For the fun of it, I bought a first class ticket and on account of the first class car being at the forward end of the train, I had a long hike on the platform, which seemed to take me half-way to Madurai. There was no rush. I took a break. The train wouldn’t leave until 10:45 AM but it was still a long walk with pack and briefcase. Of course for Rs.5 (twelve or thirteen cents) I could have hired a bearer. Another idea was to put wheels on luggage. That first occurred to me in 1957, which was a decade or two before the next fellow thought of that improvement. He or she acted on the epiphany; I didn’t. And there went another million dollars I never made. When the car number matched up with the number on the reservation, I found that I had the car to myself…almost.
Looking around the car I found it identical to the second class sleepers with one exception. The toilets were clean. There were two of them. Not His and Her’s but East and West. Except for luxury hotels catering to European and visitors from the Americas, Asians used a squat toilet when I traveled here forty years back. This was a porcelain commode but the facility was set into the floor and the user set one foot on either side of the bowl. At age thirty I found I liked them. I later read articles in the U.S. extolling the health benefits of the pressure of one’s thighs against the belly. What I liked was the simplicity. No moving parts. Nothing to go wrong.
Within easy reach was a water tap along the wall with the bucket beneath the tap. You flushed by pouring a bucket of water into the bowl. Western decadence has not set in but the Asians recognize that when one arrives at a more advanced age (mine for instance,) one’s knees might not have the strength they once had and it could be that the Europeans might have a commendable idea with the raised bowl. Another idea that westerners have is providing toilet paper. Come back and check in another forty years but until then always carry toilet paper where ever you go.
So I had the car to myself until a family joined me. They were from West Bengal and since the son and daughter were on holiday from their respective colleges, the family decided to go to Kanyakumari. The adults kept to themselves but “Rik,” his nickname, and “Song,” a translation of her name, joined me. I’m embarrassed but I do lose addresses and proper names. Both of these young people were charming and both spoke good English. I asked about life in West Bengal and they had a hundred questions about the United States and my life in Alaska. Without looking on the temperature conversion chart you can remember that -40 degrees F and C are the same and since that temperature is reached every winter in Fairbanks, it makes a good story when the listener is a young lady wearing nothing more than a thin sari.
We rolled pass the wind farms, which reached more miles to the north than I had guessed, and the “Utah” mountains. The rice paddies gave way to stands of trees, brush, and shrubs. In time I began to nod off. The day wore on and I dozed. Rik kept watch. Song had joined her parents.
The route led inland, which if that is the shortest way to Madurai (pronounced MA-ju-rai and at two hundred thirty-five words per minute) is fine with me but I was curious about what the coast looked like.
Long ago in a far, far away land that lay along the Arctic Ocean, I encountered my very first Reader’s Digest condensed novel called Coromandel and at that moment the train paralleled India’s eastern coast of that name. The novel was a romance about a beautiful girl and her handsome fellow, which his being handsome really didn’t have much importance to the girl since she was blind. He led her here and there across India. I learned two things from reading that book. One, in abridging a novel, the editors apparently tossed out the romance. When you draw the romance out of a romantic novel, you don’t have much left. And as this was a time I began developing literary sensitivities, I would decided that while the tribe at Reader’s Digest shrunk novels and that a tribe in South America shrunk heads that neither novel nor head worked particularly well after the treatment. Probably the most important lesson learned was that much of the time, what gets into print shouldn’t. I read ever word of that book in hopes that it would draw a breath but from page one to the last, the work was moribund.
Arriving in Madurai on this day would be special. The Hindus have a festival of light called Diwali. Rik said that people all over India would be on the move. As the family and I looked for hotel rooms, I could believe that a good portion of India had taken to the Madurai streets. Imagine two football games ending simultaneously and the crowds merging but moving in diverse directions. Then add trucks, motorcycles, auto rickshaws, bicycles, and compact automobiles, which remember have a bright future on the Asian market. And then try to walk through this, the heaviest traffic I’ve encountered to date. No cows but I did come on to something else I find rarely in India. The wine shops were open and lying on anything that was flat, there were several individuals who would sleep soundly for the rest of the night.
The first port of call was the Hotel Pearls. An elevator, a room on the forth floor with soap, towel, and toilet paper…and on Diwali night for about Rs. 400! I think I shouted above the roar of the crowd when I said, “I’ll take it!” We said goodnight and the family went elsewhere.
A hotel employee knocked at the door asking if I needed anything and in about twenty minutes I had a bottle of water, two parata (a flat griddle bread) and a small canister of gravy for dipping. With the food in me and the celebrants out in the street, life was good. I had no trouble falling asleep with firecrackers returning fire from first this street and then from that.
Rik had told me they would come by for me. I was ready and we walked off looking for the temple. Song looked fresh and pretty in her spotless sari as she picked her way through the trash on the street. It is somewhat unfair to describe Madurai after opening night of Diwali so I won’t. But I will say that a few cows had come through the night better than some of the men. It is one thing to sleep after a few glasses of wine; it’s another to be so far gone as to wet your pants and a good portion of the sidewalk. At least the traffic was lighter.
The father spoke fair English and he led us through a street and then we turned out onto an avenue where at the end we could see a temple façade rising probably one hundred fifty feet. Looking down the street we could see only one of the temples of the complex. The structures are steep pyramids with flat tops. As we drew closer we could see the figures of humans, gods, and animals played among columns supporting the next level. The sculpture covered the entire building. The Lonely Planet Guide says that while the temple complex was designed in 1560 and finished during the first half of the next century, the site goes back two thousand years when Madurai was the capital of the ancient Pandyan empire. We entered through a gate in the wall and checked our shoes. Then following the family I went into the temples. Through the dimly lit passages lined with sculpture, I very quickly lost all sense of direction. Here and there were alters standing before images where the devout stopped, passed their hand over a flame and then after touching the tops of their heads brought their hand down so as to pass over their face.
Between the space of two buildings there stood an adolescent (but with no body piercing that I could see) elephant. You could receive a blessing from him also. I took up a position about three feet from his face, then I placed a rupee in the end of his trunk, the elephant passed the rupee to his trainer, and then the elephant with the tip of his trunk tapped me on the head and passed his trunk down across my face. I’m something of a fan of Ganish, Shiva’s elephant-headed son, and who is said to remove impediments. And how about writer’s block?
We entered another temple and wandered through the darkened labyrinth of representations in stone of a thousand stories. Four hundred years of flames from the palm sized grease lamps added a patina of black to passageways where the sun never shown but now electric lights did. When the first worshipers walked through these temples, they must have carried tapers or candles. The keepers of the temple kept the level of lighting low. I doubt if much of the aura has been lost to modernity.
Turning this way and that, we came to a place where only the faithful were to proceed. The family conferred with me and asked if it would be alright for me to wait at this spot for their return. Of course, I didn’t mind. And they were gone.
What happened was that some of the temple guards did mind and I was asked to move back into another area of the temple. This didn’t sit well with me since if the family couldn’t find me, not only would I be deprived of good company but of my one an only pair of shoes as well. The temple complex pavement was swept clean. Beyond the wall was another world which wasn’t.
