9
LAKSHMI. The word occurs in the Rig-veda with the sense of good fortune. In the Atharva-veda the idea has become personified in females both of a lucky and unlucky character. The Taittiriya Sanhita makes Lakshmi and Sri to be two wives of Aditya (god of the celestial light). The Satapatha Brahmana describes Sri as issuing forth from Prajapati (the Creator).
Trivandrum: views from Hotel Sha (in India “hotel” means restaurant, “lodge” the Indian word for hotel). Desultory late afternoon weekday traffic: buses half full, early-risen workers returning home, Indian tourists afoot on the sidewalk, housewives shopping. Weather sultry, an occasional whiff of mid-winter cool ─ though author’s arm, laid on page to write, leaves multiple blobs of sweat in the pulpy paper of Indian notebook. Across-street view of shops for tourist/wealthy burgher: “The Shoe Bazaar,” “Francis and Brothers Footwear,” “Ragam Handmade Chappals.” Windows stacked with other leather products: suitcases, briefcases, handbags. Francis’ sign in light blue, light blue and white checkerboard beneath the name “Francis.” A single figure within straightens merchandise, his seated form doubled by a full-length mirror at the back of the store. “Lakshmi or Sri in later times is the goddess of fortune, wife of Vishnu, and mother of Kama.” Pedestrians passing, lovely young women in their somewhat muted but still bright South Indian colors (the Malayalis, in their poverty, wear polyethylene saris), their dark skin radiating grace and decorum. “According to the legend transmitted by Valmiki she sprang, like Aphrodite, from the froth of the ocean, in full beauty, a lotus in her hand.” Hair, full and frequently wavy, caught up in a variety of ways, is always long. “Elsewhere she is represented as floating on the flower of a lotus at Creation.” Passing laborer pauses to light cigarette. “With reference to this origin, one of her names is Kshirabdhi-tanaya.” Laborer flaps the tails of his longhi. “(Daughter of the sea of milk.)” Drops of sweat dripping off author’s arm, as he starts third glass of hot coffee. “From her connection with the lotus she is called “Padma.” Laborer now in conversation with friend, both doing mild version of South Indian head-shake routine. “In the Puranas she is the daughter of Bhrigu and Khyati (the Vedic sage and his consort).” Behind the 2 laborers, both now smoking, a chocolate van, its front in bright yellow enamel. “One version of Ramayana affirms that she was born of her own will in a beautiful field opened up by the plough.” Two girls, one in mocha, one in brilliant yellow, sari. “Where she received from Janaka the name of Sita.” Gold earrings, gold nose pins. “In this tradition she is known as ‘the mistress of the worlds.’” Stunning profiles.
A walk up the main avenue, past dazzling white colonial Secretariat, past red brick Victoria Jubilee Hall, past immense municipal stadium (gates locked). Everywhere the stuccoed walls of the town have been freshly whitewashed, then stylishly lettered with slogans of the C.P.I.: in salmon, robin’s-egg blue and creamy pale yellow; in bright vermillion, midnight blue and chromium. Carved in stone 2 feet high, the hammer-and-sickle, in glossy red, in glossy yellow, marks street corners. The 13th Communist Party Congress advertised on huge billboards, multiple flags, multiple hammers and sickles.
Trivandrum, like Pondicherry, another provincial capital of 600,000 inhabitants, nonetheless has the feel of a small town. Malayalis, a little more subdued than Tamilians, are still animated, pleasant and polite. The language, Malayalam, is spoken very rapidly, as though in the deep South a cultural peak has been achieved. But the subterranean flow of life moves at a stately pace. Along the avenue a line of faces awaiting buses: a resigned but withal sensuous expectancy in their mien. Integral with the feeling inherited from the rich past, all nonetheless is in the present, or perhaps just slightly in the past, up behind the brows.
Back at the Hotel Pankaj (“hotel” also used in its western sense for rich visitors), what appears to be a French athletic team is boarding its tour bus. Brisk and professional, in lavender, pink, pale blue alligator shirts, seated high above the scene of beggar children exhorting them for money, they converse in their proud language, as other Indians look on, from the street, from the hotel steps, from the rust-colored velour seats of the lobby, where the author has situated himself.
The directeur, a mince 52, re-enters the lobby to attend to, or to wait to attend to, some detail of his équippe’s departure. A young French athlete writes in his diary. “The bus is not going?” asks an Indian tour coordinator, striding toward the door in his all-white uniform. The bus is ready to go (the driver is honking). The athletes are waiting ─ as though there were a choice. Passengers in a passing municipal bus gape at the French tourists. Pedestrians in the now very late afternoon light, stream past in a slow, thick wave. Conferencing in the lobby, the French leadership discusses the question of departure.
