in South India body
language. It is something that is so natural, one assumes that it is
unconscious. Somewhere between yes, no, maybe and I understand, it is an
endearing physical expression that you might see an affectionate little boy
show to his mother. It is disarming and once we began to figure it out, we
realized that it says a lot of things. In this case, I would eventually
understand it to mean that I was wasting a beautiful vacation day waiting for
someone who would never come, and that I should know that if something is
impossible to do, no-one will inform me, and that he felt my pain.
In spite of this gentle way of being told off, we had been told to forget
our preconceptions of a tropical sense of time. We would find our guides
arrived punctually and expected us to do the same. At 2:30 PM, our guide and
driver arrived to take us on our 3:00 PM tour. We were soon on our way to see
fascinating granite temples that had been carved out of, and into, solid rock.
They were thought to date to the 7th century, in the time of a Palava ruler
called Mamalla who lent his name to the place. The best-known carving is a
bas-relief that has been interpreted as telling two different stories. One
school of thought believes that it tells a flood story of the creation of the
Ganges River, and the other, the story of Arjuna’s Penance. While the Ganges
flows out of the Himalayas and meets the sea at Calcutta, way to the north of
Tamil Nadu, the carving is considered to be one of the most famous
representations of the Ganges flood story and in this interpretation is called
The Descent of Ganga. All life watches Shiva disburse the waters of the Ganges
through his hair, thus saving the world from drowning. Arjuna, in the other
hand, was the reluctant warrior for whom Krishna was the charioteer. In this
alternate interpretation, he is doing penance to obtain strength in battle
from. In both cases, Shiva is honoured, and his influence is evident right
across Tamil Nadu. The mural is an enormous piece of work carved skillfully
around a natural indentation that was formed by a creek.
The Descent of Ganga or Arjuna’s Penance?
The first site we visited had a series of temples carved out of – and into –
solid granite outcroppings. Our guide explained the four types of structures,
which were the caves, the monolithic carved buildings (made from a single
rock), the masonry structures, and the bas-relief mentioned above. For the
children, there is also the butterball, a huge rock that has been sitting
precariously on the rocky slope above the grounds for as many centuries as
people can recall.
This cave is cut into the same rock as the bas-relief and is right beside
it.
Looking out from inside.
Detail carved on the wall.
Sheila and the guide stand in front of a temple carved from a single
stone.
The Butterball
A short drive away was another compound where four buildings and three
full-sized animals were carved from a single, huge rock outcropping. It is
thought to have been the site of a school for carvers.
Temples and animals carved from the bedrock.
Another short drive took us to the masonry temple on the shore of the Sea of
Bengal where myth had it that seven temples once existed. There was no
archaeological record of any others, and many experts dismissed the myth, until
the tsunami of December 2005 revealed evidence of ruins for a few moments as
the sea receded.
The Sea Temple
January 7
On January 7th, we left early to travel to Pondicherry, a distance of 120
km. It took about three hours, as anticipated. The daytime roadways are
chaotically busy, but the traffic flows smoothly. John is a professional
driver. In a country like ours, where every teenager drives, his professional
status does not resonate. However, we were learning that the roads in South
India are a culture of their own, and we were traveling with a man of great
status in this environment. Given the presence of trucks, buses, cars of all
sizes, three-wheel taxis, bicycles with two people onboard, every variety of
motorcycle, some carrying a family of four or five, the mother sitting
crosswise in a colourful sari sometimes with a child on her lap, ox-carts,
occasionally with sleeping drivers, and pedestrians -- coupled with the absence
of sidewalks in many locations -- and no willingness on the part of anyone to
slow down, the driver has to know the culture and have split-second timing. The
traffic may be chaotic, but it is not haphazard. There are rules and there is a
discipline. We experienced fewer traffic slow-downs than we do in Canada, and
even with the volume of traffic, we saw only two accidents over 18 days.
We have moved to the left to accommodate an oncoming bus that is
overtaking the ox-cart. We narrowly missed the concrete telephone pole
Traffic is traveling it two directions, but the whole road expands to
absorb the busier lane.
Three rows of boys waving from a three-wheel taxi preparing to embark on
the express toll road.
Horn-honking is the language of this road culture, and most large vehicles
have notices on the back reminding the driver behind to honk. We asked John if
he had ever thought of describing the different patterns of honking and what
they mean.
The heads of the oxen team often swing in unison as they walk.
We drove on to Auroville, a community created around the shared vision of
“The Mother,” Mirra Alfassa, a woman of Turkish and Egyptian extraction who
grew up in France, and Sri Aurobindo, the founder of the Aurobindo Ashram. It
is a huge territory conceived as an international city dedicated to divine
consciousness, education and human unity, and while it welcomes visitors, all
you can really do is walk through some lovely paths from the information
pavillion to the Matrimandir, a huge, round gold dome that glitters in the sun.
Somehow it failed to impress me from the vantage point of our visit. While I am
sure that this community was set up with the highest ideals, and has attracted
many people of good will, it left me wondering if, like many a lofty concept,
it is a dumping ground for the actively lost, a place overrun with people who
need to be told that they have found the right path. That said, when I came
home, I could not miss the contrast between its lofty goals and the declaration
of the small Quebec town of Hérouxville and its attempts to secure its
sectarian purity.
The dome and amphitheatre at Auroville.
The dome in perspective.
When we arrived at the dome we met an Israeli couple who asked if we could
take their picture. He was a tall man, originally from New York, who reminded
me of Randal Marlin and his father, Spike. He left before I could pursue this
with him.
Most of the people that we saw were Indian tourists dressed in their lovely
saris. The men tend to dress Western, but the women have retained their
historical attire. We noticed this even in the streets, where the women are
elaborately and colourfully dressed, even while seated on a motorcycle. The
standard historical costume of the men is a dhoti, which is a white wrap-around
skirt that is usually folded about knee-height, pulled back to the waist, and
bundled at the stomach to keep it in place. When released, it falls to the
ankles. White is standard, and the coloured, dressier ones are called lhungi.
They suggested to me a costume invented by a wise old woman who knew that her
young men needed to fiddle endlessly, and so developed the perfect costume to
keep their hands busy. The men wearing these seem to be endlessly stretching
and retying them giving them a harmless occupation. By contrast, the beautiful
saris catch the eye and often deflect the eye from the wearer, forgiving poor
posture and levelling the field of physical beauty in the process. When I
mentioned later to my son that these beautiful outfits almost seemed conceived
for this purpose, he responded that if I did not have two grown sons, he would
have suspected me of being gay and that he was not fooled for a minute by the
costumes. Perhaps I am mellowing.
That day walking through the Auroville property, I noticed that Sheila was
drawing a lot of looks from both the men and the women, but particularly the
women. One lovely young woman walking with her family even stopped and greeted
her enthusiastically. Does her Turkish ancestry remind them of “The Mother” I
wondered? We were perplexed. The people are very tolerant and accepting and
there seems to be an attitude of respecting others regardless of what they look
or dress like, but we eventually solved the problem when I realized that her
off-white skirt strongly resembled a man’s dhoti. The sari covers the legs
entirely, so it would seem that such attire would strike people locally as
looking very masculine.
Notice the men's costume in the above photo and Sheila's skirt in the one
below.
