I have been pulled here out of a sense of duty. Duty and the desire to escape a hotel terrace where my immediate neighbors are playing an interminable shuffle of Abba, Aerosmith, James Blunt, and the guttural mellowness of Israeli light rock. I've spent quite a lot of time decrying the sorry state of Indian pop music, but in the grand scheme of things our Judaic friends really take the cake when it comes to assembling offensively bad collections of beach tunes. You know what else Israel and India have in common? Terrorism. Coincidence? Not very likely.
I've just completed my meticulous tour of Tamil Nadu's major temple towns, which was hardly the most invigorating and varied portion of my travels in this country. But hey, money in the bank; money in the bank. It is out of the aforementioned sense of duty that I confer upon my readers this brief guide to The Tamil Temple Tour.
Madurai
In short, awesome. I refer you to this post: Maximum Hindu.
Rameswaram
Also awesome. Island Getaway
Tiruchchirappalli and Srirangam
Not bad but not great. Me Against The World
Thanjavur
Thanjavur is an appealing temple town, in large part because it has things to see that aren't temples. The great temple itself is quite impressive, and mercifully a different shape from the ones in the rest of the state. One can also visit the needlessly complicated and crumbling royal palace complex, where there are several little museums including a brilliant collection of bronze sculptures.
Kumbakonam
Even on the Indian scale, Kumbakonam has wild and chaotic streets. Its roads are currents of pure anarchy of such intensity it can only have resulted from devotees at its numerous Shiva shrines swearing to the Destroyer upon their eternal souls that they will tear the very fabric of the cosmos asunder, drawing and quartering our pitiful, doomed world between a thousand tugging mopeds. There are many Vishnu temples in the city, a Rama temple, and a memorably haunting shrine to Nagaraja, Shiva as the King of Snakes. What there are not many of is eateries that are open between 3:00pm and 6:30pm, a sinister conspiracy amongst its cartel of restauranteurs to daily starve visitors until they are willing to actually pay for the the steaming piles of rice and insipid slop they serve on banana leaves you have to wash yourself.
Darasuram
Darasuram is just down the street from Kumbakonam, and is most remarkable for being just down the street from Kumbakonam.
Gangaikon...I'm not even going to say it
This conspicuously polysyllabic huddle of cottages would merely be notable as a cartographer's headache if it weren't for its very beautiful, impressive, and out of place temple and pleasant adjoining gardens, where the people of nearby villages come to picnic away from the daily humdrum of rice paddies and buffalo shit. (Still not saying it).
Chidambaram
When I got to Chidambaram I checked into a hotel and was told that I was lucky to find a room. Most of the places were full and this joint only had one room left, as there was a dancing festival on and every other room in the hotel was being occupied by a troupe of dancing girls. "Entirely occupied by dancing girls? Do tell..." I thought. The manager wasn't lying. The place was full of dancing girls, between the ages of nine and twelve. Oh, and when you're dealing with five dozen child divas, dressing them up as celestial beings does little to make them more reasonable.
Nevertheless, I was very excited for this one. Chidambaram is the site of the Nataraja temple, and I do mean the Nataraja temple. It is where Shiva, as Nataraja, the Lord of the Cosmic Dance, performed said dance, which is also described as being a full representation of the forces and energies of the universe. He subsequently also defeated the bloodthirsty goddess Kali in what must have been the dance-off of all time. Kali probably was banking on the deities assembled as judges to be scared shitless of her necklace of severed heads and vote in her favor, but when you try to bust a move on Shiva, "You Got...Served!" doesn't even begin to describe the response.
The town, it must be said, is hot and ugly. The temple, while impressive, doesn't stand out as the best in a state full of massive, active temples. The idol of Nataraja itself is one of the most superb I've seen, and if you're into dance, odds are you can arrange to be here for some classical Hindu dance.
No matter when you come, and no matter what your feelings on the matter, you will hear shitloads of bells.
Tiruvannamalai
I wish I could say waking up at 4:30 in the morning to climb halfway up a volcano and sit around blinking while a bunch of dreadlock-beehived saddhus with ash on their faces meditated upon Shiva transforming his cock into an endless pillar of fire and becoming the light of the universe would count among the weirdest of my experiences in India, but I'm afraid I can't say that for certain.
What I can say for certain is that the main temple at the bottom of the volcano is also pretty cool. Pretty cool, but not the best. It has an above-average concentration of religious wackos, but its actual shrines aren't that spectacular, save for the fact that this Temple of the Eternal Dawn is dedicated to aforementioned phallic conflagration and is at the base of a memorably-hued volcano. In the early morning, when the rocky pinnacle is lit almost blood-red and the lower temple resounds with eerie chants to the element of fire, one can hardly resist the urge to start opening boxes in hope of finding the Megaton Hammer and kicking some dragon ass. If you're lucky enough to be here at festival time, the priests provoke their own little pillar of fire by immolating a massive vat of butter on the summit, which reputedly requires a 100-foot wick. My opinion is that if you're the high priest of the Temple of Eternal Dawn performing a ceremony on a volcano, you shouldn't be afraid to get your chest hair a little singed. Though to be fair, the average brahmin seems very fatty and combustible.
Mamallapuram (a.k.a. Mahabalipuram)
This town is by far the most touristed on the temple circuit, and distinguishes itself from other Tamil Temple Towns for two reasons. 1) It's on the beach. 2)All its famous "temples" are fake.
If you don't mind hanging out in the sort of place where a local business has to calls itself the Bob Marley Cafe to stand out from the horde of lesser cafes which stoop to playing the music of other performers (such as Ziggy Marley), you will probably enjoy a few days cruising around pretending to be interested in ancient art and savoring that most rare of Tamil commodities: a decent breeze.
