INDIA - Tamil Nadu
Written
by Aaron
After 36 hours in a train, we reached Chennai from Dehli. In three days we crossed the India subcontinent, from it's Northwest edge all the way down to near the Southeast tip. Day one of the trip was on a bus from Jaisalmer to Jodhpur, then a night train from Jodhpur to Dehli, and then the 36 hour oddyssey. Laura had confirmed tickets, but remember folks, this is India. Our confirmed seats were 46 and 47, but there was no 47 on the 2nd class A/C train. And there was no one to ask, of course. So the train left, and at that point, Laura was sleeping in the hall between train cars. But then we lucked out, and met the superintendent of the train, or of all trains, we're not sure. He was a Christain, had a son who worked for Oracle, and was keen on having us hook his son up at a job in the States. We said we'd do what we could, and he moved us to our own cabin, and that was really nice. That night and half the next day, we were on our own, then two Indian gentleman showed up and we had to share, but that's okay. Until one of them started snoring, and then I thought I was going to have to kill them. They didn't smell, though, so that was good. Two tier was far better than three, in the three tier cabin, it's six people to a cabin, and that was fine for a night, but not for 36 hours. Anyway, with our things locked up tight against thieves, Laura proceeded to kick my butt in Gin Rummy, taught to us by our Brit friends, Gail and Vince. The score was something like 700 to 150. It was embarrassing.
But really, the 36 hours flew by, and we arrived in Chennai. Now, we are on anti-malaria medication, Larium, since we are in the heartland of Malaria Country, and one of the side effects of Larium are intense dreams, hallucinations, and other fun things. I get these night frights, after waking up from very David Lynchian dreams, but also, I lose all ability to make a decision. So we spent the morning looking for a hotel going from place to place, being driven around by a crazed Rickshaw driver, but we finally found a place. Chennai is the fourth largest city in India, and I think most of those people sleep on the street, and they have their own home businesses, hawking different things from the bit of sidewalk where they sleep, bathe, eat, urinate and defecate. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home. People praised the south as being different from the North, the people nicer, less touristed, et cetera. Well, I think the North has learned some lessons, and that the South is like the North was ten years ago. Beggars, merchants, everyone is a little more aggressive, but then again, we've met some really, really nice people. One of the best things we've found in the south is the breakfasts. From the French influence, they have delicious coffee, and for breakfast there are all these breads, some deep fried, that you dip in various sauces, lentils, onion yogurt raita, things like that. Very good! Laura's favorite breakfasts so far on the trip.
Chennai seemed like it was a little more 'with it' than Dehli, but after some looking around, we thought that the people were probably poorer. Chennai had billboards for cell phones, computer ads galore and we saw none of that in Dehli. Anyway, we worked on getting a Visa extension, which we accomplished, and in only one day. We were blessed by Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. We hired a car and a driver, and our driver, Deepam, told us that he had prayed for us, and so that was why we had Ganesha's blessing. The car/driver was more expensive than the north, and our driver was far less sophisticated than Culdive, whom we missed every day! The south is just behind the north as far as tourism is concerned. Our driver did not have a free room, but had to sleep in his car. And the travel agent folks told us his meals & accomadations were included in our price. Yeah, as if. And as we are running around, getting passport photos, going to the FRO (Foreignors Registration Office), Deepam tells us that he gets 100 Rupees a day for driving, and his hotel and food come out of that. And with meals costing around 25 Rupees a shot, that means he makes a wopping 25 Rupees a day, a little more than fifty cents. Yeah, that made us cheerful around him, and we were hitting ATM machines, taking out 20,000 Rupees at a time, complaining that there was a limit.
Finally, on Tuesday, November 28, 2000 we left Chennai, formerly known as Madras. While most of the time we were taking care of business, we did visit a couple of old Christian churches, one even had the body of St. Thomas interred underneath. There are 18 million Christians in India, 3/4 of those live in the south. St. Thomas, by the way, is the Thomas, Doubting Thomas, from the bible. Supposedly, he came over to spread the good news in 52 A.D., but most scholars are skeptical about that. Anyway, we saw where Yale, the Yale of college fame, got married, and the churches were nice. We even saw where St. Thomas lived, on Little Mount, that had a comanding view of Chennai. We would have visited the old Madras fort and museum, but the India government, in all its wisdom, changed the prices so that for Indians, it's 10 Rupees, for Non-Indians, it's 10 dollars. So we skipped on that. Chennai, by the way, or Madras, as the Brits called it, was where the English started their colonization of India, so its full of collonial historical stuff.