Not surprisingly, Auroville has a large (inefficient) restaurant for
visitors as well as a couple of boutiques. The architecture of these was very
nice. It took us an age to get any attention to eat, though, and by then, the
only boutique that looked interesting had closed for some reason.
John brought us to our new hotel, the Annamalai in Pondicherry, a luxurious
establishment with a four-storey high lobby and a pool on the roof, but sitting
right on a busy thoroughfare and outclassing any building in the neighbourhood.
Cattle mingle with pedestrians on the street, and John told us that they eat
what they can find, but particularly like the political posters that are placed
around election-time. It seems that they use different glue, probably made from
flour.
View from the mezzanine of the Annamalai Hotel in Pondicherry.
Outside the hotel. Cows have a taste for political posters and trash.
The noise from the street outside was formidable. While the hotel was
lovely, we felt that we were living at a remove from the daily life of India,
seeing it only through the lobby or the car window. Our afternoon plan was to
go to the Aurobindo Ashram, and we anticipated that we would be fleeing this
fascinating city of Pondicherry early in the morning without really having seen
it. We discussed this with John and suggested that he take the afternoon off,
that we were simply going to go for a walk instead.
We headed out of the hotel into the press of people, noise, smells and
vehicles. Depending upon a map, we decided to visit a local museum on the other
side of town. We anticipated being swamped by curious onlookers and surrounded
by beggars as we had been at the public sites in Mahabalipuram. To our surprise
and delight, this did not happen. In fact, we may as well have been locals, in
spite of Sheila’s dhoti. Walking across town, we could see the French
influence. Pondicherry had once been a French trading colony, and some of the
architecture and names reflected this. In fact, some of the bilingual street
names were in Tamil and French. The Office de la Langue Française would have
been pleased.
The architecture and even some road signs remain from the French period.
Our route took us along busy shopping streets and through the market place,
but he street names were confusing and the map was only a rough guide. Access
to the museum cost 2 rupees (about 4 cents) and the information inside was
really cultivating local pride, like small municipal museums everywhere. At the
same time, the items on show would have been a celebration of antiquity back in
Canada.
We also walked down to the shore, where there were tourists, beggars and
street sellers. Every public square also seems to celebrate Ghandi, and seeing
his statue is somehow familiar and reassuring.
Statues and reminders of Ghandi are ubiquitous and somehow reassuring.
Returning, I was trailed for a while by two young boys, begging. I finally
gave them something in exchange for their picture.
Two young boys asking for money, a pen, or anything. Perhaps just
acknowledgement.
Back at the hotel we swam on the roof at dusk (must be Canadians) and
decided to dine there. Asking John to help us find a restaurant elsewhere was
proving difficult, and we saw nowhere else, ourselves, that looked any more
authentic. John asked us how much the rickshaw had cost to get back across town
and was taken aback to discover that we had walked both ways.
South India, January 2007
January 8
We left early as planned for Thanjavur with plans to stop at Chidambaram, a
35-acre temple property. In the meantime, John told us more about his own life.
He is a Syrian Christian. That means his ancestors converted to Christianity
around 52CE, the year St. Thomas is said to have arrived in Kerala. People in
India, he said, believe in arranged marriages and therefore, while the
communities coexist comfortably, there is not really any intermarriage. He
himself chose to marry so his mother would have a family companion. He is the
older of 2 sons, and the younger one is studying to become a priest. His wife,
Sheena, and he have a young daughter, Rosalie.
We pulled up in a busy non-descript street with people milling around, and
when we got out, John introduced us to the new guide. A slightly older man than
the others, he was Hindu.
The guide showed us huge, ancient mobile temples sitting on wooden wheels
that the faithful pull through the streets under temporary canopies in an
annual celebration. They and the canopies are decked with flowers. Some of the
vehicles are hundreds of years old, but a new one, with huge iron wheels, had
recently been donated by a wealthy congregant.
These mobile temples, some centuries old, are decorated and pulled
through the streets in celebration each year.
We walked to the temple along a road under the temporary wood canopy. When
we arrived the guide explained that the temple has four entrances, as seen in
the picture. They are massive edifices tapering as they rise and are painted
bright colours. This temple is supposed to be the only Hindu temple in India
not owned by the government. Priests maintain it privately. The entries - in
fact the whole place, was stunning. The temple is dedicated to the Nataraja
manifestation of Shiva and the cosmic dance of bliss.
I learned that the principal gods of Hinduism are three in number, making it
similar to the Christian Trinity. God the creator is Brahma, while God the
Protector is Vishnu, and God the Destroyer is Shiva. Where it gets confusing is
that they are all married, and Vishnu and Shiva have offspring, but if you
ignore the offspring, you remain focused on the real gods – and their
manifestations! Generally Shiva manifests himself in many forms such as
Nataraja, but Vishnu became man and accepted to be reincarnated 9 times, and
will be reincarnated only one more time in the future, at the time when evil is
vanquished. Familiar names such as Rama and Krishna are in fact incarnations of
Vishnu. While the interpretations change with different sects, a problem has
recently arisen because one school of Hindu thought has decided that Gautama
Buddha was an incarnation of Vishnu. This is problematic, because it means
either that he is the tenth, or one other has to be demoted. Most of the
temples have representations of the 9 incarnations of Vishnu, and they cannot
start erasing one. When you realise that the Buddha lived 2500 years ago, you
start to see how slowly things actually change in this culture. Give it another
2500 years, I suggested to the guide, and Mahatma Ghandi will have to be
recognised as a manifestation of Vishnu. The guide, a religious man with a
sense of humour actually laughed comprehendingly but nervously at this
suggestion.
We often saw a symbol of the two interlinking triangles that form the Star
of David, and we also saw swastikas. Both of these symbols are older than
Europe and carry none of the baggage that they would in our culture.
Two of the four gates to the temple grounds can be seen beyond the temple
pool.
The four gates of the temple are massive structures that taper into the sky
and can be seven or more storeys high. The temple grounds also include a pool
used for ritual bathing. A few days after our visit we heard in a news story
that several pilgrims had drowned while bathing. When it came time to go into
the temple proper, there was worshipping in progress and we objected. The guide
encouraged us on, saying that we would disturb no-one, but that we should go on
by ourselves and he would wait. He told me this was because they would ask for
a donation, and he had already given. He said I should give whatever I felt
comfortable giving. There were no rules. Anything would be appreciated. He
encouraged us to walk around the outside of the worshipping, all inside a huge
building. Looking through the crowds, where we were not allowed to take
pictures, we saw young men naked from the waist up performing ceremonies for
the faithful. There were wide corridors surrounding the centre of worship,
allowing us to walk around it through these large passages. The far one was
fairly isolated from the worshippers, but there were priests there who stopped
us and insisted that we had to give a donation. They were rather aggressive,
and said the amount should be at least 200 rupees, which surprised me.
Obviously the guide had not prepared us well. I gave the 200 rupees, and the
priests asked my name and where I was from. They insisted that I fill in a
form, which seemed reasonable enough. The hotels asked for feedback and a lot
of places ask you to sign your presence. I began to suspect that something was
different when they wanted our mailing address, phone numbers, email address
and so on. Finally one of them told me to fill in what my monthly donation to
the temple would be. At this point, I stopped and told them that I could fill
in whatever they wanted, but there would be no further donation. They backed
off at that and we moved on, no longer hassled. It confirmed my impression
though, that everyone has his hand out, as though we were in a culture of
beggars.