Trivandrum 8:00 am restaurant scene, customers drinking coffee from metal cups, eating idli with their hands from metal plates. Man to author’s right bent over, his fat frame bulging through longhi, large gray shirt. Behind him, an open window, black wrought-iron grill in the form of a peacock, its tail rippling across the aperture with energy. “Though said to have four arms she is generally depicted as having only two.” Two women at the next table arise, holding their dirty right eating hands daintily aloft, as with left hands they gather up the folds of their saris and proceed to the wash stand. “In one hand she holds a lotus.” The peacock is part of a pair ─ consort depicted in the adjacent window ─ that face one another. “She has no temples.” “HOTEL ARUL JYOTHI” reads the menu over the fat man’s head. “Tomato Fry, Potato Fry, Gophi Fry” ─ each entry in a different pastel color. “But being the goddess of abundance.” “Aalu Gophi Fry, Green Peas Fry, Peas Masal, Fried Rice.” “And good fortune.” At either side of the restaurant’s large open entranceway grill-work putti arches fill the corners. “She continues to be assiduously courted.” Atop a counter rest half a dozen cases for various sweets: yellow, salmon, beige; ocher, off-white, green. “And is not likely to fall into neglect.” Beneath these, piled on platters a shelf below: pyramids, cubes, rectangular stacks of candies.
Author’s view to front counter obscured by standing conversants, customer and waiter, latter in white uniform, brown bare feet, former in silk shirt, cotton longhi, chappals. Behind them, in a generous space, sit 2 cashiers behind table-top desks, as a hungry beggar-child mewls on the street at the restaurant’s entrance. Customers enter and exit, ignoring the child and its mother. “Other names of Lakshmi are Hira, Indira, Jaladhi-ja (ocean-born).” Three students, in smoky-pink, off-white, coffee-colored saris, pass in stately profile, shoulders thrown back, black woven tresses filling the hollows of their backs. A departing customer gives the child a coin. “Chanchala (the fickle) or Lola (goddess of fortune).”
Above the counter, which is tiled in white with orange diamond lozenges, the spectacular icons of divinity crowd the farther wall: Lakshmi enthroned; Ganesha in gold (against a jet ground); Venkateswara (the blind god) in the largest representation of all, mahogany-framed, its glass reflecting the light of the street, swiftly passing bus, tree branch, white official building. “Her greatest name, however.” Atop the counter sits a large blue plastic bucket. “Is Loka-mata.” Over which a red plastic sign with yellow letters: “(Mother of the World.)” “PLEASE TAKE CARE OF YOUR BELONGINGS.”
View from Hotel Pankaj. All night long for 2 nights work continues next door in construction site where, buildings having been demolished, workers with pickaxes, scoop shovels, woven baskets, fill a large wooden-bedded truck by hand. Daylight arrived, another crew takes over. In 48 hours 2 shifts of a dozen men accomplish what a bulldozer would have accomplished in an hour.
One of the workers on this shift at 9:00 am is a 30-year-old woman. Elegantly dressed in pink choli, light-green sari, beige wrap, she has braided and mounted atop her head a cloth for support of the baskets of stone she carries. Now she addresses a pile of larger rocks, each one 20 or 30 pounds. One at a time she balances them on her head, steadies them with a slender forearm braceleted in gold mid-way between wrist and elbow, sways lithely through the rubble on bare feet, dips her head and deposits her burden with a thud-chunk on the pile of other rocks.
Elsewhere in the site skinny-legged pick-and-shovel men release the relentless soil for porters, who waste little time in mounting their baskets, straightening their torsos, traversing the few yards to the red bed of a blue-cabbed and yellow-ornamented truck, from whose tape deck issue the strains of a quick-tempoed Malayalam movie score.
8:30 am outdoor Trivandrum street scene observation. Block of international-style 1940s stucco building fronts, curved ledges, ample balconies. Light settling on upper stories, street dappled by shade trees. A handcart, piled high with burlap-wrapped vegetables, negotiates its way past pausing bus; a second cart follows, 2 pullers bracing themselves with each step to slow its jerky downhill procession. A passel of maidens, “ANANDA BHAVAN” vegetarian restaurant sign behind them, wait for a bus ─ wait, now it seems, for someone to meet them, who arrives in the person of their teacher, to lead them across the street for an early-morning tour of the Secretariat. Two other girls, not associated with the tourists, pass author, looking out at him from dark brown faces, white almond eyes. In her amusement one returns a second glance. Author smiles. Retreating uphill, arms bound in tight wine-colored choli, full-length dark blue skirt in small white floral pattern, moon-white wrap, she donates a final over-the-shoulder smile. Across-street buildings: “CAPITOL TOURIST HOME,” “STATE BANK OF INDIA,” “LEKSHMY BHAVAN” (black background, grass green letters, yellow Malayalam script beneath). A bike, 3 wooden boxes strapped to its back. Passing, passengerless “autos.” A dozen Catholic school kids, maroon and cream uniforms, 2 nuns in gray habits. The second smiles at author.