In ten minutes or so Rik found me. We saw in the half-light a sign that said non-Hindus were to stop at this limit. Rik wasn’t pleased by any limits on the visitor regardless of his faith. He said that the experience of the sacred sites should be open to all. That had been my understanding from my earlier travels but the world is a different place now. Recently the Hindu, a major newspaper printed in English, published a series of videoed photographs from Sri Lanka, showing a woman approaching an assistant to a minister, who sat behind his desk. He explained that she would have to wait and be frisked before going in to see the minister. The next picture was smudged with smoke and the rest of the series showed other people in the room escaping. The woman lay dead on the floor. The assistant was knocked backward out of his chair and lay dieing. The world has turned and we now hear echoes of what was said but when nobody listened.
We walked out into sunlight, retrieved our shoes, and filed back onto the street. The family was to travel on later in the day, while I needed to find an HDFC Bank. This was the only bank in India that I knew of that recognized my Plus ATM card. So money was on my mind. The parents went back to check out of the hotel while I took Song and Rik to lunch. Had they not picked up this stray, I would not have had half the experience that I did have. The food was pretty good although I was looking for something other than food flavored by curried gravy. Dream on and eat what’s on the plate. It’s good for you!
Then came the good-byes and while I saw the last of the bright yellow shirt Rik wore that I used as a guide-on, I would remember their generosity and how Song’s hand glided over a flame in the temple’s half-light as graceful as a bird’s wing in flight.
= = =
Part One: In bright sunlight and with enough heat to melt an icecap, I rocked along a broken street in an auto rickshaw toward the HDFC Bank and its ATM machine. Once there the machine coughed up Rs. 10,000 but beeped a warning that I paid no attention to as I counted my money. I looked around and the machine had swallowed my card! Exclamation points are symbols, if you can remember to use them, which remove the need to write clearer Anglo-Saxon! The machine told me to contact the bank manager. What the machine had not taken into consideration was Diwali!
The security guard, who I decided I liked because he was sympathetic and possessed an English vocabulary that was adequate to calm rattled customers, told me to come tomorrow, not at ten when the bank opened, but at one o’clock. Apparently bank managers enjoy a little more Diwali than do tellers. I boarded the rickshaw again and counted the CPI (M) posters back to the hotel. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) never wants you to forget that they have brought a higher standard to Madurai or if I’ve got that wrong, want to bring a higher standard of living to Madurai. Lenin and Marx were cover boys on probably a half dozen posters. Engles made it onto two or three. Stalin, only one. But the local and statewide fathers of the party, where well represented. I had asked if there had been improvements made in Tamil-Nadu and Kerala and the subject was dropped with, “They are all corrupt!” The exclamation point again.
The rickshaw driver raised the price of the ride from the Rs. 20 we’d agreed on to 30 and so I suspect he bought in to the idea that we should produce according to our abilities and consume according to our needs. My need was to cool down from a thieving machine and not have a fistfight over ten rupees. I would have given Rs. 30 for a cold lassi, the yogurt drink, right then.
Part Two: I walked back to the bank the next day saving my Rs. 30 for a day when it might rain. Damn those Communist! And I arrived dodging traffic and jumping trash at one o’clock. One good thing about the banks is that they are air conditioned. This helps explain what little calm I was about to exhibit.
I explained as briefly as an English major could, just what my problem was. The young man behind the desk understood perfectly. He was educated, intelligent, and after ten years service to his bank, experienced. And he began like this, “I see. I understand. I will make an inquiry to our head office in Mumbai and they will contact your bank. From what state are you?”
This was not going to happen. I had no plans to lay hands on this man but I could see by his reaction to the way I looked that he understood that this was not going to happen. I could never make a living as a hit man. My face always gives me away. If my victim were to see me coming, he would shoot first and there would go my promising career. It has something to do with my Method training. We negotiated for another couple of minutes with my reminding him that my card was inside his machine, which stood not thirty feet from where we sat looking at each other across his desk.
“Sir, we have our regulations. Please, come back at 3:30.”
My plans included my taking cash hit (about $250 US) this afternoon and another tomorrow before I boarded a bus on the following day to head for a mythical hill station, where the streets were said to always be air conditioned, Kodaikanal. Even with the speed of an electron bouncing off a satellite 22,000 miles above Earth, I was not going to subject myself to the bank’s inefficiency. As I walked out of the lobby, I saw a poster touting a bank loan. The lead line was, “No Hassle!”
Then down the street I went talking to myself, I planned on emailing Flori, my guardian angel at Wells Fargo in Sitka, telling her that my card had been stolen and I would include the name of the thief who sat behind that desk. Money would henceforth have to be wired to me until something with the word “VISA” arrived.
Part Three: Once more I escaped being hit by something bigger and harder than I and walked back into the bank by 3:25.
“Please, take a seat,” and he pointed out the chairs along the wall. I suspect this was his way of showing authority but while he didn’t know it, he could have rented me that chair for about five to ten rupees an hour just to dodge dealing with the delicate environment on the other side of the bank’s door. Air condition is not the same as being in Alaska but it will do until I get back.
I watched him. He looked at everything but me. Then he motioned me over to sign papers and releases etc. We parted politely and in a few minutes I was in the ATM machine room (also air conditioned.) When the machine counted out the money, I yanked on the card. The machine, which was bigger than I was, wouldn’t turn loose! I grabbed the money with my free hand, still holding onto the card and an electric eye in the machine decided that my procedure was in keeping with bank regulations and turned loose of the card!
Part Four: The next day I drained my account in Sitka of another $250 and paid the HDFC Bank damn near a hundred rupees for the favor. Then I went looking for a state ticket agent. With luck I would see what a hill station looked like within 24 hours. Cool? Impossible! But I packed thinking that it might be true. What I put on the backburner of my mind was that it was 123 km. to this Shang-rah-la, and not one cm. of which was by train; all by bus. It could be that God would keep this poor storyteller alive at least until he reached the top of the ridge. I’d board the bus the next morning to find out.
#
Monday, December 10, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
The Microcosm
Anil had tucked his wallet between the mattresses. I’m not sure why a man would stick his head out the door without his wallet in his pocket but he had and that coupled with a slippage in memory means that you must borrow bus fare from friends and backtrack. He slept in my room for what was left of the night and then bussed off again in the morning to join the musketeers.
I went for a walk looking for the train station. Walked right passed it. It looked like a grand hotel and even though I had walked out of the building, I couldn’t remember it. I must have been distracted by the boys and the complexity of plans. I considered purchasing a ticket but I was hot and tired and walked on.
Sometime in the early afternoon I visited the Gandhi Memorial. His ashes were taken round the country and the memorial was built around a pedestal on which his remains rested. The room was large enough to have hanging from the walls large poster-sized photos of Gandhi during key periods of his life. The memorial had several stairways, which led up into one of several towers, giving me a view of the surrounding area. If my sense of direction was correct, the official tip of India lay about a hundred yards to my left and of course down at the water’s edge. There is a great temple crossing over the access to that point. If you remember, there was a dark street that the four of us entered and I said that I didn’t want to go there. That was the entrance to the temple. In the daylight it doesn’t look much less forbidding. Of course one removes his shoes when entering a sacred place but the temple was hyper-sacred. Men removed their shirts as well. I’ll read a description of the place some day. As I age, I find myself less curious; probably a bad sign. Comparing the two sites, this temple with the Gandhi Memorial, the latter could be called a clean, well-lighted place.