Being already in the habit of tipping the guide, I gave this one a slightly
smaller tip and suggested that he could give whatever he felt was appropriate
to the priests the next time he went in. This also set me to asking him what
these particular priests do for the community. The answer, once he understood
my question, was nothing. This is not true of all of the temples. Some feed the
poor and are very involved in the community. That seems to be in part how the
government provides welfare. Having taken over the temples, they continued to
encourage the historic role of the temples and the priests in the community.
The difference in the Chidambaram temple is that it is privately owned and has
adamantly refused to follow the example of the other temples and transfer
ownership to the government. The result seems to be that they are doing all
they can to make their way, but not really pulling their weight beyond their
walls.
When we got to Thanjavur to see the Brihadishwara temple, the regular guide
could not make it and his replacement was a young man named Shandar (for the
second son of Shiva and Padmavati) took us around. He loved his work and was
very enthusiastic about all he told. Most of the guides speak English after a
manner, but it is very hard to understand them. Also, there seems to be a
tendency for people to have the answer to any question you ask, whether they
have any idea what you asked or not. This led to a lot of strange answers to
our inquiries, not just of the guides, but also in the hotels. Shandar was a
different sort. He had a ready, and never brief, anecdote for any and every
question we asked, and seems to at least have understood the general sense of
our questions. As a result, we learned a lot from him. When we asked him why
Brahma did not seem as present as Shiva and Vishnu in the temples, he gave us
the long answer, which was basically that the other two had caught him out in a
lie. When we asked him about the sons of Shiva, we learned about their sibling
rivalries. He was very interesting and informative, given that we had the time
to listen. We were learning in any case that we had no responsibility for time,
and we might as well just enjoy ourselves. Shandar also showed us the museum
with its fine Chola bronze. This included several representations of Shiva
dancing.
A bronze representation of the dancing Shiva.
We arrived at the next luxurious hotel, called Parisutham, in Thanjavur, but
it was not conducive to sleep. Although we were given the Honeymoon Suite, it
turned out to be just above the kitchen, which stayed open late, and then began
again early in the morning. I spent the rest of the night listening to a clock
loudly call out the quarter hours with the appropriate number of gongs on the
hour, but felt that I had won some kind of victory each time I realised that I
had missed one of the hours. That meant I must have slept through it.
January 9
Come morning, we headed off towards Madurai with a stop at Trichy where we
visited Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple. It is on a 30-km long island, almost
entirely covered by the magnificent 600-acre complex of what is arguably the
largest temple in India. We caught our first glimpse of the Temple on the Rock
on our way there.
The Rock Fort
The island is considered holy, and we started by visiting a waterfront
location where the faithful were bathing. This, I felt, would be a place where
we would feel awkward. The faithful were here to strip down and bathe and would
not welcome some nosey tourists poking around in inappropriate dress taking
pictures. I was wrong. We may as well have been invisible. People’s sense of
personal space and privacy is very different.
Pilgrims and other Hindus swimming in the sacred waters of the island.
We met our new guide there. His name was Rajan and his English was very easy
to understand. He told us on our way to the temple that the island was holy,
and had always been a place where people came to die. As a result, its economy
was booming with senior citizens homes; hardly the image that we expected of a
holy island, but very sensible. In spite of his clear English, he was laconic.
He brought us to the temple but unlike the previous guides, he let us look
around and said very little. I tried to engage him, with some success. I asked
him where he had learned English. I told him that his accent was quite easy to
understand for our Canadian ear. He told us that his favourite entertainment is
listening to Radio Canada International, and his behaviour proved to be quite
consistent with that of a CBC lefty type. He told us that he is a teacher of
architecture and we began to talk about the architecture of the temple
buildings. He confirmed that there was virtually no shifting in one large
structure and described the foundation work. He brought us to a roof where we
could get some fantastic photos of the temples and the grounds, and then he
brought us close to a religious procession, where we could watch. The priests
were honouring one of the senior priests.
Views from the roof.
He also showed us stone carvings commemorating a battle with Muslim
invaders.
One of a series of individually carved warriors on horseback all in a
long row.
I was reconciled to making a donation to the temple, and I asked him how and
when. He told me that he would let me know when it was appropriate. In the
course of trying to get to know more about the guides, I usually asked them if
they had families. Rajan told me that no, he did not. It was his horoscope, he
explained. Despite the fact that he was a teacher and an architect, his
horoscope was a bad omen to the marriage brokers. He also had a physical
disability that may have influenced them. He had trouble with his feet and
walked with some difficulty. On top of that, he had a receding hairline. We saw
almost no Indians with receding hairlines. That and his skinny frame and
knowledge of CBC made him seem worldly, but he told me, as the other guides
had, that he had never left India.
We went to the Rock Fort and left our shoes for the climb (about 400
stairs). He told us he would wait at the bottom. This turned out to be a real
adventure. When we reached the top, a group of young pilgrims became fascinated
with the camera, and we had a following. On the way back down, we met the same
Israeli couple that we had met at Auroville. The pilgrims were so excited for
us, despite the fact that they could not possibly have understood what our
relationship was with these people, that they insisted on being photographed
together with the Israeli couple and Sheila. We had the chance to talk with the
Israeli couple for a few minutes, and I asked where he was from originally. He
told me New York, and we exchanged names and addresses. I am still curious to
find out if he is somehow related to Spike Marlin whose family was also from
New York, and I intend to explore this.
(Above) Pilgrims we met at the Rock Fort.(Below) The pilgrims with our
acquaintances from Israel.
When we got back down, Rajan met us and showed me where I could make the
donation. I had already offered him the money to make the donation so that he
could get the credit for it. He had refused saying that it was very important
for tourism that we make it so that the donation could be documented. We did so
now, and were given a warm thanks and a very official looking receipt. I
offered it to Rajan, but he told me that it was important for me to keep it. He
said he would need to borrow it a bit later to show it to someone and some time
later, he did. I never saw it again, but Sheila saw him give it to someone. We
thanked him for the tour, and he glowed when I told him he reminded me of a
typical CBC listener.
We pushed on to Madurai. We had not eaten and despite our many appeals to
John, he would not share a meal with us. We accepted that this was a part of
the correctness that he showed, being our lowly driver only, and that the more
we insisted, Sheila suggested, the more awkward he would feel. So we dropped
it, but going through one small town, I got him to stop so we could buy some
bananas.
We checked into the GRT Regency in Madurai, another super luxury hotel that
cost somewhere around $50.00 for the night but would be 5 to 8 times that here.
We were supposed to see a sound and light show at the Thirumalai Nayak palace,
but our new guide, Balla, met us in the lobby while we were going for a late
lunch to tell us that the show had been cancelled. Instead we were going to see
yet another temple. This one was the Meenakshi Sundareswar Temple, and even
though the light was fading, we got some good pictures. It was another living
temple with activities going on, including a large soup line.
Blurry low-light images of the interior of the temple.
Looking up at the temple ceiling.
Movement and action in the temple. The food line can be seen behind the
barrier on the right.
I had the opportunity to ask Balla about dress code in the times when these
temples were built. I said that it seemed the representation of the body
suggested that the men and women went bare-breasted. He said that it was like
that until the British influence began. There was even one picture of Shiva
dancing with his arm around one of his wives and his fingers squeezing her
nipple. It is fascinating how completely the women are covered now,
considering.