“The cosmology of Vedanta would indicate a reconstruction of the cosmologies of Sankhya and Vaisesika, as well as those of Buddhism and Jainism.” Drone of academic paper-reader, early afternoon whitewashed interior university hall. “The Sankhya conception of Prakriti and its relation to the gunas.” Blackboard on easel reading “Seminar on T.S. Eliot and Shakespeare, Session II.” “Ruling out the necessity or even the possibility of recognizing Brahman as the cause and ground of the universe.” “Jan. 7, 1988 / Eliot’s Criticism of Shakespeare.” “And the Vaisesika suggestion of epigenesis rendered plausible in the context of its Atomistic hypothesis.” Tables with drawers ranged inward. “Are alike shown to be inadequate.” Light on drawer handles. “In the logic of the Brahma Sutra.” “PARTICIPANTS,” lettered in black magic marker on white card.
Stultifying ceremonial introductions, long-winded prefatory remarks. “The theories of ‘Nairatmya’ and ‘Samghata.’” Talk within talk within talk. “Which are the negative and positive aspects of the phenomenalistic metaphysics of Buddhism.” All governed by the pontificatory mode of Eliotic definition. “No less than the ontology of Jaina Monadism, considered in the background of its conception of Matter and the other four substances.” Rank of M.A. girls against wall. “Including not only Space and Time.” In deadly sensitive audition. “But also Dharma and Adharma.” Saris in white and saturated green; regal blue; gold-and-blue-bordered white elegance. “Come in for scrutiny.” Dark green with white-and-brown delicate floral motif. “And refutation.” Light green on dark green. “In the arguments of the Brahma Sutra.” Wine with paisley pattern. “As the commentaries like those of Acarya Samkara demonstrate.”
“The final criticism of Eliot’s theories as proposed in this lecture.” Universal attention/inattention, hands on table crossed on notebook page, pen through fingers; hands on chin, folded, walrus moustache atop them; hands tightly grasping one another to ward off sleep through pain; hands over top of head, fingers interlaced. Meanwhile, the outdoor drama of natural profusion: Ashoka trees, garnering their sunlit borders, weave in the rhythm of inevitability/chance. Butterfly; shadow of crow on stone roof; the odd leaf in mid-air, descending diagonally in the breeze. Author experiments, changing ground relations by focusing on different planes. “The role that dream and vision play in them has considerable significance.” A palm branch, its ribs light-spattered, giving way to creamy facade in mellow shade. A brilliant line of light on nearby balustrade. (Quotations from K. Sheshadri, Heritage of Hinduism.)
Sri Padmanabha Temple (Trivandrum), 8:30 am, author seated, steps of building, well below ground level, steps of temple access filled with largely immobile figures: a man asleep, shirt filthy, longhi in like condition, feet covered with dust; 4 lounging pilgrims in saffron longhis; a middle-class woman with her daughter, a suitcase beside them. Into the scene steps an ascending damsel, supple, angular, in bright purple sari, sunlit coral bracelet ringing her black-brown forearm. Next, 3 young women appear, in Malayali-cream saris, one bordered in brown, one in gold, one in deep burgundy. A black-clad figure, enormous Chinese red plastic belt, descends the steps, as 2 more young married women ascend, one in black-and-white silk. Now many devotees emerge, 8, 10, 11, all bare-chested, somber longhis in black, dark blue ─ but also white, with brilliant saffron sash. Young girl, white pleated skirt, brown top tight to breastless torso, black jasmine-laden braid, her mother, in pink sari, orange breed, limping behind her, as more black-clad pilgrims gather in whitewashed entrance hall, behind which (and above) 7 gold turrets surmount the soot-stained sandstone gopuram.
Sri Padmanabha Temple (Trivandrum), 10:30 am, author seated, back turned on livid green “tank,” odor of garbage, urine, rankness surrounding him, a beggar-woman/infant importuning him. To his right, a local tour bus, white with black, gray-green, green-gray trim, radiator exposed, front end crushed and rusted. Into its windshield glares the sun. Recently-purchased veena and bow in hand, young boy observes author activity. On his brown brow, the chrome yellow smear, the arterial red blot of devotion. Asking what author is writing about he is told it is he himself. “Why? What reason?” he queries. “I don’t know,” says author. (“Vedanta, usually interpreted as ‘the end of knowledge,’ conveys the quintessence of all there is to know.”) A crowd gathers about scribbling author. (“It is ‘Tattva-Jnana,’ knowledge of the real.”) A merchant of plastic birds and fish displays his wares, umbrella-like, on a staff above his head. (“As such it comprehends the inmost nature of man and God.”) On the bus’s windshield, Malayalam script, yellow letters. (“The Jiva.”) On blue ground. (“And the Brahman.”) Peacock in dark blue, yellow, red-tufted wings. (“Thus Vedanta initiates all enquiry into the nature of Ultimate Reality.”) Green tail, purple eyes with yellow/red pupils. (“Processes the enquiry along systematic lines.”) Flowers, handbags, shawls stashed on the dashboard. (“And consummates the whole quest.”) Images of Lakshmi, doubled, side by side, in red, gold, blue. (“In the form of a final realization.”) Atop the bus 2 porters stow luggage, as the devotees reassemble. (“The ‘end of knowledge’ is indeed the highest end.”) Smoking figure next author, emerald longhi, cut-glass beads. (“The supreme goal.”) Cigarette almost gone. (“The Summum Bonum.”) Laughs at boy’s repeated questions. (“The quest of life.”) As to activity’s purpose. (“That is how Vedanta turns philosophic wisdom.”) Author, having identified Madras as his home. (“Into the fulfillment.”) Entreated to speak in Tamil. (“Of a disciplined way of life.”) Speaks a sentence. Stroking veena, boy proposes that author go swimming in temple tank. (Quotations from Sheshadri.)