As I write I wonder why Gandhi’s ashes were not housed in this temple. Both the British and the Indian governments go to great lengths to show their secular side. But Gandhi himself said that his religious beliefs were an amalgam of all religions, eastern as well as western. When I meet someone with an education, I must ask.[1] I was about to meet a person who would qualify but the question hadn’t occurred to me at the time.
I found a cyber café, a one computer, two person operation. The man was monolingual and the young woman could make herself understood but what she wrote on paper worked better. Her speaking through a pencil lead impressed me.
“You write English well.”
Her eyebrows shot up and she wrote, “Of course!”
“Well, many people here in Kanyakumari don’t have that skill.”
“Many haven’t any education,” she wrote. A smile played across her lips.
“Are you in high school?” and then I said something else because they don’t call it ‘high school’ here.
The eyebrows climbed again as she got my meaning and this time she seemed put out with me. Twisting the paper round, she wrote, “I have graduated!”
Still thinking that she was in her teens, I asked, “Are you going on to continue your education?”
This seemed to anger her, “I have graduated!” she repeated as the pencil sailed across the paper and the paper flipped around where I could read, right side up. “I have a Bachelor of Arts.”
I read and since she didn’t seem old enough to have finished college, it was my time to look surprised.
“In what subject?”
“I have a BA in,” the pencil lead broke. She bore down too hard, I suspect. She grabbed a pen and started the sentence over as if to give emphasis. “I have a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature.”
I’ve developed a bad habit over the past ten or so years. I stop breathing. Don’t have any idea why.
She wrote on. “I have graduated from college.”
I remembered to take a breath and asked what writers she studied.
“Shakespeare, Shelly, and other writers.”
I was curious about, “and other writers,” but wondering if you could get a BA in state or would she have to go to Bangalore or New Delhi, I asked her if her college was in Tamil Nadu.
She was really losing patience with me. Even for a tourist, well… She twisted the paper around and underlined where she had written “Of course!” once before. No need in getting writer’s cramp. She decided that it was high time I got on the internet. But now there was another problem. The power failed. The surge protector beeped and I said that I would be back when the power returned.
I walked out into the heat and sunlight but a light wind blew. Ten miles to the north-east turbines turned. It must be another town’s turn to get on the web. The cook stoves operated on gas or coke. I went looking for a cup of coffee.
------------
The day wore down to the nub of late afternoon. Somewhere I picked up a bottle of water to keep the heat at bay. Not wanting go to my room as I had an hour of sunlight to burn and neither being hungry nor tired, I walked back between the buildings where we had watched the sunrise the morning before. I sat on the retaining wall and looked out over the beach and rocks to the sea. The great statue of poet Thiruvalluvar and the Vivekananda Memorial stood on the storm washed stone islands to the right, the jetty was off on my left, but what caught my eye was a boy of about six or seven just inside the lower retaining wall below me where Anthony had rock-hopped to get a better view of the sun. The kid squatted looking down into the tidal pool created by the lower wall. While the boy did wear a blue shirt, I could see no evidence of his wearing pants. His back was turned toward me as he intently watched what was going on in the pool. And his bottom was as bare as the rock he squatted on. Whatever it was that held his attention moved on to another part of the pool. The boy stood, holding his short pants at knee level and taking short steps, followed with interest. The next time he squatted, he dropped a yellow ochre stool. He changed rocks a time or two more anointing each in their turn before he pulled up his pants when a larger than usual wave smacked against the lower wall sending spray and water over the wall and into the tidal pool.
From off to my left, an older boy climbed over the wall on which I sat and carefully lowered himself onto a pile made up for the most part of coconut hulls but there were planks of rotting lumber and household rubbish making up the heap as well. He crossed the sand and stepped on to the rocks, joining the six-year old. They moved from rock to rock looking down in the tidal pools, talking to each other.
The two were joined by two more boys, one of whom gnawed on an apple-sized piece of fruit. The two descended by the same route over the wall and down the rubbish heap. Of course, they discussed what they found in the pools, while one boy stepped to the side and urinated. He seemed to have his mind on what they had seen and not that his shirt tail was out and that he was urinating on it. Another boy squatted on a rock with his pants down while a third trotted down the beach to a place where the lower wall played out and the boy began struggling to pull up some cloth which had been sanded over. He dug with his hands and stood up when a bigger wave washed over where he worked, probably filling in the hole he dug. He was about a hundred feet away; too far away for me to see.
The second boy, who had defecated, pulled up his pants and seemed to have a better idea than the boy who dug at the water’s edge. He remembered seeing some cloth in the heap that lay against the upper retaining wall where I sat. He ran back climbing the rubbish and watching him, I drank from my bottle.
The boy dug into the heap and ripped out a length of fabric about the size of a hand towel. By this time a couple of more boys had join the group and so when the boy with the cloth came back to the tidal pools, the group had grown to about seven children. The kid who worked at the water’s edge retrieved some rag but no enough to find approval among the other children. He dropped his find where he stood. Another boy squatted on a rock, pants down, while the boy who ate the fruit tossed the remains over the wall and into the sea.
One of the bigger boys took the cloth from the boy who found it in the heap (the children worked as a group) and directing the boy, who brought it down; they bent over holding the cloth down in the water using it as a net. They missed what they seined for on the first try but we all had time. It would be a half hour to sundown. The other children offered advice and spotted ahead for the fishermen. I drank the last of my water. A larger than ordinary wave smacked the lower wall sending a good amount of water over, carrying the remnant of the fruit with it.
Within five minutes the boys had caught a pan sized fish. I did not wonder if it were eatable. The biggest boy wrapped the cloth around his hand to keep from being finned. Taking the fish in the protected hand, he climbed on rock rubble that took him beyond the lower wall. Standing above the deeper water he tossed the fish back into the sea.
The fishing continued but one of the boys walked back up to the heap to look for more resources. I tapped the empty bottle against the wall. The boy looked over.
“Would you like to have this?” I asked holding out the bottle.
He climbed down off the heap and walked over to me. I tossed him the bottle and he turned back to the boys wading and walking on the rocks below. The group divided. Part kept up a fish watch while two or three of them found a sharp rock and began sawing the bottle in half. By the time the fishermen made a few more dips of their rag, the bottle cutters had produced two containers of a half-liter each. They gave the bottom half to the fishermen and kept the necked half for themselves. One boy removed the cap, covered the bottle’s mouth with his palm, and held the neck and most of bottle down in the pool. When he slipped his hand from the mouth, the bottle gulped water. Quickly, another boy reached beneath the water and screwed the cap on. Then they raised the bottle, cap down, and looked at what the bottle had sucked up. There were about four boys in this party. And while I couldn’t see the fifty feet or so to where they sat on their heels, I could guess at the tiny invertebrates they caught. All four looked into the watery world of the bottle. I could see them talking and would have given a dollar for their thoughts. The boy, who held the bottle by its cap and neck, swirled the contents and a tiny whirlpool spun the creatures round and round. The kids watched seemingly in wonder.