Balla was an older man, moonlighting from his regular job as a professor of
economics, and we kept running into his students who shyly asked him
questions.He took us to a tailor where no doubt he received a commission, and
we ordered made-to-measure clothes. It is sad to think that a respected
professor should have to depend upon these other sources of revenue. The tailored
clothes, ordered after dark, were delivered to the hotel by nine o'clock the
next morning.
January 10
We got up and decided to go to the Thirumalai Nayak palace even though there
would be no guide. It was a fascinating building and I find that my memory of
these amazing buildings is stronger when there is no guide talking. The temples
we saw with Rajan and this palace stay more strongly in my mind than the
others. I took a picture of a Catholic Church that we flew by on the way. It
was also a remarkable edifice. At the entrance to the palace, because we were
early we had to wait a few moments. A beggar woman stood around trying to get
something from us, but John kept shooing her away as though she was an
embarrassment to India. I finally gave her something and took her picture.
The palace courtyard.
Arches around the courtyard.
We headed next to Thekkady, our first stop in Kerala, John's home state. He
told us Kerala means the land of the coconut, and as we approached it, we could
see how relieved he was to cross the border. He told us the government there is
Communist, and it has been alternating between Communist and Congress from
election to election for years. He is very well suited to a regime. Sheila
called him our ‘minder’ because he would not let us out of his sight and
treated us as his important charges, as though we were some visiting
dignitaries
We were now starting a serious climb into the Western Ghats mountains as
well. Up until this point, we had been within range of the sea, at very low
elevation, but that was all in the process of changing. Thekkady is just across
the border, and we were going to stay at the Cardamom Resort. It was a long
drive, and we were going to visit the Periyar Wildlife Reserve in the morning.
On the way up the mountains, we saw gigantic pipes coming down under the
switchback road. John told us that the British had diverted a mountain water
source years ago to supply industry and agriculture in the valley on the
Madurai, or Tamil Nadu, side. Today, though, the Tamil Nadu government wants to
increase the flow, but they are at odds with the Kerala government, and it is a
source of friction between the two. We had also noticed that in some of the
towns, John had to buy a certificate to allow him to drive. He explained that
while he had an all-India vehicle registration, he was clearly from Kerala, and
it was simpler and safer to pay off the police in Tamil Nadu than to be stopped
and hassled. As we approached the border, he relaxed a lot also, as though he
was arriving home. At one point, climbing through the steep switchbacks, we
were tangled up in a small snarl with busses and trucks. It was amazing how
everything sorted out. Right after, we came across some monkeys in a tight
corner of the road. John decisively grabbed the rest of the bananas we had
bought the previous day and threw one out the window. We watched as a monkey
grabbed it, sat down on the busy road, calmly peeled it, and ate.
The driver sleeps as his team pulls him through chaotic traffic.
Three monkeys with their babies.
Cardamom was a lovely resort, and as usual, once he dropped us John
disappeared. We learned at the GRT Regency, when our tailor came to deliver the
dresses, he was not allowed beyond the lobby, and he had to enter and exit
through a service entrance. These class rules are handled almost invisibly, so
it took us some time to become conscious of certain details. We always asked
John if he had eaten, and he always reassured us that he had. We learned
rapidly to look after ourselves and not worry about him, because it would have
created impasses everywhere, with him worrying continuously about us. Our room
at Cardamom was a free-standing unit above the main buildings, up on a hill
with a lovely view. In spite of the fact that we were in the mountains, though,
and had effectively our own building, I had no illusion that our quest for a
quiet night’s sleep would go unrewarded for some unpredictable reason.
John offered to take us out to see a martial arts show in the evening. I
also accepted his suggestion to have an ayurvedic full body massage. It felt
pretty pointless, but I could see how it could be useful and pleasant if you
returned repeatedly to the same masseur until he got to know your needs. John
asked me after if I had enjoyed it. I told him that it was an interesting
experience, but that I could see no reason to do it again. I asked him if he
goes in for that. He said he had had one once. We snorted together lake two
unappreciative peasants and left it there, but a few minutes later I could see
him consumed with guilt at the thought that I had not enjoyed it. I reassured
him that it was an experience that I would not have missed, and that I was
really grateful to him.
The Kalaripayattu martial arts show was fascinating. The young men could
really have hurt each other, fighting in a choreographed dance with real
weapons. When they danced with torches, it was much more impressive. I thought
that they could have done a great imitation of the dancing Shiva if they had
set their minds to it.
Our promising hotel room turned out to be pretty quiet until the night crew
began hammering and banging on some project for a few hours from 1:30 AM.
Martial arts show. At one point they turned off the lights and danced
with torches.
January 11
Sheila’s birthday saw us leave before breakfast for a 2-hour nature walk in
the Periyar Lake Wildlife Sanctuary. We arrived to meet three other tourists,
one of whom was a guest at our hotel, an Indian from Calcutta who moved to
Switzerland where he married a Swiss. He was more Swiss than Indian. His wife
and child could not make it because they had colds. The other two were women
from Finland. Our new guide pulled us across a narrow part of the lake on a
bamboo raft. The raft is attached to both shores by ropes and can therefore be
pulled across as needed. This guide was a short man who did not talk. When we
arrived on the other shore, he charged off as though we weren’t there and we
all had to scramble to catch up. We were embarking upon a trip into the forest,
a preserve of elephants and tigers.
Crossing on the bamboo raft.
When each of us caught up with the guide in turn, we tended to drop back.
While he did not talk, as though not wanting to disturb the wildlife, he farted
continuously. When he stopped, he squinted knowledgeably with one eye virtually
closed, then headed off in a new direction barking at best a one-word answer to
any question we may have gasped out at him. At one point, I stopped to tie a
shoelace, making a scene about it to allow the others to catch up. He
immediately dropped down and tucked my pants into my socks, knowingly, this
despite the fact that some of his other charges were in shorts. We soon solved
the farting question. He was wearing rubber loafers without socks, and each
time he stepped, they responded. We dubbed him the Guide with the Farting
Shoes. 
Taking turns following the guide.
Keeping up with him was hard enough, but worse was all the
fascinating things we were rushing past. Perhaps he hoped to surprise a tiger
or an elephant for us, or else he was afraid that we were being followed by
one. Whatever, at one point he began to climb, and we soon found ourselves at
the top of a mountain with beautiful vistas on all sides. He allowed us to sit
while he went looking for the lost tiger, and we soon learned that there were
monkeys in the trees around us. One thing that the pictures cannot convey was
the continuous wallowing hoot of the monkeys and the songs of the birds.
We could hear the monkeys continuously, but saw them rarely.
Views from the mountains.
The walk took well over three hours, which meant that the dining hall would
be closed upon our return and we would have to rush to get out before the
checkout deadline, but we eventually found ourselves again at the bamboo rafts
and saw a group of staff arriving from their own mission into the forest.
Staff returning to the camp.
We had an early lunch at the hotel and left from there to visit a spice
plantation. As with most of the tours we had, this one was private, consisting
of just us. The guide tried to get us together with the local elephant first,
but we told him that we had already been blessed by a different elephant in a
temple. After that, he took us through the plantation showing us the spices and
herbs, hitting us with rapid-fire questions of what they were before he told
us. Because we were just two people, he made us guess four and five times
before he explained. We learned, and no doubt rapidly forgot, a lot.