Mamallapuram is to this day the most renowned center of Hindu stone-carving, and everywhere you look people are still carving magnificent statues. The little rocky hill behind the town is essentially a fading gallery of boulders and rockfaces where the local artists spent a good portion of the first millennium A.D carving statues, bas-refiefs, and little fake temples just to show off. As the works were carved of the artists' own volition, there is a charming diversity of subject matter, as if the old masters had muttered "You know what? If I get an order to carve one more fucking Ganesh I'm going to put a chisel through my brain. Well, since I'm not busy today...you see that rock there? I'M CARVING A DUCK. WITH ONE FUCKING HEAD."
It's a nice change of pace.
Kanchipuram
I haven't actually been there yet, and I'm not going to. I've had enough Tamil Temples, and as a writer of increasingly staid travel information I have one formidable weapon in my arsenal: "Knowledge in the public domain." Wooooop wooop.
So now ends my little jaunt through this Tamil state, which I have covered more meticulously than is probably good for my health. And so too draws to a close my exploration of the far south of India. I say "Why linger somewhere where it is brutally hot all the time when you can venture to parts of the country that are even more brutally hot, but only right now?"
I shall sweat until a million cows have drowned in the salty brine. Attention North India, I'm coming baaaaaaaaaaacckkkkkk........
p.s. a note to indian/indophile bloggers and websites: stop stealing my photos if you don't want your cows to faintly smell of human urine in the mornings. You've been warned.
Showing posts with label Tamil Nadu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tamil Nadu. Show all posts
Mar 19, 2010
Mar 16, 2010
Gangaikondacholapuram
The History of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram
There is a mighty temple of Shiva in the ruins of the city they call "the town of the Chola king who conquered the Ganges", Gangaikondacholapuram. Now deserted, all that remains is the temple itself, its precinct walls, and the village of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram was for a long time the capital of the Chola empire at its peak, when its northern frontier lay in the Ganges basin and it dominated southern Asia. From Gangaikondacholapuram the emperors even launched expeditions of pillage and conquest as far as Burma by land and Indonesia by sea, whose spoils added to the wealth of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Getting to Gangaikondacholapuram
Lying in a small village in the middle of a rural delta where there isn't a whole lot to see besides rice, I was forced to make do with local transportation. I walked into the Kumbakonam bus station and asked "Excuse me, which bus to Gangaikondacholapuram?"
"Gangaikondacholapuram?" the inquiry official asked.
"Yes, Gangaikondacholapuram" I answered.
"Go to Gangaikondacholapuram you take bus to Anniyaikarai then you take bus Anniyaikarai to Gangaikondacholapuram."
"Thanks", I offered, assuming the conversation was over.
"...You want Gangaikondacholapuram?"
As slowly as I could, I uttered "Gangaikondacholapuram."
"Gangaikondacholapuram this bus."
I took the bus and rode it across an unchanging expanse of paddies all the way to Anyakarai, or whatever it's called, a village squashed on an island between two dams in the delta. I braced myself for another tedious inquiry and raised my eyebrow to capture the attention of a passerby who looked like he might know how to get to Gangaikondacholapuram. He didn't. I asked another man "Gangaikondacholapuram?", waving my finger at the the chain of buses struggling to maneuver in the tight confines between the dams. He merely shrugged and said something which I believe means "I only speak Tamil, but Gangaikondacholapuram is that way."
Just then I heard a voice. "Gangaikondacholapuram?" it beckoned. I turned to see who had uttered the word 'Gangaikondacholapuram'. It was clearly meant for me. You don't say "Gangaikondacholapuram" in casual conversation. It was a rickshaw-wallah and he took me to Gangaikondacholapuram without any fuss.
Visiting Gangaikondacholapuram
We arrived in Gangaikondacholapuram in the late afternoon, late enough for Gangaikondacholapuram's famous temple to open after Tamil Nadu's customary sleepless afternoon siesta. "So this is Gangaikondacholapuram..." I mused.
On all sides there was litGangaikondacholapuramtle to be seen except the odd row of coconut trees lining the Gangaikondacholapuram edge of a rice paddy, and the widely spaced briGangaikondacholapuramck and bamboo cottages that occupy the land once part of great GangaikondacholapuramGangaiGangaikondacholapuramkondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram
Gangaikondacholapuram
$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$
$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$
!!$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$!!
"Captain, sir, we can't stop it! The Gangaikondacholapuram....it's escaped the Gangaikondacholapuramcontainment field! It's in our brainapurams....OH GOD... GANGAIKONDAAAAAAAAAHHHHHGHHGHHHHHH"
"Lieutenant Smith! Lieutenant ondacholasmith...my God... Someone start the override!"
"Which override sir!?!?"
"The Gangaikond.....NO, NO....start the Snoop Doggapuram, the Snoop Dogg override, before it's too late!"
"Sir, yes sir!"
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL 187
GANGAIKONDACHOLAPURAM SNOOP DOGG OVERRIDE
----Tha Gangaikondacholapuramshiznat--
##Poppin, stoppin, Gangaikondacholapuram like a rabbit ##
##When I take the Gangaikondacholapuram ya know I gota ta have it ##
##I lay back in Gangaikond retain myself ##
##Think about the shit, and I'm thinkin wealth ##
##How can I makes my Gangaikondacholapura ##
##And how should I make that Gangaikigga straight slip ##
##Set trip, Ganga get him for his grip ##
##as I kond around the corner, now i'm on a-nother ##
##mission, cholapuram, wishin, upon a star ##
##Gangaikondacholapuram with the caviar ##
##In the back of the limo no demo, this is the real ##
##Breakin niggaz down like Kondachola Holyfield, chill ##
##to the next Episode ##
##I make money, and I really don't love hoes ##
##Tell ya the truthuram, I swoop in the Coupeuram ##
##I used to sell looturam, I used to shoot hoopsuram ##
##But now I, make, hits, every single day ##
##With, that nigga, the diggy Dr. Dre ##
##So lay back in the cut, motherfucker 'fore you get shot ##
##It's 1-8-7 on a motherfuckin cop ##
----------------------------------------
"Sir! Listen, the Gangaikondacholapuram, the override's working!"