Our first stop was Kanchipuram, and at first, we thought that in most of the cities in the South we'd need a full day to see them. When the travel agent, and later Deepam, our underpaid driver, told us that we could breeze through, we were a little nervous about them underestimating the time it would take to tour the sights. As it turns out, the 21,000 Rupees we spent on the car was the best thing we could have done with that money. To do try to do a temple tour of the south any other way would be very difficult, and most of the time, you'd be standing around waiting for a bus, getting on a bus, or wishing you were not on a bus. And the pay offs of the sights weren't that big to credit a one way ticket to the little villages where we stayed. Granted, we liked the temples, and Tamil Nadu, the southernmost state in India, is a fascinating place. We were off the beaten track, we were nearly the only non-Indian tourists for days on end.
At Kanchipuram, we saw the Sri Ekambaranathar Temple, one of the largest temples in India, and it's hall was impressive. There was an ancient mango tree near the inner sanctum that was supposedly 3,500 years old. It's four branches symbolized the four Vedas. Sure. We were blessed by a priest, and we coughed up some serious baksheesh.
We then went to Laura's favorite temple, the Kailasanatha Temple which was built in the 7th century A.D. The old priest showed us carvings of Shiva and Parvati during a dance contest they had. In the light of a flickering oil lamp, Shiva was either shining or frowning, and Parvati, his wife, was either shy or bold, depending on where you held the lamp. The carvings were exquisite, and it was a lot of fun. We then jammed on over to two other temples, one dedicated to Parvati, the other to Vishnu. Real quick,the Hindu's have a trinity, but then, there are 330 million gods, so take this all with a grain of salt. Brahma is the god who created the universe, Vishnu is the god that preserves the universe, and in the end, Shiva will be the god who destroys the universe. Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. There. We did learn some things about weddings at the Vishnu temple, and stood in the impressive thousand pillar hall. Our guide, a supposed Brahmin, the priest caste in India, was nice, but his English wasn't so good. I slipped him some baksheesh though, but of course, he wanted more.
Then on to Mamallapuram where we saw people carving up a storm in granite, marble and various rocks. I bought a couple of Ganesha's, love that god, and we spread some more baksheesh around the locals. One of our guides, a really old man, was great, and showed us some carvings of Arjuna, a hero in one of the Indian epics, The Mahabharata, a kind of Bible, Stars Wars movie, and Greek Myth all rolled into one. On the ocean front, we stopped off at some temples that had been under the sand until the Brits dug them up, again, commemorating the five heroes of the Mahabharata. It was a steep ten bucks to get in, so we just walked around the outside, under siege by beggars and postcard salesman, taking pictures through the chain link fence. We then went to another temple, right on the ocean, and as the storm blew in, we looked at the waves crashing on the rocks, waves from the Bay of Bengal. I felt the water, it was warm. The temple was really cool, but again, ten bucks to get in. I told the security guards I was an Indian at heart, but they couldn't get passed my skin color. That night we stayed at Uma's Guest House, and Uma was not the hot starlet of the cinema, but the kindest old man we've met in India. The power went out, and so we ate by candle light, but the power went back on just in time for us to catch a few Dixie Chicks songs before we had to go to bed. Deepam, that cheery man who so loves his job, told us a cyclone had hit Madras and was heading straight for us. We lit a candle, gave some puja to Ganesha, and hoped for the best.