Our next adventure would take us into tea country. Tea grows at high
elevations, and it is impossible to convey the impression that the vast
mountains of cultivated tea plants made upon us. The elevation is 1500 metres,
over 4500 feet! John told us that the British had overseen the creation of
these plantations 100 years before independence. Before that, the hills had
been barrens, and a few still were. We also stopped at a tea factory where we
saw how tea was treated after harvest; dried, crushed and graded. John told us
that the harvesters have to take the tenderest leaves off the plants once every
14 days. You see women working in among the endless sea of tea plants, all
wearing colourful saris.
Tea plantations cover the hills surrounding this village and laundry
operation.
The tenderest tea leaves must be removed once every two weeks.
We were, of course, in Kerala, and the Christian influence was starting to
show. Kerala has a stable claim to Christianity that is 2 ½ centuries older
than the Catholic Church. Christianity here is Indian. We were beginning to see
more churches. We were also getting beyond the tea regions into rugged
mountains. We were heading to Vanilla County, Teekoy. The name does not refer
to ice cream, but to a place where vanilla grows. Clinging to the sides of
cultivated mountains, we saw a town in the valley 800 feet below with a narrow
road leaving it as it wound still lower down the hills. Sheila asked John if
that was the road we would soon be on, but he did not know. After traveling
through many more kilometres of tea plantations, the landscape gradually became
more barren. The roads through these mountains are basically one-track, but the
traffic is not, and you do not know if you will find a bus heading your way
when you round a switchback. We were beginning to wonder where Vanilla County
was, and how a resort could survive way out here in these hills. John had never
taken this route before, and was relieved to come to a T-intersection and see a
sign pointing left to Teekoy and indicating 18 kilometres. He smiled and said
that we would be taking the road we had seen. We were on a windy, single lane
with sheer drops and vistas at every turn. The road was the only sign of human
presence until we turned one switchback and saw a small school bus filled with
uniformed little girls. They seemed an anomaly out here in the wilds. Driving
on did not seem to explain them, but some distance later there were more
children walking along the road in the same uniforms, and soon we were in what
looked like a few houses hugging the side of the mountain. There was a simple
sign saying Vanilla County down to the right on one more switchback and we
turned into the courtyard of a stately home.
We were ushered to our room where an elderly woman dropped our heavy bags
and disappeared while our doting host told us that we had been expected for
lunch at 1:00PM. We soon found ourselves in the dining room eating a sumptuous
lunch at 3:30 PM. Concerned for John, I asked if he had proper accommodations
and a meal. I was assured that he did. Our hosts were pleasant to the point of
being unctuous and the food was delicious. Right after lunch, we saw that our
host, Mr. Baby, was taking some other guests on a tour, so we joined in. We
learned that our lodgings were a part of a plantation, and we watched the
process of transforming the sap from rubber trees into latex. It is tapped from
a rubber tree, mixed with formic acid over night, and then squeezed out and
hung to dry. Voilà, rubber. This is the grade that will be sold to make tires.
This hand-driven press squeezes the excess liquid out of the rubber.
Our host, Mr. Baby Matthew, told us that, according to custom the youngest
son inherited the household and the responsibility for the aging parents. Since
he was the youngest son, he turned the house into a home-stay after his parents
passed away. His siblings built elsewhere, but together they still ran the
rubber, spice and vanilla plantation.
The other guests were a family, grandparents, parents and 2 children. I
mentioned to our hostess that we would come down for dinner but not eat much
because of our late lunch. I added that it was Sheila’s birthday, thinking that
this information would serve to break the ice with the other guests. I was
right. At dinner, the host’s daughter had thought to put some candles on the
table, and we all celebrated Sheila’s birthday, even getting the host to sit
with us for a while. He was a Christian, and his house showed that his family
was actively religious. The other guests were Swiss-Indian grandparents coming
back to India with their children and grandchildren. The grandfather was
Punjabi, and after he had finished his studies in Switzerland, he and his Swiss
wife moved to Chennai where he worked as an engineer. Soon he found that the
slow economy was too much of a challenge, so they moved to Switzerland where
their family grew up, married, and still lives. We discovered that we had more
in common with the senior generation and talked about all the world’s quirks
and problems while the children put the grandchildren to bed. We were
discussing rising fundamentalism in America and the Middle East. When our host
sat down to join us I praised him for his table and told him that we had just
solved the problems of the world around it. I asked him why Kerala was so
peaceful and stable. He responded by telling us it was because Christianity had
come to Kerala. We did not pursue that line of thought and went on to other
things.
After dinner I asked again about John whom I hadn’t seen since we arrived,
and Mr. Baby told me I should not worry about the driver. “Those people are
used to this. He is fine.” Mr. Baby, in addition to being a Christian of
countless generations is also a Brahman. The caste system has no problem, it
seems, adapting itself to Christianity. His wife, the wonderful cook who had
prepared our meal, wanted to make sure we were comfortable, and turned some
lights on near our room. I told her I hadn’t turned any on in the bedroom to
try to reduce the risk of mosquitoes. She responded that I should not be
concerned because there were no mosquitoes in the mountains. True to her word,
we saw none. We looked forward to a very peaceful night sleeping, as we were
virtually outside. In fact, we crossed an open balcony and another bedroom to
get to our "ensuite" bathroom. The windows had no glass, but only
large wrought-iron grillwork and we left the doors open. As I nodded off to the
background singing of mountain crickets and night birds, I thought at last our
quest for a good night’s sleep would be realised. One small imperfection was an
outside light that shone into the room and the whir-whir-whir of a mechanical
fan somewhere. I carefully reasoned through a huge panel of switches and
determined which one turned off the light. Perfect. I went back to bed in
anticipation of an exquisitely peaceful night’s sleep thinking that I could
easily master the rhythm of the fan.
As I dozed off again, I was startled by the noise of a hog squealing,
screeching, right outside the building. It went on for a very long time. My
eyes flickered uselessly in the darkness like a candle in a light breeze and I
fell out of the rhythm of the fan. Eventually, the hog succeeded in getting a
dog to react, and so its squeals were accompanied by incessant barking. I
fought to recover my drowsiness but it was becoming a lost cause. I was
searching through my philosophical tool kit for the method of accepting all the
noise, arguing that, after all, it was natural, when I heard a loud scraping
sound. It was as though a rodent were dragging something over a wooden floor.
Since the floor of the bedroom was concrete, I concluded that it must be in the
ceiling. I was sure it wasn’t the hog. Sheila was now awake, listening
intently. I assured her it wasn’t the hog. Long after the hog had stopped
screeching, the dog began a particularly aggressive run of barking. Suddenly, I
heard a loud “Blam!” and it stopped barking. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘the owner shot
the blasted thing. How considerate!’ Things were looking up, but just as
quickly, a rooster crowed, perhaps in reaction to the gunshot (or slammed
door). I listened for the poor dog, but did not hear it. The rodent dragged
across the ceiling again and the hog started all over. Now I heard a new
cackling noise, and realised it was coming from me. Grinning strangely in the
dark, I was soon asleep.
