The Memorial, the Wind Farm, and Panic

The line of people down to the ferry was long, considering the distance out to the rock where the memorial/temple stood for Vivekananda was only a few hundred meters. But then in time we were across and climbing up the walkway to the shoe shed. When entering a sacred site, one sheds shoes.

The memorial was well thought out. To make sure that you missed nothing, someone had painted large arrows onto the stone pavement. I wondered if I were the first person to imagine myself as a piece in a board game. The arrows led us up to a level where the smaller of the two shrines stood. Under a canopy of masonry and further protected from the elements (and possibly people) by a thick pane of glass, one could see beneath the pavement level a foot print in the living stone. Its significants escaped me. I think the print was believed to be the track of a god. Then the arrows led over to the larger building, one more elevated. The whole complex of pavement, walls, and structures was finished in 1970. As sacred sites go, these shelters were raised only yesterday. But in doing so, the architect(s) decided to use stylistic elements from all over India and the structures are not only eclectic but tasteful. We climbed the steps and walked into the half-light of the larger building. Light came into the room by side doors or windows. Even with a hundred other pilgrims, the nave was quiet as a silent prayer. At the far end of the nave stood the sculpted likeness of Swami Vivekananda covered from turban to sandaled foot with gold leaf. His stance was that of a man stepping forward, while his head was slightly tipped back as if looking into the lower reaches of Heaven.

During the last half of the 19th century Vivekananda studied the Vedas and wanted to understand the connection between the holy books and life as he experienced it. He meditated and talked to those he felt knew more than he had learned. Finally he made a pilgrimage from the Himalayas in the north to this spot directly below where the statue stood. It was here where the questions he had asked merged with the answers he had learned. This was the spot on which he gained Enlightenment.

After a few minutes we passed out of that hall and around a corner. Anthony told me that where they were going next was a meditation room and would I like to go in. I could go in. Avinash told me that I could go in. There are places to admire for their beauty and there are sacred places. I felt that the meditation hall was a place for the faithful. I told them I’d wait out on the terrace beside the hall. I found a cool shadow cast by a pillar and they left me. When the three of them came back in about five or ten minutes, Avinash asked Anthony if he had noticed the volume of the mantra climbing as they meditated. One of us was a Hindu. Avinash and Anthony, remember, where Roman Catholic and it was Anthony who was first in the bookstore/gift shop on a lower level tucked beneath the meditation hall. There were pictures of the swami for sale but Anthony bought a couple of books, one of which contained the saying of Vivekananda. He was particularly interested in showing me the opening lines of a speech the swami delivered to a congress of world religions held in one of the great halls constructed for the St. Louis World Exposition. According to what I read, Vivekananda was either one of or the only Hindu representative. In about twenty-five words he thanked his audience for giving him the chance to speak but the emphasis of what said was addressed to the idea of the brotherhood of religions. This brought the house to an applause, which kept him from continuing for several minutes. It was the right moment and the right place and since it is now over a century later, this gesture to the West is what enthralled, I assume, a devout Catholic. Both Vivekananda’s words and Anthony’s interpretation impressed me. Ten thirty had come and gone with a bus we never saw leaving town. There were more important things to do.

The painted arrows lead us downhill to the shoe shed. Even before we had boarded the ferry, the next destination had been decided on. We would walk the near mile length of a jetty which left the beach only two or three hundred yards from where we’d watched the sunrise. I think the main purpose for walking out to the end was “because it’s there.”

As we made our way along the sands to the jetty, Avinash warned me against stepping on “landmines.” The residents of the makeshift building above us used the beach as their toilet. The theory was that if you defecated below the high water that a flood tide raises all boats and other things as well. Like many theories in aesthetics and in particular literature, theories make glib arguments but often do not prove out. Forsaking the theory is easy, provided you are not the author. However that may be, I watched my step.

The jetty, while seemingly exposed to whatever the Bay of Bengal could brew up, was in very good condition. You had to watch your step because the cracks between the boulders were wide enough to catch a foot and turn an ankle but if you’ve walked on an urban sidewalk in India, walking the jetty was nothing.

One purpose of the jetty was to provide a fixed point on which to tie a stern line of skiff. The boatmen used a crude raft made of three logs lashed together to pull themselves along the tie-up line to the stern of their boats. Whether the bows were tied off to permanent moorages or the temporary sets of an anchor, I couldn’t tell but while the system worked, were I a boat owner, I would want to find a sandy stretch of beach where I could run my boat aground should a storm rise, landmines or no landmines.