Trivandrum. Late-morning beach scene, Arabian Sea. Crow, from telephone line above, shits on notebook page, descends to sand at author’s feet, addresses him with repeated caws. Northward view: schematically outlined full-scale flank of Malayali ocean-going craft (beachside pavilion), black hull, curved prow ending in sharp point, 2 circles within circles of eyelike consciousness. Supported on 3 piers, an imitation tile roof, atop which structures in imitation of/allusion to Moscow’s Red Square, in turn atop which 3 red flags with white hammer-and-sickles. Inside the open ship’s bay lounge half a dozen police, one tapping his lathi on the ship’s planking (loud enough to be heard 70 meters away); another jiggling his foot in a kicking motion; another flat on his back, newspaper held at arm’s length above his head.
Two boys, 10, 18, stand at station by ice cream carts in the largely deserted scene, sandy from asphalt road strip to water line. Eastward view: a large indoor athletic facility, peaked roof in corrugated asbestos. Along its white enclosing wall, Malayali slogans in salmony pink, lime green, sweet blue; citrus yellow outlined in dark blue; “CPM” in salmony pink, hammer-and-sickle in lime green. Ice cream boy rings bell to signal departure to fellow ice cream vendor; together they set off in pursuit of still-arriving high-windowed tourist bus.
Author to ocean. Mid-winter sun risen to late-morning station, 70 degrees. Tide coming in, surface of water streaked with sandy reef to distance of 200 meters. Slurrrrr-shshsh, down-beach rumbelly-rumble, quiet thud, white-froth hundred-yard retreat. Single men from fishing establishment ─ thatch-covered boats pulled up on shore ─ reconnoiter author at 5-minute intervals, seeking money. Author makes inland retreats of 20 yards, returns to station. Faces sea, whose horizon line appears to bulge as eye follows it to its most distant point. There, a scumbling of gray, touched at half an inch above the horizon by subtle appearing/disappearing clouds, above which a cirrus wash that travels upward, outward in 3 directions, passing over author’s head.
*
He whose form is universal; who is eternal; who Himself witnesses all that passes in every heart, who exists immutably throughout the universe, and is free from all shadow, is called God. Neither in earth nor metal, wood nor stone, painted walls nor images, does that great Spirit dwell so as to be perceived.
Kottayam (Kerala) nighttime scene, 7:30 pm, total dark, Catholic church on outskirts of town, candles lit before large outdoor stone cross, in front of steps to church itself. Sprightly voices of women returning home through narrow square. Silence. Sound of wax sputtering. Woman, mounting stair from piazza below, bears young child on her hip. Her teenage sister emerges out of the shadow. On bare feet both move up steps to the church gate, open it for the stranger. Sound of large metal structure moving on its hinges.
Again-shadowy figures disappear through the portal into a courtyard beyond. Author follows. As he reaches the gate the church doors themselves are opening, a light inside turned on. Author removes cowboy boots, steps over threshold, where 3 illuminated faces await him, baby fearful, teenage sister curious, older sister serene, all 3 patient, clear-eyed, silent.
A book is opened: “The oldest Syrian church in this part of Travancore.” An inscription in Pahelvi (Old Persian). “One of the seven crosses St. Thomas founded on the Kerala coast.” Teenage sister closes book, older sister still at threshold, baby in arms. High above altar, framed in red, green, yellow light bulbs: the Virgin and child. To one side of the red-curtained altar: the mature Christ; to the other, the Dove, descending. On the southern wall: photo portrait of Edavazhikal Gheevarugheese, Mar Severios. “Haile Selassie has visited here,” another inscription reads.
At the threshold the 2 gorgeous sisters await the exiting author, the elder whispering to her baby. The younger, taller of the 2, tresses in freshly washed disarray, pearl necklace about her pajama smock, peers into the author’s eyes, as a 6-year-old girl, doubtless a cousin, emerges from behind her skirts.