January 12
Breakfast consisted of flat bread, home-made banana jam (red and delicious), home-made peanut butter and a cup of coffee. We declined the omelette, since we could not have eaten more. Our host declined payment for the previous day’s meals, and we warmly thanked him and commended their place. Soon we were off again. John, however, who is always impeccably dressed and groomed in the morning, was unshaven. He looked tired. I asked him if he had had breakfast, and he said no. It wasn’t offered to the drivers. He was told there was a place he could go to eat in the village, five minutes’ drive. He would never ever think to use the car for his own needs. Supper had also been thin and the staffhouse had been posted with rules, making for a generally unwelcoming environment. I had to coax this information out of him because he is such a proud professional that he would rather stay silent. He explained to us that the drivers generally had trouble with the home-stay places. Some treated the staff well, but this was not one of them. I remembered the old woman who had been ushered off after bringing our bags. John told us he had never been to this one before, but that the drivers had a list of ones that they refused to drive to, and such a list hurt the home-stay owner’s business. He did not have to tell us that Vanilla County would be put on that list. We felt sad about this otherwise lovely place.
Back on the road, we were on our way down the valley to our next adventure, a day-and-night long stay on a canal boat. This was the event everyone had told us not to miss: The highlight. We were particularly happy for John, too, since he could get home and see his wife and daughter. First, though, we had to solve a cash shortage problem. We needed to find an ATM that recognised our Desjardins “Plus” debit card. This turned out to be a challenge. In Thekkady we had failed to get one to work, and after another failure in Alleppey, we were directed to the UAExpress. This outlet, we were told, could solve the problem. They had a universal card reader. I walked up to the counter and told the man what I needed, but he apologized that the machine was not working right then, indicating a technician who was tinkering with some electronics. “Shall I wait, then?” I offered. I figured a half-hour wait would be worth solving the problem since I had learned that you have to wait for all kinds of things here. “You could come back,” he offered, “it’s been broken for a week.” We traded our last cash reserve in for rupees.
When we arrived at the canal, we saw all kinds of boats, and we were soon boarding a ‘wicker’ boat that looked like something out of a fantasy story. These canal boats are converted rice barges that have been adapted for a 24-hour trip on the canals of Alleppey. The basic boat, a solidly built wooden hull, is fitted with bamboo arches and then enclosed with woven palm leaves. They have a kitchen, rooms, bathrooms and a lovely deck. The floor was made of coir, a rope made from coconut husks. Sebastian, Baby John and Captain World, our crew and companions for the next 20 hours, greeted us. We were on our way. Our bags were put carefully in our room, and as usual, we discovered we were the only tourists on board; another private tour.
This is a typical converted rice barge with added superstructure.
We began by pretending to be sophisticates and reading in the comfortable chairs on deck. Baby John, the cook, prepared an Indian snack (a cocoanut with a straw and a bowl of very sweet fruit) and Sebastian offered to answer any questions while Captain World carefully steered the craft along the canal. At one point when Sebastian was in the stern, I asked Captain World a question, but he responded by pulling a string that rang a bell in the stern, and Sebastian arrived to answer. Soon, our reading was put to the side and we were gazing out at the fascinating scenery, rice fields, small homes, walkways with people going to-and-fro.
Seasoned traveler relaxing onboard the houseboat while Captain World navigates carefully through the canals.
The floating plants are water hyacinth.
The system of canals around Alleppey was built under the reigning Maharaja in the last half of the 18th century. He saw the potential of a young man named Kesava Pillay on whom he relied increasingly over time. Kesava, who became known as Raja Kesava Das, rebuilt the town and is considered the architect of two of the major canals. The region boasts three rivers and two large lakes forming hundreds of kilometres of navigable waterways, but the real genius of the backwaters and canals is the Thannermukkom regulator, a barrier that protects the region from the tidal intrusion of salt water. Large sections of land between the canals are flooded with fresh river water creating rice paddies, while the canals themselves grow fish and are used for transportation. Water hyacinth, a fast-growing floating plant, can clog up the canals but at the same time cleans the water. Once a year, the tides are let in, and the salt water cleanses the canals, flushing out the water hyacinth and the remaining dirty water, allowing the process to start over. Called the Venice of the East, it is a large community living almost entirely on these canals. We were wined, dined and entertained in whatever original way seemed to work. Most of the time, just watching the beauty of the canal life, the setting sun and the people was enough. We saw ferry buses and school boats, people washing, domestic scenes complete with chickens and ducks as well as the production of huge fields of rice. In the evening, Baby John made us a delicious supper of giant prawns that we bought from their fishermen at I am sure exorbitant prices, and, with the boat tied up, the crew decided to entertain us. Sebastian had picked up a puppy that he intended to bring home to his family, but in the meantime it became the mascot as Sebastian sang and Baby John kept time by pounding the deck. When I identified the dog as Puppy, the name stuck, so I can proudly say there is a dog that I named running around in an Indian village somewhere near Alleppey, playing with little kids. Sebastian asked us to sing to them as well, but when they heard my voice they quickly excused me and contented themselves with Sheila’s singing while I took on the role of deck-thumper.
Dragon boat tied to the shore as water hyacinth floats by.
School 'bus'?
There are many ways to navigate the canals.
Commuter traveling home as the sun sets.
When it was time for bed, Sebastian asked us if we wanted the air conditioner on. I told him that we would rather not have it running, and so he told us to keep our door and windows open for cross-ventilation. We were anxious that the puppy would keep us awake all night, but while he continued to pee on the coir floor, leaving little wet circles, he was reasonably quiet. That said, I had a rush of urban nerves when the boat lights went out and we were floating off the shore of Lake Vemabanadu. I kept hearing the voices of men in other boats as they paddled home and wondered at how vulnerable we would have been if this were an American city. We finally slept well onboard the boat, but life on the canal starts very, very early and so our day began well before I was completely rested from my night worries.
January 13
After a good breakfast, we met John who looked refreshed, having spent the night at his own home in Alleppey with his wife Sheena and his daughter Rosalie.
He brought us to a small village called Vaikom where we took another tour by boat. This time the guide, a dignified middle-aged man, would be accompanying us in a dugout-like boat that is poled along a very narrow canal - a wide creek. John described the village as similar to where he lives. There is a village square where people gather to exchange. It is under a roof, and nearby there are public washrooms and a tap. We were told that after our boat ride, we would return here.
Vaikom village square
When we embarked, sitting comfortably in the centre of the narrow craft, our guide began to fidget. He was wearing the customary dhoti, and it seems that a number of tenacious insects were displaced when he sat down, and so they took up residence in the poor man’s dhoti. As he lectured on the history of the woodland and the canal, his new tenants distracted him continuously, entertaining us in the process. We managed to appear ignorant of his plight, thereby allowing him greater confidence to shake them out as we tried not to chuckle our way up the creek.
The pilot is behind me, pushing a pole into the ground to guide us.
We disembarked at one point to watch two women in a cottage industry making twine from coir fibre. They carried bundles of coir in their aprons, and as they pulled it out, the remaining coir attached itself to it, forming a string. They tied this to a hook that was attached to a motor that spun the hook around. The women proceeded to back across the yard feeding coir out of their aprons, spinning longer and longer strings as the hook turned.
Women making coir from coconut husk fibre.
The guide, whose name was difficult to pronounce, and so is lost, also showed us an unusual tree. He told us that unlike most trees, it absorbs carbon dioxide through its leaves, but does not convert it to oxygen. He explained that if it were calm and a pilgrim should happen to sleep under such a tree, he would be asphyxiated. I tried to verify the existence of the tree on Google, but have not succeeded. Sheila asked how such a tree has survived in a community like this if it is so dangerous. He explained that believers plant the tree in the corner of the yard, a protection against pilgrims and evil-doers.