"Lieutenant Smith, is that you? Can you speak? Can you say it without..."
"Sir, I can say...I can say...not that town!"
"Try saying something else."
"Thiruvananthapuram."
"No, one with no shared syllables...we have to know it isn't dormant."
"Captain, I'll try my best...Tiruchchirappalli."
"....we did it, lieutenant, we did it!"
"Thank God!"
"No. Thank Snoop Dogg."
Gangaikondacholapuram is a trife bitch'puram. Represent your motherfucking set. Peace.
Gangaikondacholapuram
There is a mighty temple of Shiva in the ruins of the city they call "the town of the Chola king who conquered the Ganges", Gangaikondacholapuram. Now deserted, all that remains is the temple itself, its precinct walls, and the village of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram was for a long time the capital of the Chola empire at its peak, when its northern frontier lay in the Ganges basin and it dominated southern Asia. From Gangaikondacholapuram the emperors even launched expeditions of pillage and conquest as far as Burma by land and Indonesia by sea, whose spoils added to the wealth of Gangaikondacholapuram.
Getting to Gangaikondacholapuram
Lying in a small village in the middle of a rural delta where there isn't a whole lot to see besides rice, I was forced to make do with local transportation. I walked into the Kumbakonam bus station and asked "Excuse me, which bus to Gangaikondacholapuram?"
"Gangaikondacholapuram?" the inquiry official asked.
"Yes, Gangaikondacholapuram" I answered.
"Go to Gangaikondacholapuram you take bus to Anniyaikarai then you take bus Anniyaikarai to Gangaikondacholapuram."
"Thanks", I offered, assuming the conversation was over.
"...You want Gangaikondacholapuram?"
As slowly as I could, I uttered "Gangaikondacholapuram."
"Gangaikondacholapuram this bus."
I took the bus and rode it across an unchanging expanse of paddies all the way to Anyakarai, or whatever it's called, a village squashed on an island between two dams in the delta. I braced myself for another tedious inquiry and raised my eyebrow to capture the attention of a passerby who looked like he might know how to get to Gangaikondacholapuram. He didn't. I asked another man "Gangaikondacholapuram?", waving my finger at the the chain of buses struggling to maneuver in the tight confines between the dams. He merely shrugged and said something which I believe means "I only speak Tamil, but Gangaikondacholapuram is that way."
Just then I heard a voice. "Gangaikondacholapuram?" it beckoned. I turned to see who had uttered the word 'Gangaikondacholapuram'. It was clearly meant for me. You don't say "Gangaikondacholapuram" in casual conversation. It was a rickshaw-wallah and he took me to Gangaikondacholapuram without any fuss.
Visiting Gangaikondacholapuram
We arrived in Gangaikondacholapuram in the late afternoon, late enough for Gangaikondacholapuram's famous temple to open after Tamil Nadu's customary sleepless afternoon siesta. "So this is Gangaikondacholapuram..." I mused.
On all sides there was litGangaikondacholapuramtle to be seen except the odd row of coconut trees lining the Gangaikondacholapuram edge of a rice paddy, and the widely spaced briGangaikondacholapuramck and bamboo cottages that occupy the land once part of great GangaikondacholapuramGangaiGangaikondacholapuramkondacholapuram.
Gangaikondacholapuram
Gangaikondacholapuram
$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$
$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$
!!$*#Gangaikondacholapuram#*$!!
"Captain, sir, we can't stop it! The Gangaikondacholapuram....it's escaped the Gangaikondacholapuramcontainment field! It's in our brainapurams....OH GOD... GANGAIKONDAAAAAAAAAHHHHHGHHGHHHHHH"
"Lieutenant Smith! Lieutenant ondacholasmith...my God... Someone start the override!"
"Which override sir!?!?"
"The Gangaikond.....NO, NO....start the Snoop Doggapuram, the Snoop Dogg override, before it's too late!"
"Sir, yes sir!"
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL 187
GANGAIKONDACHOLAPURAM SNOOP DOGG OVERRIDE
----Tha Gangaikondacholapuramshiznat--
##Poppin, stoppin, Gangaikondacholapuram like a rabbit ##
##When I take the Gangaikondacholapuram ya know I gota ta have it ##
##I lay back in Gangaikond retain myself ##
##Think about the shit, and I'm thinkin wealth ##
##How can I makes my Gangaikondacholapura ##
##And how should I make that Gangaikigga straight slip ##
##Set trip, Ganga get him for his grip ##
##as I kond around the corner, now i'm on a-nother ##
##mission, cholapuram, wishin, upon a star ##
##Gangaikondacholapuram with the caviar ##
##In the back of the limo no demo, this is the real ##
##Breakin niggaz down like Kondachola Holyfield, chill ##
##to the next Episode ##
##I make money, and I really don't love hoes ##
##Tell ya the truthuram, I swoop in the Coupeuram ##
##I used to sell looturam, I used to shoot hoopsuram ##
##But now I, make, hits, every single day ##
##With, that nigga, the diggy Dr. Dre ##
##So lay back in the cut, motherfucker 'fore you get shot ##
##It's 1-8-7 on a motherfuckin cop ##
----------------------------------------
"Sir! Listen, the Gangaikondacholapuram, the override's working!"
"Lieutenant Smith, is that you? Can you speak? Can you say it without..."
"Sir, I can say...I can say...not that town!"
"Try saying something else."
"Thiruvananthapuram."
"No, one with no shared syllables...we have to know it isn't dormant."