We take a skin and form it into a pretty puppet; we make it play, and then throw it away. But who can see Him who plays with us?
The nighttime tour of delightful Kottayam continues: riverside buildings ─ residential structures in wood, their sloped roofs shingled, porches in elaborately inventive bricolage, homeowners within peering through the latticework at the headlights of the tourist’s car. On through dimly lit streets of suburbs, past Orthodox church, past protestant chapel, past roadside cross. Fifty per cent of Kottayam’s population is Christian, a small per cent Muslim ─ residue of a large trading community.
We return through the main part of town ─ its population a mere 50,000 ─ and on up a road that leads to hills in the East. Then, passing more old wooden buildings, we wind back into the center of town. The evening cool is refreshing, my guides cordial, bürgerlich, the town, with its Christian paraphernalia and Communist propaganda, not unlike a small town somewhere in Eastern Europe. But the main shopping center reasserts its Indianness: second-story sari display, women (manikins) buxom, pink, revealing mildly obscene midriffs. Hotel fronts of western allure ─ neon lights in pink, green, yellow, for this is a tourist site, not so much for westerners as for pilgrims, who congregate from all over Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, to visit a shrine nearby, where the primitive god is worshipped.
Those who roam to other lands in pilgrimage to find the God that dwells within them are like a shepherd who searches in his flock for the sheep that he has under his arm.
“Benares! Benares!” they cry, and delight to travel thither. Yet is not the same God here as there? If thy heart be aright, He is there and here also.
Kottayam, 7:30 am, small square before temple, view to which blocked by tour bus filled with white-bandanaed devotees. Others arriving in cars, vans, on foot, their possessions bundled atop their heads as they enter the temple grounds, black longhis, black shirts, some in other colors, some clad only in a saturated cerulean blue. Another group makes its appearance, all men between 21 and 29 years old, all bare from the waist up, all clad in black longhis. They assemble at the entrance to the temple, ash freshly marked on foreheads.
This against a background of scruffy urban scenery: deserted vendors’ stalls mounted on bicycle wheels; telephone lines overhead; faded advertising pennons. Ads in Malayalam script; ads in English: “tyrehouse,” “Industrial Sales Agencies,” “Aruna Laundry.” As author records names, half a dozen girls, in pairs, also enter the grounds. “Kine are of divers colors, but all milk is alike.” Bus-seated devotees regard his activity with curiosity/amusement. “The kinds of flowers vary, yet all worship is one.” Passing pedestrians likewise express interest, looking into his notebook. “Systems of faith are different but the Deity is one.”
Another group of teenage maidens mounts the hilly street, led by a lanky 17-year-old beauty in red top, flowing dark-blue flowered skirt; rear of the procession brought up by even taller, even more beautiful 18-year-old in pink top, light carmine skirt, the movement of her sandals flipping its hem up ever so slightly, sending ripples up the length of its folds to a slender waist. Her full, raven tresses are caught only at the end, presenting a scene of abundance, innocence and erotic splendor. Cars continue to swerve past “autos,” both negotiating the tight curve of the square: beige, gray, black Ambassadors, “autos” in black with cream markings.
A train derailment between Kottyam and Calicut (in Kerala ─ it is said ─ a daily occurrence) forces sudden change of plan. A quick trip to the bus station beats the crowd ─ just in time to get the last seat for the 7-hour trip. All day long the aisles of the bus, which lurches from one side of the road to the other, will be filled with strap-hangers.
Off from bus stand, then, at 10:00 am to head north on up the coast. Before long we begin our ascent into the Kerala Hills (the sea never visible on this leg of the journey, as we press on inland). Winding roads, dangerous encounters (just the day before 2 motorcyclists seen dead on the road, the dented front of the bus that hit them); passage after passage uphill in third, second, first gear, to roll and rumble down, swerving barely to miss inweaving bus, truck, car; skirting pedestrian, bicyclist; bull, water buffalo, even elephant.
Halfway along our route, at 2:00 pm, we reach Trichur, destination of many pilgrims, whose buses line the roadside, as they themselves lie in siesta beneath spreading palm and banana tree, or bathe in the river below. (“Will the application of white ashes do away with the smell of a wine-pot? Will a cord cast over your neck make you twice-born?”) Dressed in black, covered with the markings of devotion, they are nonetheless in a festive mood, singing, playing the cymbals, or simply talking among themselves in a lively way. (“What are you better for smearing your body with ashes? Your thoughts should be set on God alone; for the rest, an ass can wallow in dirt as well as you.”) Some have even procured a car, crowded with passengers, for the trip. They too swerve and sway along, their faces, seen from the bus, chanting songs in unison.