This small boat trip was memorable because we were literally passing through the daily life of the homes. Women were washing clothes, one was weaving reed mats, and a boy was bathing. Children were running around their houses, ducks swam in little groups. It was very domestic.
A domestic scene of life on the canal of Vaikom village.
The guide explained the different trees and a little bit about the village life, but since we were his whole tour, he finished telling us everything he was supposed to tell us before we headed back along the canal to the village square. I was very tired after finally having a good night’s sleep, no doubt, and so Sheila took the brunt of the focus from our (once again) private tour guide, who seemed to quite like her. He told us that he was a radiographer, and that he had learned his trade as an apprentice and had found a very well-paying job in the north of India, but eventually he had fallen sick, and the doctor told him he was suffering from radiation poisoning. His co-workers were Japanese, all of whom had dose-o-metres (Geiger counters?), and when they found the radiation was too strong, they would refuse to go close. Since he did not have one, he became the person who was exposed. He could get neither recognition for the danger nor a dose-o-metre for himself, so he was obliged to quit. He said that he has been sick ever since, but that he came back to his village to live with his wife and family. He was very cynical, and told us that the things John and others had said about Kerala having a 100% literacy rate were just propaganda. He said that the states received international funding for education, and so they had to demonstrate that the funds had been used successfully, but that much of the funding had landed in politicians' private accounts. When we returned to the village square, we had a lovely meal on banana-leaf plates while another tour, this time of Indian tourists, were at the adjacent table. Sheila could finally get a good glimpse of how one eats politely with ones fingers, and became quite adept.
A feast served on banana leaves at the village square.
From there, we drove to Kochi where we checked into a fairly nice hotel on a side street. It was certainly no resort, but felt more like a good, midrange hotel you might find in Europe. Once we were settled, John brought us to the docks for a harbour sunset cruise. One of the signs boasted a “Calm and Quite family restaurant”. Arriving in the hustle and bustle of tourists getting onto cruise boats to motor out through the harbour, we were directed to ours, a large boat with two decks that could accommodate a fair number of people and a crew of two. We were ushered to two prime seats on the upper deck and the boat set off – with just us! Once again, a private tour.
Modern Indian architecture. The Cochin Port Trust building in the harbour.
The crew member who was not piloting the boat came up and told us a little bit about the harbour, describing buildings and answering questions as we passed ships full of tourists and the occasional boat like ours, with just two or three passengers. He even invited us to the cabin to meet the pilot. They gave me the steering and took our picture with me pretending to control the boat as it began a series of hesitant tacks back and forth across the harbour. As the day fell, the captain positioned the boat in a spectacular location where I began photographing the sun setting through some Chinese fishing nets. The position was so prized that I soon realised other boats were jockeying in around us to try to take it. One boat that we clearly blocked blasted a horn at us and moved off in a huff. Others just had to wait for us to finish. We eventually drifted further out where we managed to get other views of the setting sun.
The sun caught in a Chinese fishing net in Cochin harbour.
John had told us earlier that some of the guides and hotels would introduce us to stores, and that they would tell us that the drivers got kickbacks – finder’s fees – for introducing us to their stores. He said this was true, and that it was also true of them. He told us that we should feel comfortable buying where we want, knowing that in a sense we were rewarding the guide, hotel employee or driver by choosing their connections. We asked him to introduce us to his tailor because Sheila wanted a shalwar kameez. We had also thanked another guide by letting him introduce us to his store, and bought other things the same way. After our harbour sunset cruise, John brought us to a good tailor who made me some pyjamas and made Sheila some more dresses. Sheila was taken with the signage, advertising “Lenin and Silk Material.”
One should not come to India to learn English.
That night, we ate at the hotel, where three very young dancers, probably part of a school dance programme, entertained us. In their lovely costumes they did their best to evoke the /images of the young women that they will eventually become. Dark as most of the South Indians are, it was surprising to see that one of these young girls had clear blue eyes. To our surprise, during the performance, the Israeli man whom we had met twice before arrived, walked over to the dance floor, and took some pictures. We connected with them again, and promised to get together the next evening if they were still around, and they also invited us to spend the next day on an excursion with them, but we already had other plans.
Child dancing at the hotel restaurant.
January 14
We met George, an elderly, prosperous-looking man who would be our guide for the day. A very proud Syrian Christian, he took us around to the churches, telling us their stories and filling in a lot of loose ends. For instance, the god Shiva is called Shiva the Destroyer, but George called him Shiva the Destroyer of Evil. (I checked this afterwards, and while some sources describe Shiva as the destroyer of evil, I am not sure the destruction of evil was originally intended or considered, although there are references to Shiva as Rudra, and one of Rudra’s roles is to drive away sorrow. Shiva could be the God Shiva the Destroyer without any reference to good and evil.) He also told us that the canals of Alleppey were a result of the Dutch influence, which makes sense given the dikes of Holland. (This was not borne out at all. The Dutch were present at that time, but not as allies, and I could find nothing connecting them to the building of the canals or of the Thannermukkom regulator.) As colourful as the different guides' information might be, it often is not reliable.
George proudly showed us the various churches of Kochi and took us to the Syrian Church’s Bishop’s residence, where he seemed like a regular. He also took us to the Cochin Synagogue, which was built in 1568. Sadly for the Jews, the Portuguese brought the Inquisition to India in the early 1500s and destroyed the Jewish communities that it found. The synagogue represented a new start. According to a booklet that we found there, when St. Thomas arrived in Cranganore, the Jewish princedom, in 55 CE, a Jewish girl playing the flute was among the party that greeted him. The pamphlet also reports the legends that the first Jews in South India arrived with the trading ships of King Solomon, but it also reports that the real influx was at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in the first century. While the Syrian Christians coexisted with the Hindu majority, the Jews, thanks to the Inquisition instigated so far away, had a rougher time. Even the Syrian Christians, however, were forced to become Catholic at that time.
The Infant Jesus Church Emakulam.
George brought us through a closed market to catch a glimpse of another, larger synagogue. It was the congregation of the black Jews who moved to Israel before 1952. It is generally accepted that they experienced no persecution in Kerala, but they moved for religious reasons. Of the surviving community, there are not enough men to form a minyan and one sad young woman that we met refuses to abandon her elders despite the hopeless task the marriage broker has of finding her a Jewish husband in Kochi.
Walking through the closed market to see the closed synagogue.
The rain tree, brought by the Portuguese, constantly rains small leaves.
At the end of the day, George invited us to his home for tea where we saw his daughter’s wedding album. She was married just the previous year, and he explained to us that despite the law forbidding it, the bride’s family was expected to supply a dowry; a page in the album showed the wedding party with a car, a ribbon tied around it. Socializing with George was an interesting experience. We crossed his front yard, which was a pile of rubble. He had just acquired it and was intending to build a house for his son. Beyond that, we entered a simple waiting room, clearly the reception room, and we sat on straight-backed chairs while his wife served us tea. She did not appear for more than this function. When the tea arrived I expressed a serious dilemma to George, because we could not drink tea on our laps while looking at the wedding album without risking the latter. Perhaps, I thought, we could put the album aside, finish our tea, and then go on from there. Seeing the problem, this 60-odd year-old leaned over us holding the album and showing us one page at the time. We would learn in Goa that the reception rooms are somewhat awkward, formal places. We soon thanked him for his warm hospitality and I said thank you in both English and Malayalam to his wife. This was a little bit of a faux-pas since George insisted that her English was fine; another theme that recurred throughout our trip.