The upper retaining cast long shadows over the boys and the buildings behind me hid the sun. It was time to move on. My evening would begin by my washing my hands, I would read a menu, and order supper, if I chose to. Back in my room, I’d shower before bed. That was my call. I walked away from that one hundred foot square where the boys ate, fished, relieved themselves, and spun sea water into a whirlpool. In a half liter of water they found questions and have thousands of sunrises to find the answers, if they chose to. That was their call.
#
[1] If a Christian’s opinion on a Hindu custom is to be believed, Sam, my new found friend, thinks that a temple is off limits for the dead. The dead are considered unclean and therefore should only be handled by the Untouchables who operate the crematoriums.
Anil had tucked his wallet between the mattresses. I’m not sure why a man would stick his head out the door without his wallet in his pocket but he had and that coupled with a slippage in memory means that you must borrow bus fare from friends and backtrack. He slept in my room for what was left of the night and then bussed off again in the morning to join the musketeers.
I went for a walk looking for the train station. Walked right passed it. It looked like a grand hotel and even though I had walked out of the building, I couldn’t remember it. I must have been distracted by the boys and the complexity of plans. I considered purchasing a ticket but I was hot and tired and walked on.
Sometime in the early afternoon I visited the Gandhi Memorial. His ashes were taken round the country and the memorial was built around a pedestal on which his remains rested. The room was large enough to have hanging from the walls large poster-sized photos of Gandhi during key periods of his life. The memorial had several stairways, which led up into one of several towers, giving me a view of the surrounding area. If my sense of direction was correct, the official tip of India lay about a hundred yards to my left and of course down at the water’s edge. There is a great temple crossing over the access to that point. If you remember, there was a dark street that the four of us entered and I said that I didn’t want to go there. That was the entrance to the temple. In the daylight it doesn’t look much less forbidding. Of course one removes his shoes when entering a sacred place but the temple was hyper-sacred. Men removed their shirts as well. I’ll read a description of the place some day. As I age, I find myself less curious; probably a bad sign. Comparing the two sites, this temple with the Gandhi Memorial, the latter could be called a clean, well-lighted place.
As I write I wonder why Gandhi’s ashes were not housed in this temple. Both the British and the Indian governments go to great lengths to show their secular side. But Gandhi himself said that his religious beliefs were an amalgam of all religions, eastern as well as western. When I meet someone with an education, I must ask.[1] I was about to meet a person who would qualify but the question hadn’t occurred to me at the time.
I found a cyber café, a one computer, two person operation. The man was monolingual and the young woman could make herself understood but what she wrote on paper worked better. Her speaking through a pencil lead impressed me.
“You write English well.”
Her eyebrows shot up and she wrote, “Of course!”
“Well, many people here in Kanyakumari don’t have that skill.”
“Many haven’t any education,” she wrote. A smile played across her lips.
“Are you in high school?” and then I said something else because they don’t call it ‘high school’ here.
The eyebrows climbed again as she got my meaning and this time she seemed put out with me. Twisting the paper round, she wrote, “I have graduated!”
Still thinking that she was in her teens, I asked, “Are you going on to continue your education?”
This seemed to anger her, “I have graduated!” she repeated as the pencil sailed across the paper and the paper flipped around where I could read, right side up. “I have a Bachelor of Arts.”
I read and since she didn’t seem old enough to have finished college, it was my time to look surprised.
“In what subject?”
“I have a BA in,” the pencil lead broke. She bore down too hard, I suspect. She grabbed a pen and started the sentence over as if to give emphasis. “I have a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature.”
I’ve developed a bad habit over the past ten or so years. I stop breathing. Don’t have any idea why.
She wrote on. “I have graduated from college.”
I remembered to take a breath and asked what writers she studied.
“Shakespeare, Shelly, and other writers.”
I was curious about, “and other writers,” but wondering if you could get a BA in state or would she have to go to Bangalore or New Delhi, I asked her if her college was in Tamil Nadu.
She was really losing patience with me. Even for a tourist, well… She twisted the paper around and underlined where she had written “Of course!” once before. No need in getting writer’s cramp. She decided that it was high time I got on the internet. But now there was another problem. The power failed. The surge protector beeped and I said that I would be back when the power returned.
I walked out into the heat and sunlight but a light wind blew. Ten miles to the north-east turbines turned. It must be another town’s turn to get on the web. The cook stoves operated on gas or coke. I went looking for a cup of coffee.
------------
The day wore down to the nub of late afternoon. Somewhere I picked up a bottle of water to keep the heat at bay. Not wanting go to my room as I had an hour of sunlight to burn and neither being hungry nor tired, I walked back between the buildings where we had watched the sunrise the morning before. I sat on the retaining wall and looked out over the beach and rocks to the sea. The great statue of poet Thiruvalluvar and the Vivekananda Memorial stood on the storm washed stone islands to the right, the jetty was off on my left, but what caught my eye was a boy of about six or seven just inside the lower retaining wall below me where Anthony had rock-hopped to get a better view of the sun. The kid squatted looking down into the tidal pool created by the lower wall. While the boy did wear a blue shirt, I could see no evidence of his wearing pants. His back was turned toward me as he intently watched what was going on in the pool. And his bottom was as bare as the rock he squatted on. Whatever it was that held his attention moved on to another part of the pool. The boy stood, holding his short pants at knee level and taking short steps, followed with interest. The next time he squatted, he dropped a yellow ochre stool. He changed rocks a time or two more anointing each in their turn before he pulled up his pants when a larger than usual wave smacked against the lower wall sending spray and water over the wall and into the tidal pool.
From off to my left, an older boy climbed over the wall on which I sat and carefully lowered himself onto a pile made up for the most part of coconut hulls but there were planks of rotting lumber and household rubbish making up the heap as well. He crossed the sand and stepped on to the rocks, joining the six-year old. They moved from rock to rock looking down in the tidal pools, talking to each other.
The two were joined by two more boys, one of whom gnawed on an apple-sized piece of fruit. The two descended by the same route over the wall and down the rubbish heap. Of course, they discussed what they found in the pools, while one boy stepped to the side and urinated. He seemed to have his mind on what they had seen and not that his shirt tail was out and that he was urinating on it. Another boy squatted on a rock with his pants down while a third trotted down the beach to a place where the lower wall played out and the boy began struggling to pull up some cloth which had been sanded over. He dug with his hands and stood up when a bigger wave washed over where he worked, probably filling in the hole he dug. He was about a hundred feet away; too far away for me to see.
The second boy, who had defecated, pulled up his pants and seemed to have a better idea than the boy who dug at the water’s edge. He remembered seeing some cloth in the heap that lay against the upper retaining wall where I sat. He ran back climbing the rubbish and watching him, I drank from my bottle.
The boy dug into the heap and ripped out a length of fabric about the size of a hand towel. By this time a couple of more boys had join the group and so when the boy with the cloth came back to the tidal pools, the group had grown to about seven children. The kid who worked at the water’s edge retrieved some rag but no enough to find approval among the other children. He dropped his find where he stood. Another boy squatted on a rock, pants down, while the boy who ate the fruit tossed the remains over the wall and into the sea.