The Kerala coast, especially from Kottayam north, would seem to be prosperous (though one is informed by everyone of the region’s poverty). By contrast with the shantylike trackside structures seen on the train ride from Trivandrum to Kottayam, large houses appear along the road to Calicut. Elegantly styled smaller houses, houses newly building. All with a certain panache, reminiscent of the prosperous Bretons: elaborate grillwork (the full bay windows of one house filled with the wrought-iron form of curtains blowing in the wind); bas relief on stucco house front; elaborate gates; walls of masonry. And the colors! Orange, blue and black; pale blue, brown and yellow, with an overhang of maroon; red, white and black; red, yellow, green and blue. The churches too, especially in the early going, are brightly, even gaudily decked out, towering over the town from near hillside, or dominating the square. One, as we round a bend, displays before it a gigantic white imitation of Michelangelo’s early Pietà.
And the colors of clothes, which shift into livelier patterns as we travel farther north: (“The books that are called the Vedas are like courtesans, deluding men, and wholly unfathomable, but the hidden knowledge of God is like an honorable wife.”) Orange with purple a favorite; pink with dark green. As we make our last hour’s approach to Calicut, school is getting out and the darling little Muslim girls have all pulled their flimsy shawls over their heads: mauve against the green and white of their uniforms, the dark brown of oval faces and skinny legs.
*
INDRA. The god of the firmament, the personified atmosphere. In the Vedas he stands in the first rank among the gods, but he is not uncreate, and is represented as having a father and mother: “a vigorous god begot him; an heroic female brought him forth.” He is described as being of a ruddy or golden color, and as having arms of enormous length; “but his forms are endless, and he can assume any shape at will.”
9:00 am tea stall scene, main road, 15 kilometers from Calicut, sunlight streaming through piled wooden trays of orange pop, occasional bottles of cola, lime drink intermixed. A huge truck descends the decline, “LAKSHMI NARASIMHA” on its front in simulation embossed lettering. Patrons arrive on foot to order their tea at this outdoor establishment, whose jerry-rigged roof is supported by 2 central wooden poles, the top of a wheeled cart, and the roof of a brick guardhouse. “SARATH” reads the name, in black on white, of another descending truck, its driver leaning forward to shift down for the imminent curve.
The King said: “Are the five ayatanas (eye, ear, nose, tongue and body), Nagasena, produced by various actions, or by one action?”
Among the articles for sale at the tea stand (I.e., the result of various karmas, or of one karma?): candies in large-mouthed jars; 2 kinds of cake, housed in a glass-enclosed hutch; “Glucose” candy bars.
“By various actions, not by one.”
“Give me an illustration.” Three full clusters of dark purple grapes, 2 hanging clusters of bananas. A patron observes author as he writes, attempting unsuccessfully to comprehend this activity.
“Now, what do you think, O King?” Atop the wooden hutch, salmon-colored envelopes, writing paper, large brown envelopes. “If I were to sow in one field five kinds of seed, would the produce of those various seeds be of different kinds?” A second patron arrives, sits to smoke before having tea.
“Yes, certainly.” In the large interior of the cart, its blue wooden doors flung open, 2 red shelves.
“Well, just so with respect to the production of ayatanas.” On which, packages of half a dozen different varieties of cigarettes (Panama: “Good to the Last Puff”); large packages containing (no doubt) smaller packages of matches; a plastic container displaying ballpoint pens in various shapes and sizes; rusty tin cans; an empty Frooti container, orange lettering on pale green ground.
“Very good, Nagasena!”
Across the roadway, past the dangling thatch of the roof, a scrubby horizon of deciduous trees beneath a bright but diffuse sky scattered with clouds. Against the trees, mounted advertisements, mostly in Malayalam: “JEVANDHARA,” reads a single word in Roman letters, in red on yellow ground, a primitively painted woman’s face, her husband opposite reclining comfortably in a chair.
The King said: “Why is it, Nagasena, that all men are not alike?” “PHOTOSTAT CENTRE / XEROX,” in hand-painted black on white. “But some are short-lived and some are long-lived?” Letters of “CENTRE” squeezed together to fit the sign’s border. “Some sickly and some healthy?” An ad for dealers in “Hendez TV.” “Some ugly and some beautiful?” Those 2 the only words in English, on a pale yellow banner, its cloth surface pierced by holes for ventilation. “Some without influence and some of great power?” “Visit Hotel Mugal,” first word in black, second 2 in pink. “Some low born and some high born?” “Kohindoor,” followed by an arrow pointing the visitor in the right direction (uphill). “Some stupid and some wise?” Beneath the signs, a rough, cement-capped wall, fashioned of the porous, reddish, volcanic rock of the region.
The Elder replied: On its surface, in broad whitewash strokes: “Why is it that all vegetables are not alike, but some sour and some salt, some pungent and some acid, some astringent and some sweet?” “SSF DISTRICT CO INFEREN CE AT TIRURAN GADI ON DEC 29,30.”
“I fancy, Sir, it is because they come from different kinds of seeds.” Beneath, on the red dirt wallface sculpted from the incline, the same messages in Malayalam (beginning “SSF” and ending “29, 30, 31”).