"Captain, I'll try my best...Tiruchchirappalli."
"....we did it, lieutenant, we did it!"
"Thank God!"
"No. Thank Snoop Dogg."
Gangaikondacholapuram is a trife bitch'puram. Represent your motherfucking set. Peace.
Mar 13, 2010
Me Against The World
Tamil Nadu is beginning to wear on me. Perhaps I've mentioned this already, but...THE WEATHER IS TERRIBLE. My clothing gets so clingy that taking off three-button shirts has become my introduction to yogic exercises. I'm also getting slightly bored of the interminable series of temples I'm visiting. It's partly my own fault, a scheme to crank out lots of location articles and get paid, but really Tamil Nadu, don't you have anything else to mix things up a bit? I guess this is what happens when you intensively travel around a single cultural region for any period of time. In Rajasthan I got bored of the daily slog of visiting castles in the desert heat. At least Tamil Nadu doesn't have any hills. You could call it a tradeoff of sorts. In places like Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu which are renowned for particular types of things, you just have to accept that you're going to see a lot of castles or temples, camels or Tamils.
My temple fatigue was already starting to set in by the time I finished my first temple visit in Tiruchchirappalli (and yes, that is a real name). The sole distinction of that city's temples are that they are located on a curious pile of golden boulders in the middle of the city and that the builders have done a remarkable job of crafting fake "cave temples" by building on top of rocks and making you enter through a dark, windowless passageway filled with vaguely archaic music and statues of gruesome creatures. Even after bribing the priests to take me into the forbidden Shiva sanctum I can't really say I was very moved. Really, I could stay home and get the same experience from hanging out in a friends' basement and watching him play World of Warcraft for five minutes, or until I kill myself, whichever comes first.
After an episode getting lost in Tiruchchirappalli's small Muslim ghetto for a short time and accidentally dispersing about half a crab's worth of fried crustacean onto my neighbors' table at a restaurant, I was going to take a bus to the nearby town of Srirangam.
Srirangam holds the distinction of possessing the largest Hindu temple...pretty much anywhere. The outer wall encloses a courtyard of 60 hectares. That's 600,000 square meters. It's so big in fact that at some point the people of Srirangam decided they couldn't be assed to walk all the way out from the center of the temple, and proceeded to build most of their town within the outer two courtyards. Now you have to penetrate as far as the third wall before the temple ceases to have zebra crossings and bus services. From the top of Tiruchchirappalli's rock temple you can see over to Srirangam and notice a number of temple towers popping out from the trees on opposite sides of town from each other. What you don't realize is they are all towers of the same temple, and it's the town that's in the temple and not vice versa. Some of the towers are awesome structures, and from strategic rooftops you get a marvelous view of them lined up in different color schemes and sizes, shrinking until they reach the golden dome of the sanctum sanctorum.
You may have noticed I said I was going to get a bus to Srirangam. I got on a bus, but it was the wrong one. I was quickly notified of this, and the conductor had the bus slowed so that I might jump off, which I did. Now, jumping from a moving vehicle is never an entirely safe idea, and this bus was going just a wee bit too fast. I focused on the cardinal rule of jumping from moving things, which is to jump out parallel to the way you're already moving, otherwise when you land you will be perpendicular, while your body continues to move on a parallel axis, which is not good. I also focused on the second important consideration: making sure there is open space where you are about to be skipping along. Obviously, you don't want to jump into a pole. Now, while I was so cleverly accounting for all these factors I forgot one thing: I'm in India. Just because I'm at what I call the side of the road doesn't mean that I'm at what someone else is going to decide is the side of the road. I also didn't look behind me, where, about two feet closer to the pavement than the bus I was leaping from, was...another bus. WHACK. I already described the immediate results here.
I shuffled off in my tattered trousers to the restaurant which I had so recently repainted with crab innards and washed off in the sink, then caught a rickshaw to my hotel and somehow communicated to the hotel boys to run off and get me a selection of bandages and other medical supplies. As I sat in my room controlling the bleeding with scraps from a giveaway turban, I had an epiphany.
All along I've believed I've been in a war against Indian beasts -my numerous combats against cowkind and their animal lackeys need no retelling- but I've been forced to realize that my war has also always been against Indian machines. Like my forebear Tupac Shakur, it's Me Against The World.
Yeah, me against the World. Watch the fuck out. I'm not saying the outcome is certain - the odds are stacked high - but now would be a good time for you to start looking into personal spacecraft.
No machine is any less devilish than its animal counterpart, and they shall all be vanquished forthwith.
Trains, those laggard mules of the rail, plodding along at the slowest serviceable pace and halting stubbornly at whatever interval suits their hulking iron fancy...
Buses, the uncomfortable, sweat-stenched and indignant camels of the road...
MP3-enabled cell phones, the screeching, raspy parrots blasting the Procrustean din of Indian pop music across the aether...
Megaphones and amplifiers, the bastard offspring of perpetually crowing cockerels and 800-pound, priapism-afflicted gorillas trembling the Earth through sheer volume and inanity...
Rickshaws, the hungry, scrapping dogs of the street, biting one another's flea-ridden flesh for rights to the freshest walking carcass of a customer...
Shit-slow cybercafe computers, monkey-like entities capable of near-human intelligence that use this power to squeak "Hey! Let's throw some poop!"...
And grainy televisions, perpetually tuned to second-rate Bollywood dance tunes and WWF pro wrestling, the nefarious bovine menace of the whole electronic world...