We had visited a snake farm in Chennai, but the Crocodile Bank near Mamallapuram was the coolest! We saw the 2nd largest ocean crocodile in captivity, well, only his head, but we saw everything from baby crocs to mugger crocodiles swimming around in the water. We were surrounded by shrieking Indian school children, but that was okay. At one point, though, Laura felt something poking her back, and she reached behind her to feel what it was, and then began tearing at her backback. A spider had been knocked down from a tree by the wind (from the cyclone) and had landed on her. It was big, about the size of a silver dollar, with large almost tusk like teeth. Laura was inconsolable for a couple long moments, but soon found her courage. I told her at least it wasn't a crocodile, but she didn't think that was funny. By the way, the difference between an Alligator and Crocodile? Alligators have an extra tooth that protrudes from their lower jaw and are mostly found in the Americas. Crocodiles have the same tooth, but it is inside the mouth, and they are found everywhere. A point of interest, those countries that raise Crocs and then sell their skin have more Crocs in the wild than those countries that don't have special farms. Poachers and people living have wiped out most of the Crocs on earth, and this farm was one place where they were being raised, not for their skin, but to be re-introduced into the wild. So, those animal rights people who say that buying crocodile products is helping to wipe them out, aren't necessarily right. In the U.S. and in another coutnry, I forget which, when the skins are sold to manufacturers, the money is then used to proctect the wild crocodiles and so their populations are better. Ahhh, we shall all be saved by Capitalism in the end.
From the Alligator farm we drove down the coast to Pondicherry, where the French started their colonization of India. The French in India? That's right. The Brits might have, in the end, controlled the most area, but the Dutch, the French, and the Portuguese were here as well. And the Portuguese were the first ones here and the last ones to leave! Vasco De Gama is buried in India, and we plan on visiting his grave. How cool is that? Anyway, Pondicherry was like a breath of cool air on a hot, muggy, Tamil Nadu afternoon. Both Laura and I were getting a little tired of India. Pondicherry felt like Europe, its a separate from Tamil Nadu, its its own state. There wasn't a billion people in the streets, and speaking of which, the sidewalks, and there were sidewalks, were free of excrement! It was a miracle! Very little trash, nice buildings, and we ate a twenty dollar lunch (very expensive for India) at a wonderful French restaurant. And for the first time in months, we had beef! After that, we eyed the cows walking down the streets with hunger rather than curisoity. We then walked to the pier where waves were thundering down onto the sand, and there were crowds of people to witness the awesome power of the storm. We didn't think much of it, until we got in the car and Deepam told us it was going to be the worst storm in 15 years. And he was right.
As we started to the drive to Chidambaram so began two hours of hell, as the hundred-mile-an-hour winds uprooted trees, blew cars off the road, snapped power lines, and tore the thatch and woven walled Tamil houses apart. At one point a downed live power line struck our wind-shield. Deepam never slowed. His idea was that if we slowed down, we'd get stuck somewhere, and he wanted to keep us on schedule. At one point, we passed through a port city that had a storm flag up, rating the storm from a 1 to a 10. Ours was an 8! Deepam went faster. We'd get stuck in traffic, and he'd haul us to the side, and twice the road was completely blocked by trees. He drove through a field to get around one block, and narrow winding side streets to get around another. The wind was bad enough, but then the monsoon rains hit, and we couldn't see anything. I was just about to say that we needed to stop, when we did stop, in Chidambaram. We got a room in the hotel, and we bought Deepam a room as well, we all agreed that he shouldn't sleep in his car during the storm. We didn't get the A/C room, since the power was on and off again, but mostly off. The rain was dripping madly into the hall, and then into our room, and there was an inch of water on the floor when we went to bed, the windows open to get a draft in, and our mosquito net up. Our mosquito net, by the way, we bought and what a great purchase it was. It has perma-kill on it, a pesticide that binds with the fibers of the net. We woke up the top was covered in dead mosquito carcasses. At least someone is paying for us having to take Larium.
The temple
at Chidambaram was within walking distance, and the storm had
passed us, but we could see its destructive power. The streets
were a mess, but the temple was still nice. The Nataraja Temple,
built to honor Shiva, and his dancing, dancing which created
and sustains the universe. But wait, you cry, Shiva is the destroyer
god, how can he be responsible for creating and sustaining, I
thought that was Brahma and Vishnu. Welcome to the wacky world
of Hinduism. Scholars would say that in Hinduism there is only
one God, Brahman, and all other gods are just aspectes of this
one god. Nice in theory, but
for most people, Hinduism is a free-for-all of ideas, kind of
nice when compared to how stodgy and inflexible religions often
are. In Hinduism, everything, everyone, everywhere is holy. However,
this is in theor and we won't go into the whole issue of the
Untouchables, the caste that no one likes. At the Nataraja Temple,
we found a guide that was as unhappy with his job as Deepam was
with his, and he tried to get more money out of us by saying
that the storm had wrecked his house, which it probably did.