One of the bigger boys took the cloth from the boy who found it in the heap (the children worked as a group) and directing the boy, who brought it down; they bent over holding the cloth down in the water using it as a net. They missed what they seined for on the first try but we all had time. It would be a half hour to sundown. The other children offered advice and spotted ahead for the fishermen. I drank the last of my water. A larger than ordinary wave smacked the lower wall sending a good amount of water over, carrying the remnant of the fruit with it.
Within five minutes the boys had caught a pan sized fish. I did not wonder if it were eatable. The biggest boy wrapped the cloth around his hand to keep from being finned. Taking the fish in the protected hand, he climbed on rock rubble that took him beyond the lower wall. Standing above the deeper water he tossed the fish back into the sea.
The fishing continued but one of the boys walked back up to the heap to look for more resources. I tapped the empty bottle against the wall. The boy looked over.
“Would you like to have this?” I asked holding out the bottle.
He climbed down off the heap and walked over to me. I tossed him the bottle and he turned back to the boys wading and walking on the rocks below. The group divided. Part kept up a fish watch while two or three of them found a sharp rock and began sawing the bottle in half. By the time the fishermen made a few more dips of their rag, the bottle cutters had produced two containers of a half-liter each. They gave the bottom half to the fishermen and kept the necked half for themselves. One boy removed the cap, covered the bottle’s mouth with his palm, and held the neck and most of bottle down in the pool. When he slipped his hand from the mouth, the bottle gulped water. Quickly, another boy reached beneath the water and screwed the cap on. Then they raised the bottle, cap down, and looked at what the bottle had sucked up. There were about four boys in this party. And while I couldn’t see the fifty feet or so to where they sat on their heels, I could guess at the tiny invertebrates they caught. All four looked into the watery world of the bottle. I could see them talking and would have given a dollar for their thoughts. The boy, who held the bottle by its cap and neck, swirled the contents and a tiny whirlpool spun the creatures round and round. The kids watched seemingly in wonder.
The upper retaining cast long shadows over the boys and the buildings behind me hid the sun. It was time to move on. My evening would begin by my washing my hands, I would read a menu, and order supper, if I chose to. Back in my room, I’d shower before bed. That was my call. I walked away from that one hundred foot square where the boys ate, fished, relieved themselves, and spun sea water into a whirlpool. In a half liter of water they found questions and have thousands of sunrises to find the answers, if they chose to. That was their call.
#
[1] If a Christian’s opinion on a Hindu custom is to be believed, Sam, my new found friend, thinks that a temple is off limits for the dead. The dead are considered unclean and therefore should only be handled by the Untouchables who operate the crematoriums.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
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!
#
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!
#
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Sunrise
There are places on Earth where if you can stand beyond the shadows’ reach of tree or building, you can see the sunrise and the set of a full moon simultaneously. At the southern tip of India is such a place. And since it was first noticed thousand of years ago, it was decided that to experience such an event would lead one into an auspicious day.
“The three musketeers” were to leave on the morning bus at ten fifteen. They had a schedule; I did not and planned to stay in Kanyakumari until the urge moved me. I was (and am) behind in writing, the cape would be a good place for me to stop and regroup. Therefore on my first wake-up, I was unpleasantly surprised to be brought out of sleep by the blaring prayer from a public address system. It was like taking a room too near a church with a full complement of bells and an ambitious bell ringer. But at five o’clock?
The boys burned energy like ferrets and should have slept in but having chosen a place to sleep this near electric vocal cords would bring them into consciousness. No coffee, no tea, just dress and go. The four of us followed a crowd shuffling down through the deep shadows of what had been a pitch black street last night. We in turn were followed by others. After a turn here and a twist there and dodging a postcard salesman and a dark-glasses vendor, we passed beyond the buildings and onto a road that ran down paralleling the beach. The only light came from a deep red splinter of cloud just above the horizon. It was still very dark, enough light to see the ground you walked over but not enough to make out what stood on two rock islands to the right of where the sun would in time rise. I lost my bet that I made with myself. The clouds had evaporated and we would have a clear sunrise.
The crowd stopped along the top of a retaining wall that kept the town and the road from slipping into the sea. The earlier people stood to our right and higher up while the arriving crowd along with us found a place along the road the wall held up. The town to our back, the Bay of Bengal before us, we waited and watched. By then I made out what looked like a temple crowned the farther rock but on the nearer one, there looked to be a great stone pillar. As time passed, the coming day showed the pillar to be the shape of a man Then as time went on, I could see a colossus his head probably more than two hundred feet above the sea. Any tourist with a half-well ordered mind would have read the guide book. Sometime it is to one’s advantage just to see, discover, and experience. The light in the east grew.
I looked back at the people along a wall above us, and behind them at the faces framed by windows, and by the figures high atop the hotels and on its balconies and marveled at how people had turned out just to see something as ordinary as a sunrise. The moon was out of sight. I don’t remember the phase but what I had earlier estimated to be hundreds of people now stood, at my guess, near two thousand, all watching, all waiting.
The boys, never still, always moving, had climbed down the wall and stepped along the rocks to get a closer look…at the sun? at the horizon? Strobes flashed all through the crowd. And by now the stratus formation was turning from orange to near gold. The waves lapped against another smaller wall at the water’s edge. Anthony had rock-hopped his way there and was wondering aloud back over his shoulder if they should charter a rowboat for a closer look. Since the horizon bends away from the viewer as he approaches and since the sun stands about ninety-three million miles away, I called to him that this was about as close as he would get.
Then as quietly as the crowd, it happened. The sun’s edge showed above the sea but if you looked quickly you saw that it rose in several parts with the lower part ragged like a crust nibbled by mice. Over the curvature of the Earth and far, far out to sea, possibly over Sri Lanka, cumulus cloud tops blocked part of the red arc. I had not seen them before and within seconds they disappeared into the building glare. They could have stood a hundred fifty miles or more from Cape Comorin. But by now the sun’s edge became one and rose slightly changing from a blood red to a brighter and lighter orange. Cameral clicked. Off to the right I could see both the temple that I would learn was a memorial and on the rock nearer the cape, the massive form, still a work in progress, of the Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar.
Looking back at the people, I could see the saris take on colors in the brighter light. Then a family here and a person there withdrew from the front rank and walked back toward the passage between the buildings from where we had all come. Anthony and Avinash conferred with each other. The lenses retracted into their cameras. They asked Anil and I what we thought. It was breakfast time. The sun had risen.
#
“The three musketeers” were to leave on the morning bus at ten fifteen. They had a schedule; I did not and planned to stay in Kanyakumari until the urge moved me. I was (and am) behind in writing, the cape would be a good place for me to stop and regroup. Therefore on my first wake-up, I was unpleasantly surprised to be brought out of sleep by the blaring prayer from a public address system. It was like taking a room too near a church with a full complement of bells and an ambitious bell ringer. But at five o’clock?