ALL SHALL FALL BEFORE MY WRATH
My temple fatigue was already starting to set in by the time I finished my first temple visit in Tiruchchirappalli (and yes, that is a real name). The sole distinction of that city's temples are that they are located on a curious pile of golden boulders in the middle of the city and that the builders have done a remarkable job of crafting fake "cave temples" by building on top of rocks and making you enter through a dark, windowless passageway filled with vaguely archaic music and statues of gruesome creatures. Even after bribing the priests to take me into the forbidden Shiva sanctum I can't really say I was very moved. Really, I could stay home and get the same experience from hanging out in a friends' basement and watching him play World of Warcraft for five minutes, or until I kill myself, whichever comes first.
After an episode getting lost in Tiruchchirappalli's small Muslim ghetto for a short time and accidentally dispersing about half a crab's worth of fried crustacean onto my neighbors' table at a restaurant, I was going to take a bus to the nearby town of Srirangam.
Srirangam holds the distinction of possessing the largest Hindu temple...pretty much anywhere. The outer wall encloses a courtyard of 60 hectares. That's 600,000 square meters. It's so big in fact that at some point the people of Srirangam decided they couldn't be assed to walk all the way out from the center of the temple, and proceeded to build most of their town within the outer two courtyards. Now you have to penetrate as far as the third wall before the temple ceases to have zebra crossings and bus services. From the top of Tiruchchirappalli's rock temple you can see over to Srirangam and notice a number of temple towers popping out from the trees on opposite sides of town from each other. What you don't realize is they are all towers of the same temple, and it's the town that's in the temple and not vice versa. Some of the towers are awesome structures, and from strategic rooftops you get a marvelous view of them lined up in different color schemes and sizes, shrinking until they reach the golden dome of the sanctum sanctorum.
You may have noticed I said I was going to get a bus to Srirangam. I got on a bus, but it was the wrong one. I was quickly notified of this, and the conductor had the bus slowed so that I might jump off, which I did. Now, jumping from a moving vehicle is never an entirely safe idea, and this bus was going just a wee bit too fast. I focused on the cardinal rule of jumping from moving things, which is to jump out parallel to the way you're already moving, otherwise when you land you will be perpendicular, while your body continues to move on a parallel axis, which is not good. I also focused on the second important consideration: making sure there is open space where you are about to be skipping along. Obviously, you don't want to jump into a pole. Now, while I was so cleverly accounting for all these factors I forgot one thing: I'm in India. Just because I'm at what I call the side of the road doesn't mean that I'm at what someone else is going to decide is the side of the road. I also didn't look behind me, where, about two feet closer to the pavement than the bus I was leaping from, was...another bus. WHACK. I already described the immediate results here.
I shuffled off in my tattered trousers to the restaurant which I had so recently repainted with crab innards and washed off in the sink, then caught a rickshaw to my hotel and somehow communicated to the hotel boys to run off and get me a selection of bandages and other medical supplies. As I sat in my room controlling the bleeding with scraps from a giveaway turban, I had an epiphany.
All along I've believed I've been in a war against Indian beasts -my numerous combats against cowkind and their animal lackeys need no retelling- but I've been forced to realize that my war has also always been against Indian machines. Like my forebear Tupac Shakur, it's Me Against The World.
Yeah, me against the World. Watch the fuck out. I'm not saying the outcome is certain - the odds are stacked high - but now would be a good time for you to start looking into personal spacecraft.
No machine is any less devilish than its animal counterpart, and they shall all be vanquished forthwith.
Trains, those laggard mules of the rail, plodding along at the slowest serviceable pace and halting stubbornly at whatever interval suits their hulking iron fancy...
Buses, the uncomfortable, sweat-stenched and indignant camels of the road...
MP3-enabled cell phones, the screeching, raspy parrots blasting the Procrustean din of Indian pop music across the aether...
Megaphones and amplifiers, the bastard offspring of perpetually crowing cockerels and 800-pound, priapism-afflicted gorillas trembling the Earth through sheer volume and inanity...
Rickshaws, the hungry, scrapping dogs of the street, biting one another's flea-ridden flesh for rights to the freshest walking carcass of a customer...
Shit-slow cybercafe computers, monkey-like entities capable of near-human intelligence that use this power to squeak "Hey! Let's throw some poop!"...
And grainy televisions, perpetually tuned to second-rate Bollywood dance tunes and WWF pro wrestling, the nefarious bovine menace of the whole electronic world...
ALL SHALL FALL BEFORE MY WRATH
Mar 12, 2010
Island Getaway
Probably the best part of reviewing all the major temples in Tamil Nadu is that I am also working on a supplementary guide reviewing the quality of each temple's resident elephant. I've devised a whole system of marks based on the size, charisma, appearance, and talent of each sanctified pachyderm. I really, really wish this was my full-time job, because nothing fills my heart with more joy than writing "Talent: 3 stars. Fulfills his duties efficiently, but swings his trunk too hard, such that infants are frequently brought to tears" and getting paid to do so.
I began this venture while passing through the great temple on Rameswaram island and realized that many of the temples here have their own elephants. The one in Madurai is still my favorite, but I will keep you posted.
The Ramanathaswamy temple in Rameswaram is perhaps the most famous individual temple in India. It lies on an island in the Indian Ocean halfway to Sri Lanka, and marks the spot where Rama prayed to ask Shiva for pardon after killing a member of the highest caste (who, incidentally, was also the demon king...). Not far away are the beaches from which you can see the chain of sand and rocks that make up what remains of the bridge that Hanuman and his monkey army built so that Rama could cross the sea and rescue Sita. The temple itself is quite impressive. It consists of three quadrilateral corridors surrounding a pair of highly sacred shrines. The corridors themselves are the most famous parts, with their incredible use of symmetry and linear perspective. It's one of the few places in the world that can get away with pulling in visitors to see its corridors. "We have TONS of columns. Check it out." Around sundown the passages facing due west are briefly illuminated by an utterly perfect red light slicing through small windows and the western entrance. It is really a sight to behold.