As we walked, the four of us moved at our own pace and I walked alone and alone with my thoughts. The sunrise was still on my mind. While the sun’s opposition to the full moon may provide a sacred moment, the sunrise this morning struck me as a secular affair. The crowd might have just as well been waiting for an eruption of Old Faithful. And if the event were secular and a phenomena of Nature, instead of a miracle of the god(s,) then might not other places in the world where a clear view of both morning and evening horizons provide the same phenomena? The mesas of Texas or anywhere along that ancient transcontinental seabed would not only provide the view but markers could be set up to predict just where the sun would rise or set, month by month – a Stonehenge without the heavy lifting. A landowner could provide the visitor the sunrise/sunset for free; the amenities at the base of the tabletop – the service station, the café, and the motel would charge. I had seen the sea a thousand times. To Anile it was a first. When people live close together, vistas are shortened to something to less than arms’ length, and an occurrence as simple as the rising sun becomes remarkable.

The family, who sunned themselves at the end of the jetty, had thought that they had found privacy from the one point two billion but we didn’t stay long. Anthony looked to the north-east and the planning among the three began again for the next program with the spontaneity and immediacy of a genesis of a crap game. Over five miles but less than ten across the water, we could see the graceful turn of the great windmills. None of us had ever been to the base of such a machine. There was no time to lose. “Let’s go!” and the four of use hopped over the cracks between the rocks, stepping like jaybirds on frozen ground.

On leaving the jetty to find an auto rickshaw, nothing more eventful happened than my stepping on a landmine. As I scraped my foot against the corner of a wall, I said to anyone within earshot, “I WAS WATCHING!” The sands had buried what my shoe had inadvertently exhumed. Count ten, swearing won’t do any good, this is India, and what a marvelous place it is!

Scrunched together the four of us plus a driver dodged down a narrow but straight road. It was mostly paved and I did my best to think of the great gray windmills that rose on the horizon. One day I will plan a tour of India that will exclude any and all road traffic. India by rail! Trains are majestic! They can crush vehicle whose owner decides to get in the way by parking on the track. And in case you didn’t read the paper, Tata, a major producer of just about everything, announced that it sees a great new market in India in compact automobiles! No, you watch the windmills. Don’t think about tens of millions of shiny compacts on roads originally designed for little more than bicycle traffic.

The rickshaw driver had an in. We pulled off the road and walked across an open pasture to a thatch shack. The watchman greeted the driver warmly. We paid our respects and then leaving the driver to visit with the watchman, we walked over to where the windmill stood. Anil bent backwards to get the great prop in his viewfinder. I’ve walked aboard ships, which are much larger than the windmills but nevertheless there was something about the machines that dwarfed us as would the sequoias of California. And furthermore anything that large that can move without a sound is an engineering marvel! I had heard that they were noisy. I walked up to the tower near the closed door to the staircase that led up to the generator atop. I put my ear (my best one) to the tower. I could hear cogwheels turning; they whispered.

My daughter and the idea of using energy produced by means other than oil and coal were both born at the same time. She’s still a bunch of years shy of middle age. I’m the one getting old and here I stand among these giants pulling power from the wind! The wind farm amazed all four of us. After fifteen or twenty minutes we tipped the watchman and again overloaded the auto rickshaw for the ride back in town.

When we got there, it was Katie bar the door! The boys were off to their next destination. I watched as they packed and tried to stay within the conversation but out of the way at the same time. In days to come, I would think more than once of just going to find them in Bangalore to speak English with someone who could answer. They were bright and God knows they were active and when we shook hands good bye, I tried to think of something else. But then they were gone and life got quiet again.

I puttered around my room; straighten up this, putting that away, when there came a knock. I opened the door and the cleaning crew presented me with a wallet. I opened it. It was Anil’s. I knew someone who was going to make an unpleasant discovery soon and I went directly to the front desk. The boys and I had traded addresses for both mail and email and they left me their cell phone numbers. I called on the house phone but had the desk clerk receive the call. Nothing to receive. Cell phones may be as obnoxious as tobacco (beetle nut) spit but they are more useless than spit unless you have them turned on. I would call again later but the results were the same. I went to sleep at a reasonable hour and awoke at about two in the morning. I opened the door. It was wonderful to see Anil again!

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