The boys burned energy like ferrets and should have slept in but having chosen a place to sleep this near electric vocal cords would bring them into consciousness. No coffee, no tea, just dress and go. The four of us followed a crowd shuffling down through the deep shadows of what had been a pitch black street last night. We in turn were followed by others. After a turn here and a twist there and dodging a postcard salesman and a dark-glasses vendor, we passed beyond the buildings and onto a road that ran down paralleling the beach. The only light came from a deep red splinter of cloud just above the horizon. It was still very dark, enough light to see the ground you walked over but not enough to make out what stood on two rock islands to the right of where the sun would in time rise. I lost my bet that I made with myself. The clouds had evaporated and we would have a clear sunrise.
The crowd stopped along the top of a retaining wall that kept the town and the road from slipping into the sea. The earlier people stood to our right and higher up while the arriving crowd along with us found a place along the road the wall held up. The town to our back, the Bay of Bengal before us, we waited and watched. By then I made out what looked like a temple crowned the farther rock but on the nearer one, there looked to be a great stone pillar. As time passed, the coming day showed the pillar to be the shape of a man Then as time went on, I could see a colossus his head probably more than two hundred feet above the sea. Any tourist with a half-well ordered mind would have read the guide book. Sometime it is to one’s advantage just to see, discover, and experience. The light in the east grew.
I looked back at the people along a wall above us, and behind them at the faces framed by windows, and by the figures high atop the hotels and on its balconies and marveled at how people had turned out just to see something as ordinary as a sunrise. The moon was out of sight. I don’t remember the phase but what I had earlier estimated to be hundreds of people now stood, at my guess, near two thousand, all watching, all waiting.
The boys, never still, always moving, had climbed down the wall and stepped along the rocks to get a closer look…at the sun? at the horizon? Strobes flashed all through the crowd. And by now the stratus formation was turning from orange to near gold. The waves lapped against another smaller wall at the water’s edge. Anthony had rock-hopped his way there and was wondering aloud back over his shoulder if they should charter a rowboat for a closer look. Since the horizon bends away from the viewer as he approaches and since the sun stands about ninety-three million miles away, I called to him that this was about as close as he would get.
Then as quietly as the crowd, it happened. The sun’s edge showed above the sea but if you looked quickly you saw that it rose in several parts with the lower part ragged like a crust nibbled by mice. Over the curvature of the Earth and far, far out to sea, possibly over Sri Lanka, cumulus cloud tops blocked part of the red arc. I had not seen them before and within seconds they disappeared into the building glare. They could have stood a hundred fifty miles or more from Cape Comorin. But by now the sun’s edge became one and rose slightly changing from a blood red to a brighter and lighter orange. Cameral clicked. Off to the right I could see both the temple that I would learn was a memorial and on the rock nearer the cape, the massive form, still a work in progress, of the Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar.
Looking back at the people, I could see the saris take on colors in the brighter light. Then a family here and a person there withdrew from the front rank and walked back toward the passage between the buildings from where we had all come. Anthony and Avinash conferred with each other. The lenses retracted into their cameras. They asked Anil and I what we thought. It was breakfast time. The sun had risen.
#
Sunday, November 25, 2007
To Kanyakumari at Cape Comorin
To Kanyakumari at Cape Comorin
During the first five or six weeks on the Subcontinent, there were days in which the temperature was bearable up to about noon. I’d heard of a place up in the Palani Hills called Kodaikanal, which was said to not only be bearable but actually cool. Settling down for a while was of more interest than sightseeing and I considered cutting across country to find the hill station. But then came that nagging question which was, When will you be back? Travel, like living, is cheap in India. One thought was to wait in the mountains until January and then come down and do my touring then. It was during January and February that I had crossed India the first time. I remember sweaters, not sweating. But then Cape Comorin, that is the southern tip of the country, was within a little more than a half-day’s journey so why not go? From what I’d read there was a strange phenomena to experience there, and while the sun and moon were not in sync, I was far enough south that I should take in the geography. Furthermore I’d heard about wind farms.
John Jacobs peddled hand-painted scarves to the hotel guests. He, like Tony, was proficient in English and operated as a small entrepreneur. I had seen him around the hotel several times and chatted with him. Now and then you meet an Indian who would like to take on the U.S. experience and John, who had few family ties and had cared for the elderly, had the American Dream in mind. The first hurdle is speaking English well enough so that the client can understand; the second is for the elderly to have the patience to learn John’s pronunciation.
I made him an offer that I’d give him $5.00 (Rs. 200) if he would transport me to the station and deal with the ticket agent. He was more than pleased.
The hotel clerks found a train leaving for Kanyakumari at 10:15 a.m. which would arrive at the southern tip of India that afternoon late. This suited me as I would have a chance to look over the countryside by daylight. Just to make catching a train more interesting there may be several stations in one town. John got the name of the proper station from the clerk and all was set for a morning departure.
He picked me up and we rode away in an auto rickshaw. At the ticket window, he turned and asked if I wanted an inexpensive second-class coach ticket or a sleeper ticket second class. Since I didn’t plan on sleeping, I bought the cheaper ticket and he helped me board. It was the wrong car but….. Then we shook hands, wished each other well, and I settled down to think over his advice. One mustn’t accept food from strangers. I think Mother told me that or maybe the advice only applied to candy. There had been cases of pranks played causing the recipient to become nauseated and in some cases the story included knock-out drugs and robbery.
I took a single seat on the narrow side of the car, the locomotive honked twice and we rolled along a trash-lined track and out into the farms and countryside. Urban areas are dumps. At this time India and America are dickering over a nuclear deal. Forget what the United States wants from India, if India can’t keep a power plant cleaner than it does a street corner, God help India! But the land, whether cultivated or wild, is as beautiful as anyplace in the world. I’m amazed that the tourist industry (Indian or foreign) hasn’t observed this. The land is Eden. The towns are the new Untouchables.
So the wind felt good coming through the window as we rolled south through Eden.
The first person sitting opposite to me was a man in his thirties, who could knew a few words in English. He wanted me to visit his home in days to come. I thanked him but told him that I would be taking another route. Then he asked me to sponsor him to come to the U.S. I told him that he’d need to go to school of which there were many in any city I’d been in and learn English. He thought that over and went on his way.
The next person to occupy that seat was a lady of about the same age, who had training, spoke well, and if I recall was in the medical field as were her friends sitting across on the wide side the aisle. We chatted and then passed a concrete pad of about thirty-five feet by better than fifty. There was a pole metal roof overhead and a good sized fire burning beneath the roof. I asked the lady what that was about. She said that it was a cremation. Not everybody can get to burning ghats of Varanasi. It could be that the ashes will reach the Ganges later.
The afternoon wore on. I managed to buy a bottle of water and with the help of the lady, I purchased a bag of Lay potato chips. These chips weren’t sliced and fried in Ft. Worth but instead were India’s own well spiced with curry powder. The lady left and three men in their twenties took seats in the car. They all spoke excellent English and I was invited to join them. They were interested in what I thought of India and one story led to another. They particularly liked pointing out this and that using my version of the Goan wrist flip and they though retraining cab drivers to become mercenary fighter pilots was hilarious. Then the conductors, two women, came round. I showed my ticket and they looked at me like my third-grade teacher did when I had committed a venial sin. It seems that John Jacobs had loaded me into the wrong car. I should have been sitting on wooden benches instead the plastic pads of a second-class sleeper. And like the third-grade teacher, they realized that I was utterly ignorant of my mistake and after informing me of my misdeed, they let it pass.