But this temple isn't one you just see; you have to feel it. Specifically you have to enjoy walking barefoot around thousands of yards of sopping wet stone floors following bunches of soaked pilgrims dripping holy water with every step. Before entering the inner sanctums (whitey not allowed), pilgrims are expected to bathe in a series of 22 holy tanks, wells, and fountains. Often this involves a priest sloshing buckets of water on people's heads, and decorum requires that the vast majority of pilgrims get splashed while fully dressed. This makes for a rather comic spectacle, especially when sari-clad women and lungi-wearing southern men shuffle down the hall as their dress flaps heavily against the stone floors...flap splop sshhlop, and kicks up little splashes in the puddles left by pilgrims before. As a tourist, one becomes even more conspicuous than usual, as non-pilgrims are generally not heaving under drenched articles of clothes. I found it amusing that all this dripping about inside the holy temple was not only permitted but encouraged. In my experience, soaking trails indoors are usually the result of hosting a pool party, and everyone secretly knows to pin the blame on the fat kid who won't take off his shirt.
The town of Rameswaram has its own peculiarites. For instance nobody (including the temple staff) seem to think they are required to stay open all day, or even be present for the duration of their shifts. Walking into any local business, there is about a 60% chance that the person on duty will get up within five minutes and tell you "I'm off for my lunch break...come back at 7pm". At one restaurant I walked in, noticed a lack of activity and asked if it was open. The waiter replied "Yes sir, restaurant open". I began ordering a meal when he interrupted me. "Kitchen is not open". "Well thank God the restaurant is open", I said, "I just cooked myself a five-course meal but I don't have any tables in my house to eat at". I then walked into a wide-open cybercafe for the purpose of typing up a draft of my article on Madurai and found two people clicking away at their Yahoo apps. "You work here?" I asked. "Yes. Shop opening at four in afternoon." "You're not open now?" I asked, standing there at midday in the middle of their store while a half-dozen unoccupied computers' screensavers slowly bounced around little morphing balls. "No sir, opening is four."
In tourism-writing circles (or at least the numerous guidebooks I peruse for my profession), Rameswaram is also infamous for bad food. These people are clearly sissies. My guts have risen up in revolt more times than a Colombian peasant and you don't see me crying. Hell, my dietary life is essentially an anologue of the war in Iraq, except my entire strategy hinges upon trying to prevent a "surge". Yeah, the food in Rameswaram is pretty terrible, but these are the same people who naively applaud the chewy "mutton" concoctions of Mughlai cuisine in filthy North Indian cities where goat heads are tossed casually down the street.
Having come all this way, I was not going to miss the chance to see the nearby Adam's Bridge for myself. Just offshore is a string of rocks placed by warbound monkeys. How could I pass it up? To that end I rumbled along to the end of the island, past the village of Danushkodi ("Rama's Bow"), which is pretty much the definition of 'ramshackle'. The town got obliterated by a cyclone in the 1960's, but it looks like destructive weather is a weekly occurence. Danushkodi consists of about 60 lopsided bamboo shacks on a pile of sand surrounded on three sides by the Indian Ocean where people sit around and seem to contemplate maybe going out to catch some fish. I continued out on the 'road' past the village, which was really just a long stretch of dry shifting tire tracks in the sand with the occasional toe-stubbing outcrop of pavement, now useless for anything besides picking up and throwing at goats. Finally I reached the tip of the island and looked out on the majesty of the famous bridge: a strip of sand. There are rocks and islets along the way, but from the shore you can see one tiny islet and a long ribbon of sand just across a very shallow little strait, where small groups of local fisherman wade out in shin-deep water to pee together. At this point the island is just 18km from Sri Lanka, although you can't see to the other country. The view is by no means awe-inspiring, but if you're going to lug yourself hours and hours all the way out to this inconvenient island, you really are obliged to go look at the geographical curiosity with a thoughtful face and listen to endless retellings of episodes from the Ramayana. Also it's quiet, the breezes are nice, and there's a chance you might stumble across a fisherman staring equally thoughtfully at Italian men frolicking naked in the surf.
I really must be off. I'm just pausing between stops on a busy work day and [GFB]'s Guide to Tamil Nadu Temple Elephants isn't going to write itself. Here's another excerpt, from Thanjavur. "Charisma: 3 stars. Personable and charming, poses coyly with its trunk hanging from its mouth and a stupid look on its face, resembling a 12-foot tall Golden Retriever. Has the unfortunate habit of constantly trumpeting and raising its tail like it's going to poop." I smell a Pulitzer. No, that's a taxi stand.
I began this venture while passing through the great temple on Rameswaram island and realized that many of the temples here have their own elephants. The one in Madurai is still my favorite, but I will keep you posted.
The Ramanathaswamy temple in Rameswaram is perhaps the most famous individual temple in India. It lies on an island in the Indian Ocean halfway to Sri Lanka, and marks the spot where Rama prayed to ask Shiva for pardon after killing a member of the highest caste (who, incidentally, was also the demon king...). Not far away are the beaches from which you can see the chain of sand and rocks that make up what remains of the bridge that Hanuman and his monkey army built so that Rama could cross the sea and rescue Sita. The temple itself is quite impressive. It consists of three quadrilateral corridors surrounding a pair of highly sacred shrines. The corridors themselves are the most famous parts, with their incredible use of symmetry and linear perspective. It's one of the few places in the world that can get away with pulling in visitors to see its corridors. "We have TONS of columns. Check it out." Around sundown the passages facing due west are briefly illuminated by an utterly perfect red light slicing through small windows and the western entrance. It is really a sight to behold.