“And just so, great king, are the differences you have mentioned among men to be explained.” Farther up the hill, a white hundred-meter marker reading “6” in black on white ground. “For it has been said by the blessed one:” A flapping crow departs a leafy tree. “Beings, O brahmin, have each their own karma.” Wheels from south to east. “Are inheritors of karma, belong to the tribe of their karma, are relations by karma, have each their karma as their protecting overlord.” Plunges over the ridge down into the valley. “It is karma that divides them up into low and high.” A figure with briefcase descends the hill, adjusting his black plastic glass frames.
*
“He rides in a bright golden car, drawn by two tawny or ruddy horses with flowing manes or tails.” Car ride through Calicut, late afternoon, colors deepening, temperature falling, traffic increasing. “His weapon is the thunderbolt, which he carries in his right hand.” We are held up for a long time by a crew of workers putting new surface on a street at rush hour ─ clouds of dust, men in turbans, women ladling hot asphalt. “He also uses arrows, a great hook, and a net, in which he is said to entangle his foes.” It gives author a chance to look in detail at an elegant residential structure: cream walls, brown overhanging ledges, all enclosed by an outer wall of pink stucco embossed with concrete elements painted salmon. The double gate of the house of intricate metalwork in the form of 2 halves of a large sunburst. Down from the cornice in white-painted ironwork floods a waterfall, projecting out over double windows. His Indian interlocutors wonder why such expense has been lavished on a house. “For the joy of it,” author supposes.
He learns that many of the magnificent houses that he has observed on the Kerala coast are owned by Muslims, who have gone to the Arab countries, made their fortunes and returned. Kerala generally, highly populated but not industrialized, is poor. But the ample, bustling, clean city of Calicut seems full of life, efficient, even exuberant. “The soma juice is his especial delight.” Views off to the hills ─ and even over them to the sea. “He takes enormous drafts of it.” Provide a relief. “Stimulated by its exhilarating qualities.” From the flatness of other terrains. “He goes forth to war against his foes, and to perform his other duties.” A drive by the seashore, with its remnants of British occupation ─ attractive lighthouse in particular ─ reveals a scene of relaxation, as women sit in their colorful saris on the white sands of the beach, or, with children and husbands, stroll its byways.
8:30 am, outskirts of Calicut, shady side of pink house. Pregnant woman washing breakfast dishes, dressed in rust-colored sari, gray-brown choli, white petticoat (revealed as she pulls up hem to avoid wetting sari with run-off water). Her slender legs, lithe forearms (the left braceleted in gold) in lovely contrast to her bulging belly. Beside her: a turquoise pail, from which she splashes out rinse water. Having finished her task, she flips her long, unbraided black hair back over left shoulder; bends; picks up tray full of freshly washed metal dishes. On slim ankles she mounts the 2 steps to re-enter house.
Now she returns, with broom; extends knee out of sari; bends backward, revealing leg to mid-thigh. Her breasts bulge at constraint of her blouse; the soft flesh above the pregnant belly ripples with sensuousness. Using her left hand she tilts the turquoise bucket until it releases a stream of water over the steps, whose downward flow she hastens with rasping strokes of the broom, itself a mere assemblage of long coarse stalks of straw bound with string into a bundle at one end.
Her second task accomplished, she calculates the balance necessary to bring herself to the upright position. Again she tosses her hair behind her, takes broom and pail in left hand, and returns into the house through its light blue door. A crow caws 3 times. The eastern light persists in the broad-leaved trees that hang just over the roof of the one-story structure, whose side is mottled with large splotches of mauve-pink mildewed stucco.
Now she returns again, bearing a large aluminum basin, which she sets on the stoop to fill from an outdoor tap. She re-enters the house only to re-emerge at once with a pile of laundry. The basin half filled, she holds it to her side with one arm, clothes under the other, transporting both to a pile of rocks, atop which 2 slabs are positioned, at the front of the house.
With a cake of soap and a scrub brush she begins on the first garment, which she has briefly soaked in the basin. Thoroughly soaped, it is now wrung and beaten ─ rather violently ─ on the surface of the flat stone; then rerolled and kneaded, unfurled and refolded. Into the pail it goes once more.
As it soaks again the woman leans back on her heels, revealing the splendor of her full, tumescent belly. The garment again filled with water, she hurls it repeatedly against the stone, her free left arm bent back beyond 180 degrees to balance her posture. The garment ─ a gray, white-hemmed sari ─ continues to rise and fall in a circular motion. Periodically she wrings drops of remaining water from it.