We had usually given our guides 10 Rupees, what the book suggests,
but we gave him 75. A weeks salary in a day. Not bad. Anyway,
his English was bad, his explanations questionable, but he did
lead us around the talk, and told us we could go into the temple
if we paid the Brahmins preists. The big, holy temples in the
south all have tanks, and in the old days, people would take
pilgrimages to these temples, and before they went into the inner
sanctum of the temple, where the most holy of the statues were,
they would wash their bodies and their clothes in the tank.
One thing
I forgotten to mention before, in order for us to enter the temples
at all, we had to take off our shoes, and most of the time, we
couldn't enter the inner sanctum of the temples, but we still
took off our shoes. As we walked around the talk with our guide,
there, of course, was shit everywhere. And we were bare foot.
Laura kept telling herself that people bathed in the Ganges,
but still, it was awful. Laura asked our guide about the shit,
and he said it was from dogs. Little did he know that both Laura
and I had been playing Man or Beast for nearly two months and
we could tell the difference. So, in their holy temple, there
was shit on the ground, and again, isn't it nice to see a religion
where the natural processes of people are not denigrated? Hinduism
accepts the idea that we are both man and god at the same time,
and both man and god are holy. Well, some of
Hinduism says this, it's hard to say anything about what Hinduism
does or doesn't say, there are a lot of opinions.
So our guide pointed to where we could go into the temple, but of course, we had to pay the Brahmins. So we slipped them some baksheesh, and then wandered around. This was one of the first temples with the brilliantly painted frescoes, the very reason why I wanted to go to Tamil Nadu. And Laura and I watched as a priest worshipped one of the idols in the inner sanctum with a plate full of flame. Offering up items and prays in the temple is called puja, and that's what the Brahmins do, people give them money, and they offer up special secret prayers to the gods. While India abolished the idea of caste in theory, in practice it is still widely used as a tool to get money and discriminate people. More about Brahmins later.
We paid our guide, paid the shoe guy who watched our shoes so no one would steal them, went through the beggars who would touch their fingers to their lips, the international begging sign for starving, found Deepam, and drove to my favorite temple, Viadanatheeswarar Temple outside of Chidabaram. It is known for its astrologers, but I knew what my future was, Ringworm from walking around barefoot in god knows what. It was at this temple that I told Laura that Hinduism has to have 330 million gods because each bacterium needs its own God. Anyway, this temple was dedicated to Shiva and Parvati, and its tank was supposed to have curative powers. I shan't make any more jokes. It was at this temple where we saw a wedding taking place, and the new bride and groom had us take a picture with them, as they sat in front of their friends and relatives and puja was offered up to the gods. I told them I wished them luck and that they should have lots of children, I just got caught up in the moment. I should have said only two children, but again, I got caught up. The Indian government's tag line to promote having less children is "One Family One Child". With 1 billion people, population is an extremely serious issue for India.
We then were lead by Brahmins into the inner sanctum where prayers were offered up for us, and ashes were smeared on our heads. It was dark, full of priests coming and going, and where there was light, gold statues glittered. It was a little eerie, but we were given garlands of flowers as the priests pulled ruppees out of our pockets for prayers. We took the garlands and laid them down in front of a statue of Parvati and prayed for two happy, healthy children. I figured I might switch gods for now, I'm not so happy with the one I've got. We stopped at another temple, this one to Shiva called Sarangapani Temple, and here we saw our first erotic art on the temples. You see, one of the incarantaions of Vishnu was Krishna. Krishna was the playboy, a guy who needed a different woman every minute of the day, and so, since sex, like shit, is a part of the world, there we saw it. We took pictures, but that's in the part of the website where you need a password. Just kidding, one is below with all the pictures.