But this temple isn't one you just see; you have to feel it. Specifically you have to enjoy walking barefoot around thousands of yards of sopping wet stone floors following bunches of soaked pilgrims dripping holy water with every step. Before entering the inner sanctums (whitey not allowed), pilgrims are expected to bathe in a series of 22 holy tanks, wells, and fountains. Often this involves a priest sloshing buckets of water on people's heads, and decorum requires that the vast majority of pilgrims get splashed while fully dressed. This makes for a rather comic spectacle, especially when sari-clad women and lungi-wearing southern men shuffle down the hall as their dress flaps heavily against the stone floors...flap splop sshhlop, and kicks up little splashes in the puddles left by pilgrims before. As a tourist, one becomes even more conspicuous than usual, as non-pilgrims are generally not heaving under drenched articles of clothes. I found it amusing that all this dripping about inside the holy temple was not only permitted but encouraged. In my experience, soaking trails indoors are usually the result of hosting a pool party, and everyone secretly knows to pin the blame on the fat kid who won't take off his shirt.
The town of Rameswaram has its own peculiarites. For instance nobody (including the temple staff) seem to think they are required to stay open all day, or even be present for the duration of their shifts. Walking into any local business, there is about a 60% chance that the person on duty will get up within five minutes and tell you "I'm off for my lunch break...come back at 7pm". At one restaurant I walked in, noticed a lack of activity and asked if it was open. The waiter replied "Yes sir, restaurant open". I began ordering a meal when he interrupted me. "Kitchen is not open". "Well thank God the restaurant is open", I said, "I just cooked myself a five-course meal but I don't have any tables in my house to eat at". I then walked into a wide-open cybercafe for the purpose of typing up a draft of my article on Madurai and found two people clicking away at their Yahoo apps. "You work here?" I asked. "Yes. Shop opening at four in afternoon." "You're not open now?" I asked, standing there at midday in the middle of their store while a half-dozen unoccupied computers' screensavers slowly bounced around little morphing balls. "No sir, opening is four."
In tourism-writing circles (or at least the numerous guidebooks I peruse for my profession), Rameswaram is also infamous for bad food. These people are clearly sissies. My guts have risen up in revolt more times than a Colombian peasant and you don't see me crying. Hell, my dietary life is essentially an anologue of the war in Iraq, except my entire strategy hinges upon trying to prevent a "surge". Yeah, the food in Rameswaram is pretty terrible, but these are the same people who naively applaud the chewy "mutton" concoctions of Mughlai cuisine in filthy North Indian cities where goat heads are tossed casually down the street.
Having come all this way, I was not going to miss the chance to see the nearby Adam's Bridge for myself. Just offshore is a string of rocks placed by warbound monkeys. How could I pass it up? To that end I rumbled along to the end of the island, past the village of Danushkodi ("Rama's Bow"), which is pretty much the definition of 'ramshackle'. The town got obliterated by a cyclone in the 1960's, but it looks like destructive weather is a weekly occurence. Danushkodi consists of about 60 lopsided bamboo shacks on a pile of sand surrounded on three sides by the Indian Ocean where people sit around and seem to contemplate maybe going out to catch some fish. I continued out on the 'road' past the village, which was really just a long stretch of dry shifting tire tracks in the sand with the occasional toe-stubbing outcrop of pavement, now useless for anything besides picking up and throwing at goats. Finally I reached the tip of the island and looked out on the majesty of the famous bridge: a strip of sand. There are rocks and islets along the way, but from the shore you can see one tiny islet and a long ribbon of sand just across a very shallow little strait, where small groups of local fisherman wade out in shin-deep water to pee together. At this point the island is just 18km from Sri Lanka, although you can't see to the other country. The view is by no means awe-inspiring, but if you're going to lug yourself hours and hours all the way out to this inconvenient island, you really are obliged to go look at the geographical curiosity with a thoughtful face and listen to endless retellings of episodes from the Ramayana. Also it's quiet, the breezes are nice, and there's a chance you might stumble across a fisherman staring equally thoughtfully at Italian men frolicking naked in the surf.
I really must be off. I'm just pausing between stops on a busy work day and [GFB]'s Guide to Tamil Nadu Temple Elephants isn't going to write itself. Here's another excerpt, from Thanjavur. "Charisma: 3 stars. Personable and charming, poses coyly with its trunk hanging from its mouth and a stupid look on its face, resembling a 12-foot tall Golden Retriever. Has the unfortunate habit of constantly trumpeting and raising its tail like it's going to poop." I smell a Pulitzer. No, that's a taxi stand.
Mar 10, 2010
Maximum Hindu
I believe I have found it: the Ultimate Hindu Temple. It's in Madurai, a biggish city in southern Tamil Nadu. It's one of the oldest cities in India, dating back to about 500BC, and it's pretty much always been spectacular. Hell, the Greeks knew about it. Nowadays I wouldn't call the city spectacular -it's the usual hive of concrete blocks and congested streets- but once you get to the center of this city you only need to look at one building to say "Oh, my my my".
In the heart of the urban tangle, it is only a matter of time before you find yourself facing a gigantic pyramid of technicolor Hindu gods. You've stumbled across one of the twelve towers of the massive Meenakshi temple, each one a soaring, psychedelic cacophony of twenty-headed gods, roaring tigers, twelve-armed demons, dancers balancing on each other's heads, and strangely colored monsters from every corner of the cosmos. Climb on top of any of the shops around (they have viewing galleries on the rooftops to lure you into their 'antique' shops) and one of the most fantastic city skylines you will ever see spreads before your eyes. The twelve gopura towers rise out of the temple grounds, facing off at various angles and heights between loose groupings of trees and an impeccably blue sky. It looks rather like the rebel base near the end of the first Star Wars movie, only with way more six-armed people riding elephants.