All 3 mounds of wash wrung out, into another pail they go, hidden by the rocks; back into a lime green plastic soap dish, the cake of soap. Water basin, pail of clothes are returned to the stoop, where the aluminum vessel is refilled. More rinsing, the woman standing with her back to author, the ample rounded form of her hips and buttocks leant outward, her slender calves and delicate heels again visible. Across her back falls the diagonal sash of the tail-end of rust-colored sari, with its dark maroon and white breed. The rinsing of the 3 garments nearly finished, the empty clothesline awaits them.
North Kerala late morning landscape, author seated atop concrete-capped wall, sun warm on forehead, on bare arms, on lap, legs, boots. Porous volcanic outcrop, still black from heat and soot, red where abrasion has occurred, in near ground. The honking of a noisy truck pierces the air, interrupting meditation. The vehicle rises into the Kerala Hills on its southward way toward Kottayam. The tinkle of a bicycle bell warns a white-longhi-clad pedestrian that this main thoroughfare is barely wide enough for one bus or truck. Below, on the slope into a valley, a cock crows.
The pleasant, gentle terrain leads the eye past a small plateau, just large enough for a volleyball court, half of which is hidden by a tall clump of flowers and burgeoning, self-planted trees; on toward 2 construction sites, located 90 degrees from one another at 100, 150 yards respectively. These isolated signs of prosperity, in such proximity, and in conjunction with the modest but well-kept houses that lie beyond the 2 construction sites, keep the author wondering about Kerala’s “poverty.”
It has grown so warm that he must remove boots and socks. (“As deity of the atmosphere he governs the weather.”) Drought has parched the region. (“Dispenses the rain.”) A slight breeze picks up. (“Sends forth his lightning and thunder.”) The sun passes into a thin bank of cloud. (“And he is continually at war with Vritra or Ahi, the demon of drought.”) In white shirt and pale green longhi, grasping a wadded garment in his left hand, a man mounts the hill, a black umbrella shielding him from the sun’s rays. (“Or inclement weather, whom he overcomes with thunderbolts and compels to pour down the rain.”)
Cars, motorbikes, buses, trucks, an occasional auto-rickshaw, continue to pass on the road above. More traffic is heading south than north, though, as author writes these words, the double horn of a large yellow-cabbed, red-bedded truck intones, as if in a vehement voice of contradiction, first in short bursts, then in a sustained 2-note blare, as it sends pedestrians to either side of the road a step or 2 farther into the red soil of the shoulder. Now the audible shifting of gears in the distance, as another large vehicle ─ a green bus looms into view ─ reaches toward the climax of its laborious northward ascent. “KARAHAN” read the large block letters above its windshield.
Distracted from landscape in the valley, author studies pedestrian movement on the road. A peasant woman in deep yellow choli, bright red sari, hair spread over shoulders and breast (as well as down her back), tends 2 boys of 8 and 12, dark-skinned like herself, in their tiny white shirts and tinier shorts, as they make their way up the hill, past black-and-white roadside marker, into the shade of the huge tree opposite author that centers the scene, on out of its shade and back into the bright sun. A jeep piled with bales of pale green plastic, a cream-and-red Kerala State bus, pass them as they make their way on up the hill.
In the valley the cock continues to crow, now answered by the crow of an even more distant cock. Meanwhile, a woman in elegant white sari descends the hill, her full-breasted black choli asway with her rondure, both hands grasping the handle of a black umbrella, one of whose panels reads almost white in the bright sunlight. Beneath in the valley the 2 construction sites are quiet, no visible sign of activity either. As author studies the tall bamboo poles erected for scaffolding about the northernmost site, a woman in purple choli, brown-black bare midriff, lemon yellow sari wrapped about her waist, approaches the site from below, traversing a field of half a dozen grazing cattle to reach it (“One myth is that of his discovery and rescue of the cows of the gods, which had been stolen by an Asura named Pani or Vela, and whom he killed.”) Looking about the empty construction site, she picks up a rush-woven basket, a broom, and lazily, gracefully turns to proceed on down a pathway toward the second site. (“Whence he is sometimes called Vala-bhid.”) But she turns into yet another pathway and begins to mount toward the northwest instead. (“Frequently he is represented as destroying the stone-built cities of the Asuras, or atmospheric demons.”) At the southerly site construction activity recommences. Through the aperture of a ground-floor window, framed but not yet cased, is visible one tee-shirted worker, who has rolled his white shirt up several folds, baring his waist. (“And of the dasyus or aborigines of India.”) The cock crows again. To one side of the southerly site there is yet another foundation well underway. Behind it a grove of banana plants, one of whose leaves is so angled as to take the rays of the sun almost transparently. (“In his warfare he is sometimes escorted by troops of Maruts.”) Behind the banana plants, and extending to either end of the scene, are tier upon tier of low, wide-spreading palms, which entirely cover the hillside beyond. A carpenter hammers. (“And attended by his comrade Vishnu.”) The cock crows again. The road at the author’s back is silent. The steady light of the sun bears down.
10: Tiruchirapalli, Kumbokonam, Dharasuram, Gangakondacholapuram