We blew out of there and drove on to Tanjore, also known as Thanjavur. You see, the Indians are switching from the names given to cities by the Colonialists (like Madras) to more Indian names, and I think that's great. We tried to use the Indian names, but the syllables, man, the syllables! We checked out the musuem and the palace first, and that proved to be rather disappointing. After Rajasthan, what the Chola's did doesn't seem as grand. But we found a little jewel, a library that had a great collection of old books on display, books old enough to be written on palm leaves. We then drove on to another of Laura's favorite temples, the Brihadishwara Temple and Fort, and what the fort/palace left to be desired, the temple more than made up for. It was grand, clean, well displayed, and just awesome. I bought five ghee lamps and we lit them in the temple and said prayers to Shiva for our families and friends, and just wandered about. In the temple was a 4 meters tall lingam, and the lingam, well, I'll just say it, is the castrated penis of Shiva, in theory. Really, the lingam, standing erect in the yoni, is a symbol of fertility, of good fortune, and is just a holy object where good people can focus their spiritual energy. The lingam represents Shiva, the yoni (vagina) represents Parvati, and the base represents Brahman, the god underneath all reality. Around the edges, there was over 200 linga and some very nice paintings from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. We then went back to our very posh hotel, and watched cable, another form of puja. To quote Homer Simpson, "ahh, Television, friend, entertainer, secret lover."
We left early the next morning and on to Trichy, otherwise known as Tiruchirappalli. Here I got sick, but I did get to see the main temple, the biggest temple in Tamil Nadu, the grand Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple, dedicated to Vishnu. It was glorious, and our guide was awesome. It was being restored, and this is where we learned that the original temples were only colored a little, the vegetable color was too hard to find and didn't stick. Now we have oil based paints, and the colors are amazing. Some don't like the color because it's not traditional, but most love it as much as I do. We were not allowed in the inner sanctum, and Laura and I had thought it was because we were tourists and the temple should be kept holy. We then learned it started because of tensions between the Muslims & Hindus. The Hindus were afraid that the relics might be destroyed. Both Laura and I agreed that it was nice that the sanctums were off limits, it made them special for the Hindus, though our guide pointed out that it was a matter of skin color, not religion, and anyone could go in as long as their skin was dark. He also talked about the caste system, which is very much alive.
There are four castes, the Brahmins or priests, the warriors, the merchants, and the serfs, or Sudras. Underneath those are the Untouchables, our guide was somewhere in the middle. He talked about how rich the Brahmins were, and how the West Gate had been sealed when the temple was built because that's side of the city where the Untouchables lived. So here we were, giving money to the Brahmins, when it wasn't the Brahmins that needed it, and all along we thought we were giving money so that the temple could be kept running. Wrong! We were giving Rupees to the Man! So after I bought a picture of Ganesha and Krishna talking to Arjuna, I gave a beggar a few ruppees. Within seconds we were swarmed with beggars, but I had a pocketful of change, so I started giving each hand a rupee. Suddenly the crowd of beggars grew quickly and it got a little scary. When Deepam pulled up in the car, we scrambled inside and took off. Hence, we don't give money to the beggars or the Brahmins. As I said, I got sick and stayed in, watching cable. Ahh, I soon felt better. Laura toured some old churches and took pictures of the fort where there were more temples. We both were getting a little tired of taking our shoes off and walking around in God knows what, and we were counting down the days to the Maldives. It was around this time we started to have trouble with Deepam, who we affectunately dubbed "Chuckles". Laura had to fight him to drive her around Trichy, and then he was just difficult. We pined for Culdive, but with the people we have worked with, we had been lucky for so long.
Anyway, when we arrive to Madurai we took a rest and watched some bad movies on STAR MOVIES, which played old made-for-TV movies and late night cable movies with all the nudity faded out and the cussing edited it out. Unfortunately, the cable at the Hotel Supreme in Madurai, didn't have STAR WORLD, which plays American TV shows, and on Sundays, STAR WORLD shows The X-Files and Star Trek:The Next Generation. Oh, I was inconsolable. But, they did have the Action Channel, AZN, which shows action movies, westerns and hand-me-downs from UPN, like "World's Greatest Stunts" and "When Good Dogs Turn Bad". In Trichy I had watched an old cowboy movie with Donna Reed, about a group of Confederate soldiers in Nevada who learn too late that the war is over. It was great. With the Action Channel, STAR MOVIES, and Asian HBO, we found a home in India.