The young men were taking a few days vacation from their banking job in Bangalore. Two of them, Anthony and Avinash had known each other since grade school, the third, Anil, had known the two since college. They looked for the interesting and fun things to do. They had considered paragliding but due to the weather or faulty equipment or for some other reason they changed plans. They were on their way to Kanyakumari to see the sun rise. What ever turns you on. The bunch were live wires and curious, spending as much time as I, looking out the window. We had a discussion as to our location in relation to this west coast train to the Arabian Sea. Now in late afternoon, we agreed that the sun was to the west and if we were to see the sea again, it would be off the starboard since we headed south. To Anil looking over the Indian Ocean was a wonder that made the trip worth the time and effort. With my having lived twenty or thirty years on salt water, hearing the awe in his voice gave me something to think on.
Then the country and trees began to breakaway and beyond the coconut palms stood some of the most rugged mountains any of us had seen. Anil likened the sight to Utah. That took me by surprise that he would know what Utah looked like. Surely there weren’t many Americans who knew what Kerala looked like. I politely agreed although I’d have compared these rocky mountains with the Superstitions of Arizona. I wanted to point out one difference. Anil listened. “You must forget what you see in the foreground.” There were rice paddies stretching from the tracks to the mountains and the latter were five or ten miles away. Anil agreed that Utah wouldn’t have rice paddies.
Then we came to the terminal. This terminal was surely the end of the line. From here you double back; no left, right, or center.
Avinash spoke Tamil and was our chief interpreter. He dickered with the auto rickshaws and soon the four of us and our baggage were overloading a three-wheeler and chugging off to see what the hotels had to offer. Judging by the metabolic rate of these guys, I said that I wanted a room by myself. After a check of the available choice, we settled on rooms on the first floor (by British and Indian standards; second floor U.S.) and moved in. I showered and we met for supper. Indians, like the Chinese, order large quantities of food and then share. In my confusion, I ate most of a fish delicacy that they ordered. I though it was my order. They introduced me to a drink called “lassi.” The spelling varies as does the taste but I found a flavor with an untapped fortune just beneath the bubbles. I could imagine lassi stands popping up like fence posts, growing smaller as they stretched out over an American horizon. I got so many stories as to how it was made that I’ll stick with the one Avinash, who has probably never made the drink, told me. You dump yogurt into cold water and run it through a blender. The proportion should be just thin enough to be drawn through a straw. You add a little salt and a spoonful of sugar, if you like it sweet. Otherwise leave out the sugar and drink it salty to your taste. I wrote a glowing report to my daughter and she reminded me that we ate an Indian meal (complete with lassi) while sitting on some steps in Greenwich Village. I remembered the meal, my wrestling with some kind of dosi (great piece of crisp bread,) lunch time, rivers of people on Crosby Street, cars, all of which pretty well approximated India. I got stressed, daughter took it in stride, and Fred, her dog, which she carried with her, went to sleep. “And so we drank lassi?” I asked. Since she was about seven years old and that was thirty years ago, she puts little trust in my memory but that’s another story.
The Sea View Restaurant was a table cloth place. The young men would be gone by tomorrow night. But during my stay of several days, the waiters in white shirts, black ties and trousers got to know my weakness for lassi.
These three musketeers wiped their mouths on the cloth napkins and it was time to go look at the town. Of course by this time the sun had set over the Arabian Sea and there is nothing quite as dark as a tropical night. We wanted to find the “beach.” Again Avinash talked, took note, and away we went among vendors selling sunglasses, vendors selling strings of jasmine blossoms, vendors selling travel guides, but no vendor sold three foot long railway maps of India, which is about the only thing in the world I needed to purchase for a friend who loves maps so long as they don’t have too many towns shown on them.
We rounded one stand and found a brahma calf about half grown lying before a temple door. He was white but with gray, shading off to near charcoal. There are cows and there are cows but this one was a beautiful creature. Of course my gang was electronically prepared. They had come with I-pods, cell phones, and a digital camera. One by one we all had our picture taken with the calf. Anthony wasn’t too sure what would happen if he touched the calf. I couldn’t imagine an Indian made jittery by a cow but he and Avinash were Roman Catholics. Anil was Brahman. I petted the calf as I would a dog. You can charge my attitude up to my coming from a ranching family or my being Methodist-Heathen. This happened about a month ago and I haven’t seen such a beautiful animal since then.
We turned down the street which led to the “beach.” It also led to the great temple, which was part and parcel of this End of India/rising sun-setting moon thing. It was very dark. I said that I was turning back and the “boys” spun on their heels and came back with me. There manners all the time we were together were exemplary.
The last plan of the day was to get up early tomorrow and watch the sun rise over the Bay of Bengal. One of the last thing I did before I turned off the light in my room, was to go out on the balcony and look up at a starless sky. John Jacobs had told me with a giggle before he left me that morning. Most of the mornings in Kanyakumari are cloudy. Somebody was sure to be disappointed.
#
During the first five or six weeks on the Subcontinent, there were days in which the temperature was bearable up to about noon. I’d heard of a place up in the Palani Hills called Kodaikanal, which was said to not only be bearable but actually cool. Settling down for a while was of more interest than sightseeing and I considered cutting across country to find the hill station. But then came that nagging question which was, When will you be back? Travel, like living, is cheap in India. One thought was to wait in the mountains until January and then come down and do my touring then. It was during January and February that I had crossed India the first time. I remember sweaters, not sweating. But then Cape Comorin, that is the southern tip of the country, was within a little more than a half-day’s journey so why not go? From what I’d read there was a strange phenomena to experience there, and while the sun and moon were not in sync, I was far enough south that I should take in the geography. Furthermore I’d heard about wind farms.
John Jacobs peddled hand-painted scarves to the hotel guests. He, like Tony, was proficient in English and operated as a small entrepreneur. I had seen him around the hotel several times and chatted with him. Now and then you meet an Indian who would like to take on the U.S. experience and John, who had few family ties and had cared for the elderly, had the American Dream in mind. The first hurdle is speaking English well enough so that the client can understand; the second is for the elderly to have the patience to learn John’s pronunciation.
I made him an offer that I’d give him $5.00 (Rs. 200) if he would transport me to the station and deal with the ticket agent. He was more than pleased.
The hotel clerks found a train leaving for Kanyakumari at 10:15 a.m. which would arrive at the southern tip of India that afternoon late. This suited me as I would have a chance to look over the countryside by daylight. Just to make catching a train more interesting there may be several stations in one town. John got the name of the proper station from the clerk and all was set for a morning departure.
He picked me up and we rode away in an auto rickshaw. At the ticket window, he turned and asked if I wanted an inexpensive second-class coach ticket or a sleeper ticket second class. Since I didn’t plan on sleeping, I bought the cheaper ticket and he helped me board. It was the wrong car but….. Then we shook hands, wished each other well, and I settled down to think over his advice. One mustn’t accept food from strangers. I think Mother told me that or maybe the advice only applied to candy. There had been cases of pranks played causing the recipient to become nauseated and in some cases the story included knock-out drugs and robbery.
