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 at 15:46 on February 21, 2007 by joseph