Another view of Chinese fishing nets.
Later that evening we went, as scheduled, to see Kathakali (story-play) dance. The first part of the show was watching the two male dancers put on their make-up (1 hour). John took his role as 'minder' very seriously. He felt responsible to know what we were doing, when. He delivered us to approved guides and collected us from them, wherever possible. Of course we knew that this was all being done because the touring company and sub-contractor felt answerable, and were really concerned that their ‘care’ be properly looked after. We had conditioned John to stop worrying about us, and on this particular evening, he did not need too much convincing to trust us to find our own way around Kochi after the performance. Most of the other people were delivered to the theatre in white tour-company cars similar to ours, and we could see that the audience was made up, at last, of people like us. One-hour of watching these guys put on their make-up, we had been told, was getting the inside scoop, the real thing. We were ‘minded’ – read bored – for an extra hour. The MC presenting the show told us to watch the actors/dancers’ eyes. A part of the form is the incredible range of emotions they show through their made-up faces and their eye movements. It was fascinating, and we can imagine how sore our eyes would have been if we had tried. Even though we were only told the story of the myth, we could still follow it through the dancers’ expressions, and it was entertaining. Like most of the guides, this one, the MC, was difficult to understand. Each one seems to speak a different dialect of English, and it takes a lot of time to catch their drift, sometimes so long that the relationship is over before you have. This one compounded the problem by casually interrupting his presentation to answer his cell phone twice. He did so without self-consciousness or apology, as though this was totally normal and modern. Still, accompanied by two shirtless percussionists, the dancers succeeded in relating their tale.
Demon enticing the maiden in the Kathakali dance.
After, while everyone else was being ushered to white tourist cars by mindful drivers, we happily walked out into the dark city. Throughout our trip across South India, we felt safe. It makes for a special kind of relaxing in a thoroughly foreign environment to feel safe in a dark alley at night. Single women walking freely and unselfconsciously tells the story. We soon arrived at a restaurant that we had identified earlier and got a table. We sat right near the tandoori oven, where I had a great opportunity to examine how it was built and to start fantasizing about building one myself. We concluded that a culinary guide would have really enhanced our trip. Imagine, we thought, if the organiser, Altaf, had also set up the occasional meal with a guide to explain it to us. We did acquire a book on Kerala cuisine.
January 15
After breakfast and an early checkout, we took a very long walk around Kochi. We examined the Chinese fishing nets and the smaller stores in the side streets. We walked a long section of waterfront that was clearly not used by the tourists and we generally enjoyed our last morning. At one point on the beach, we saw an attractive young western woman lying in the sun in very skimpy clothes and, considering how conservatively the locals dress, we were impressed at how she was being left alone. Her skin was quite pale, suggesting that she had arrived only recently and perhaps had not yet noticed how her dress might not be all that considerate of local customs. We hadn’t seen Goa yet, where there are no such considerations.
That afternoon we saw our second traffic accident on our way to the airport for our flight to Goa. It was a minor accident, but it underlined to us how few we had seen, and how safe the roads had come to feel.
On the plane, an American woman sat beside me. We had seen very few Americans on this trip - in fact we saw more Canadians. Almost all the Western tourists were from Europe, and a number of them were mixed Indian European couples. This woman was more what you would expect, a part of a tour group. She was a white-knuckle flyer, and reminded me of an absurd idea I have had at different times: Sometimes, it seems, we live our own lives, but sometimes we drift into other people’s lives and at those time, we are the bit players, subject to their karmas. Their fears and wishes are the ones that become central, causal, that become the elements of a story with its own predictable twists. It was a very short flight, and when the plane began to land, I could feel this talkative, nervous seatmate tighten up into near panic. It did not surprise me, given my absurd perspective, when the plane hit the runway in the most jarring landing I had experienced on a commercial flight. I just had to accept that I was traveling in the shadow of someone else’s karma. Had the plane been in serious trouble, I would simply have been another statistic in someone’s story.
We were in our story, though, and the trip through these two southern Indian states revealed to us just how many different karmas there are; how central and imposing that culture is, and how we seem, at times, to be the supporting cast, our short histories starting and ending on the fringes of this major stage of the world.
Posted by joseph. Permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 13:31 on
February 21, 2007
Why Afghanistan is Our Problem and Jack Layton Has a Point
Like an animal that soils its nest, Western Culture has never learned social hygiene. The problems that we in the West face in the world today are of our own creation. We have never been tolerant of the other, as Jews, Gypsies, blacks and indigenous people know, and so the other must move elsewhere or adjust. That is largely how Israel has come into being in our time. As these words flow out, I can hear the arguments that the Coalition of the Offended will echo back, comparing our record to others, but be careful of your facts, because we have never measured up. Moslem culture, as found in its large urban capitals throughout history, was demonstrably more tolerant and cosmopolitan than Christian culture was. When the Turks first took Constantinople, Jews fleeing persecution in Christian lands swarmed to the welcoming city, and even before that, the Moors of the Iberian Peninsula more than tolerated their minorities. Chinese children have been taught from time immemorial the stories of tolerance through the legends of the Monkey King, and the indigenous peoples of the Americas initially fed and clothed the first Europeans to arrive, only shunning them when they discovered how dirty and diseased they were. Even if one accepts the arguments of the Offended who will cite intolerance in Moslem culture today, it is too easy an answer, because in many ways, they are in reaction. Our actions and colonial adventures have contributed to their current behaviour.
It is not only in ethnic matters, though, that we hurt ourselves. Our intolerance of the needy among us, our indifference to our environment and our heritage of entitlement send ripples out through the world that come back to wash over us, while our unimaginative response is to make war on terrorists on drugs. We have the capacity to reduce our need for petroleum to a point where our purchasing power could be used to positive influence, choosing to buy from countries who invest the proceeds in the betterment of their citizens, but instead our appetite swallows all available supply. We declare war on the misguided drug victims of our society, forcing them to buy illegally, and then we attack the farmers in Afghanistan who are supplying the illicit market that we created.
Should Jack Layton sincerely wish to make a difference with his policy of withdrawing from Afghanistan, he should reach out, not to the Taliban, but to the farmers who are producing over 90% of the worlds opium poppies. In order to do so, though, he would have to make the bold move of legalizing Government administered heroin and start treating drug users as patients instead of criminals. The rest of us can make a difference by drastically reducing our fuel consumption. Even the Taliban, who, like the Hezbollah, are not simply terrorists, but community groups who use drastic and violent means in the course of enfranchising their members, receive help from the very people who satisfy our huge appetite for oil.
We are theoretically in control of these things, but our self-centred sense of entitlement has us endorsing a civil policy that dumps the needy into the hands of the criminal communities while we smugly drive around in cars and SUVs bragging about our anti-theft devices. Today we protect ourselves from street gangs, but what happens when they discover God, or Allah? What happens when they become righteous? How long will it be before terrorists, begin to enfranchise the children of the needy in our cities? How long will it take for us to recognise our hubris and to clean up our own act?
Posted by joseph. Permanent link - comments: 0. Posted at 15:46 on
October 01, 2006