I took a single seat on the narrow side of the car, the locomotive honked twice and we rolled along a trash-lined track and out into the farms and countryside. Urban areas are dumps. At this time India and America are dickering over a nuclear deal. Forget what the United States wants from India, if India can’t keep a power plant cleaner than it does a street corner, God help India! But the land, whether cultivated or wild, is as beautiful as anyplace in the world. I’m amazed that the tourist industry (Indian or foreign) hasn’t observed this. The land is Eden. The towns are the new Untouchables.
So the wind felt good coming through the window as we rolled south through Eden.
The first person sitting opposite to me was a man in his thirties, who could knew a few words in English. He wanted me to visit his home in days to come. I thanked him but told him that I would be taking another route. Then he asked me to sponsor him to come to the U.S. I told him that he’d need to go to school of which there were many in any city I’d been in and learn English. He thought that over and went on his way.
The next person to occupy that seat was a lady of about the same age, who had training, spoke well, and if I recall was in the medical field as were her friends sitting across on the wide side the aisle. We chatted and then passed a concrete pad of about thirty-five feet by better than fifty. There was a pole metal roof overhead and a good sized fire burning beneath the roof. I asked the lady what that was about. She said that it was a cremation. Not everybody can get to burning ghats of Varanasi. It could be that the ashes will reach the Ganges later.
The afternoon wore on. I managed to buy a bottle of water and with the help of the lady, I purchased a bag of Lay potato chips. These chips weren’t sliced and fried in Ft. Worth but instead were India’s own well spiced with curry powder. The lady left and three men in their twenties took seats in the car. They all spoke excellent English and I was invited to join them. They were interested in what I thought of India and one story led to another. They particularly liked pointing out this and that using my version of the Goan wrist flip and they though retraining cab drivers to become mercenary fighter pilots was hilarious. Then the conductors, two women, came round. I showed my ticket and they looked at me like my third-grade teacher did when I had committed a venial sin. It seems that John Jacobs had loaded me into the wrong car. I should have been sitting on wooden benches instead the plastic pads of a second-class sleeper. And like the third-grade teacher, they realized that I was utterly ignorant of my mistake and after informing me of my misdeed, they let it pass.
The young men were taking a few days vacation from their banking job in Bangalore. Two of them, Anthony and Avinash had known each other since grade school, the third, Anil, had known the two since college. They looked for the interesting and fun things to do. They had considered paragliding but due to the weather or faulty equipment or for some other reason they changed plans. They were on their way to Kanyakumari to see the sun rise. What ever turns you on. The bunch were live wires and curious, spending as much time as I, looking out the window. We had a discussion as to our location in relation to this west coast train to the Arabian Sea. Now in late afternoon, we agreed that the sun was to the west and if we were to see the sea again, it would be off the starboard since we headed south. To Anil looking over the Indian Ocean was a wonder that made the trip worth the time and effort. With my having lived twenty or thirty years on salt water, hearing the awe in his voice gave me something to think on.
Then the country and trees began to breakaway and beyond the coconut palms stood some of the most rugged mountains any of us had seen. Anil likened the sight to Utah. That took me by surprise that he would know what Utah looked like. Surely there weren’t many Americans who knew what Kerala looked like. I politely agreed although I’d have compared these rocky mountains with the Superstitions of Arizona. I wanted to point out one difference. Anil listened. “You must forget what you see in the foreground.” There were rice paddies stretching from the tracks to the mountains and the latter were five or ten miles away. Anil agreed that Utah wouldn’t have rice paddies.
Then we came to the terminal. This terminal was surely the end of the line. From here you double back; no left, right, or center.
Avinash spoke Tamil and was our chief interpreter. He dickered with the auto rickshaws and soon the four of us and our baggage were overloading a three-wheeler and chugging off to see what the hotels had to offer. Judging by the metabolic rate of these guys, I said that I wanted a room by myself. After a check of the available choice, we settled on rooms on the first floor (by British and Indian standards; second floor U.S.) and moved in. I showered and we met for supper. Indians, like the Chinese, order large quantities of food and then share. In my confusion, I ate most of a fish delicacy that they ordered. I though it was my order. They introduced me to a drink called “lassi.” The spelling varies as does the taste but I found a flavor with an untapped fortune just beneath the bubbles. I could imagine lassi stands popping up like fence posts, growing smaller as they stretched out over an American horizon. I got so many stories as to how it was made that I’ll stick with the one Avinash, who has probably never made the drink, told me. You dump yogurt into cold water and run it through a blender. The proportion should be just thin enough to be drawn through a straw. You add a little salt and a spoonful of sugar, if you like it sweet. Otherwise leave out the sugar and drink it salty to your taste. I wrote a glowing report to my daughter and she reminded me that we ate an Indian meal (complete with lassi) while sitting on some steps in Greenwich Village. I remembered the meal, my wrestling with some kind of dosi (great piece of crisp bread,) lunch time, rivers of people on Crosby Street, cars, all of which pretty well approximated India. I got stressed, daughter took it in stride, and Fred, her dog, which she carried with her, went to sleep. “And so we drank lassi?” I asked. Since she was about seven years old and that was thirty years ago, she puts little trust in my memory but that’s another story.
The Sea View Restaurant was a table cloth place. The young men would be gone by tomorrow night. But during my stay of several days, the waiters in white shirts, black ties and trousers got to know my weakness for lassi.
These three musketeers wiped their mouths on the cloth napkins and it was time to go look at the town. Of course by this time the sun had set over the Arabian Sea and there is nothing quite as dark as a tropical night. We wanted to find the “beach.” Again Avinash talked, took note, and away we went among vendors selling sunglasses, vendors selling strings of jasmine blossoms, vendors selling travel guides, but no vendor sold three foot long railway maps of India, which is about the only thing in the world I needed to purchase for a friend who loves maps so long as they don’t have too many towns shown on them.
We rounded one stand and found a brahma calf about half grown lying before a temple door. He was white but with gray, shading off to near charcoal. There are cows and there are cows but this one was a beautiful creature. Of course my gang was electronically prepared. They had come with I-pods, cell phones, and a digital camera. One by one we all had our picture taken with the calf. Anthony wasn’t too sure what would happen if he touched the calf. I couldn’t imagine an Indian made jittery by a cow but he and Avinash were Roman Catholics. Anil was Brahman. I petted the calf as I would a dog. You can charge my attitude up to my coming from a ranching family or my being Methodist-Heathen. This happened about a month ago and I haven’t seen such a beautiful animal since then.
We turned down the street which led to the “beach.” It also led to the great temple, which was part and parcel of this End of India/rising sun-setting moon thing. It was very dark. I said that I was turning back and the “boys” spun on their heels and came back with me. There manners all the time we were together were exemplary.
The last plan of the day was to get up early tomorrow and watch the sun rise over the Bay of Bengal. One of the last thing I did before I turned off the light in my room, was to go out on the balcony and look up at a starless sky. John Jacobs had told me with a giggle before he left me that morning. Most of the mornings in Kanyakumari are cloudy. Somebody was sure to be disappointed.
#
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