Now, there might be some critics out there who would pooh-pooh us watching movies when we should have been out there "looking for the REAL India." Well, all I can say, I grew up watching around five hours of TV a day. And for the fact that I even managed to get out of the house to go to India at all is amazing. And like it or not, television soothes me. And in India, one needs a lot of soothing. And besides, I earned my time in front of the boob tube by walking barefoot around in the temples of foreign gods. Another great thing about the Hotel Supreme in Madurai was both the views of the temple and the food. Sunday evening, since I couldn't get my sci-fi fix, we toured the great Madurai Temple, Sri Meenakshi, dedicated to a fish goddess. It was the Vatican of India temples. Ten thousand visitors a day warm its halls, and there is everything there, everything. The temple sculptures, brightly painted, the tanks for bathing, temple elephants that will lay a blessing on your head for a couple of rupees (in lieu of Ganesh, I for one got blessed), and ghee encrusted statues of Kali. In an effort to reduce her rage & cool her off, people throw balls of ghee (clarifed butter) at her statue. Later, in a book about India, the statue of Kali was described as looking like the ceiling of an elementary school after a spit-wad fight. I'd have to agree. Chuckles found us a guide, and he wasn't half bad. Non-hindus can't go into the inner sanctum, but I was okay with that, those Brahmin had gotten enough of my money.
The best part of this temple were all the people...it was packed with families, wandering holy men, merchants, beggars, tourists, everyone. And we went at twilight, which was nice because we had seen all the other temples during the day. This temple was especially nice because we had seen so many other temples, we could see how different the Madurai temple (the Vatican) was compared to a regular temple (local church). Anyway, in an effort to boost local economy, and to get a view of the temples (that was the line, anyway), our guide took us to a government run shop. We went to the roof for the view, that's it. However, this shop was fantastic. It had items we had seen all through India and Nepal up to that time. They had everything, and the quality, "Madame, look at the quality." We wandered around, yanking their chain, looking at jewelry, but no way were we going to buy. They got us drinks, which was good, any time you can get something free in India, you're doing well. But we shrugged off all their attempts to sell us anything, and we were out the door when I saw a miniature painting. We had seen countless miniature paintings while we were in Rajasthan and outside of Rajasthan. Laura loved them at first, but I soon warned up to them, and we bought some during our Rajasthan travels, but they weren't as nice as the ones we had seen in the museums, of course. Well, in this little shop, miles and miles away from Udaipur (which is the home of miniature paintings) we came across one we loved using authentic paints made from crushed semi-precious stones, so the colors are magnificent. Soon we had our credit card out, and we trusted these guys with a lot of our money with their promise it would be UPS'd out back to the states. I hope the blessing from the elephant helps because we spent too much on it, though we didn't bargain. We knew what we wanted to pay, we said take it or leave it, and if they had given us any problem, we'd have walked out the door. They knew it, or they suckered us. Whatever, if we get the painting, that's all that matters*.
*Note from editor: The painting did arrive, although a month after when promised. Instead of shipping by UPS, they shipped by cheaper air mail via Indian Post and due to the postal strike, it arrived late. But it arrived! There was no credit to our charge card for the cheaper shipping method.
I watched The Replacement Killers late into the night because we didn't know if we'd get a room with cable again. And Chow Yun-Fat, how can you resist him when teamed up with the delightful Mira Sorvino? An odd thing about TV's in Asia, the most important thing while watching any show is having the remote control in your hand with your finger on the volume button. The sound is all funky, so at volume number 3 its ear splitting loud and at 2 its indiscernible. So while watching this actoin movie with many explosions while Laura slept, I had to have a finger always on the volume control, so as to not wake her up. The next morning we jumped into our Ambassador with Chuckles and left Tamil Nadu for Kerala.
Villagers making rope from coconut fibers
Little fender bender along the way
A typical temple in a typical temple town (don't ask me which!)
Inside the most famous temple in Maduri
Common scene at entrances to temples
The cart used to carry temple statues around the town during festivals.
I want to read on, take me to Kerala!
I'm lost, take me back to the India home page!