The temple is dedicated to Shiva and Meenakshmi, and celebrates the divine faithfulness between the couple. I don't know which scriptures they've been reading, but citing Shiva as a paragon of monogamy is a little...unique. Shiva is basically the big pimp daddy of the universe. In Shaivite legend he proves his superiority over Vishnu and Brahma by turning his cock into an infinite column of fire reaching from heaven to hell. The right honorable rapper Ludacris boasts of keeping hoes in many area codes; Shiva fucks hoes in many planes of existence. The priests at least have some justification for their claim. They say Shiva never dogs around on Meenakshi because she is dynamite in bed. At least they've got a better story than the priests in Kanniyakumari. The main temple there is dedicated to Kanya Devi, the Virgin goddess, another form of Parvati, wife of Shiva. Let me tell you, based on numerous sculptures I've seen, it's hard to believe that any form of Parvati could be a virgin. I've inspected the anatomy quite closely, making such astute observations as "What's that between Parvati's legs? Oh. It's Shiva's dick." It's pretty laughable to think that Shiva hasn't gotten around to plumbing the depths of his consort. Shiva doesn't exactly need red wine and a smooth jazz anthology to get the night off to a good start. He's just like "Heeeyyyyyy sugar, why don't we turn these lights off? Or naaww, we should leave them on. That's the universe. Either way you're going to have the night of your life...lives. Yeah, guess how long I can keep going, baby... Eternity."
From the outside the Meenakshi temple already an architectural stunner, but the interior is what really makes it the Ultimate Hindu temple. It's everything you think a Hindu temple should be: A massive labyrinth of dark and mighty corridors painted with exuberant designs that trail off into the darkness. At every turn there is a small carving or an idol smeared with holy paint, pilgrims' dye powders, ceremonial costumery, and garlands. Eery music echoes through the hallways and you're never far from the waft of incense or the flickering of candles. One hallway will take you to a sacred tank in the shadow of the captivating towers, and another will take you into a grand hall with golden pillars, aromatic shrines, and sacred diagrams placed seemingly at random. There are pilgrims everywhere, most of them everyday people reveling in the proximity of the divine, while the legion of priests patter about imperiously attending to the never-ending schedule of truly arcane rituals they are obliged to perform. I was walking through one such massive hallway deep inside the temple, looking up through the darkness to examine the vibrant floral motifs on the ceiling when I heard the jangling of bells approaching me, and out of nowhere comes this elephant, painted all over its face with magical symbols and marks of devotion to Shiva. I spent hours and hours in the temple, stalking groups of pilgrims to see series of rituals, hanging around popular idols to watch offerings, and above all lurking about near where the elephant had been led to dispense its trunk-tapping blessings to the masses. It's pretty much the coolest place ever. You should check out the photos I posted of Madurai (because they're banging).
There's more to Madurai than just the temple. There's also a pretty cool vegetable market, which is the place to go if you want to wander around smelling four-foot high piles of cilantro (and who doesn't?), then walk into the main street and awkwardly hobble over the enormous pools of discarded vegetable matter in the street. There's about four city blocks that are paved almost entirely with carrot stalks and onions, and smashed pools of dry chillies large enough to kill a horse. Some of the other bazaars are actually inside other little temples in the city center, so when I went and had my Awesome Teal Pants made, I hired the services of a local tailor whose foot-powered loom was under a solid black goddess idol draped in flowers, colored paste, and robes. Two Indian dragons flanked the shop from which I bought Learn Tamil In 30 Days.
By the way, I am not learning Tamil in 30 days. Even just learning the system of writing is diabolically complicated. In Tamil not only are all the names really long, but each letter is a convoluted squiggle that is only a teeny bit different on one stroke from the other squiggles. To make matters worse, like Hindi you have to combine letters a bunch, but the Tamils only came up with about three different symbols for twelve or so vowels, so they just shift the ordering of the same symbols around the convoluted squiggles. The overall effect is that Tamil writing looks like Morse code, except that instead of dashes and dots each letter looks like something you would use to tie up sails on a yacht. You couldn't be blamed if you assumed that the writing was a hieroglyphic system and that the scribes concerned themselves only with tapeworms and noodles.
Oh, and also being told that getting my Awesome Teal Pants repaired after my bus accident would be "Impossible", I just found a place that did it in about a minute for ten rupees. The bandages I bought put me back another fifty and my various jets of blood seem to be closing up and should heal pretty soon, so all getting hit by a bus set me back was...about $1.25. Yeah, I had a clash with a bus and won. "But Ghostface," you ask "How can you be left bloodied and pained and still claim a victory???" Ha! You should see the bus!
In the heart of the urban tangle, it is only a matter of time before you find yourself facing a gigantic pyramid of technicolor Hindu gods. You've stumbled across one of the twelve towers of the massive Meenakshi temple, each one a soaring, psychedelic cacophony of twenty-headed gods, roaring tigers, twelve-armed demons, dancers balancing on each other's heads, and strangely colored monsters from every corner of the cosmos. Climb on top of any of the shops around (they have viewing galleries on the rooftops to lure you into their 'antique' shops) and one of the most fantastic city skylines you will ever see spreads before your eyes. The twelve gopura towers rise out of the temple grounds, facing off at various angles and heights between loose groupings of trees and an impeccably blue sky. It looks rather like the rebel base near the end of the first Star Wars movie, only with way more six-armed people riding elephants.
The temple is dedicated to Shiva and Meenakshmi, and celebrates the divine faithfulness between the couple. I don't know which scriptures they've been reading, but citing Shiva as a paragon of monogamy is a little...unique. Shiva is basically the big pimp daddy of the universe. In Shaivite legend he proves his superiority over Vishnu and Brahma by turning his cock into an infinite column of fire reaching from heaven to hell. The right honorable rapper Ludacris boasts of keeping hoes in many area codes; Shiva fucks hoes in many planes of existence. The priests at least have some justification for their claim. They say Shiva never dogs around on Meenakshi because she is dynamite in bed. At least they've got a better story than the priests in Kanniyakumari. The main temple there is dedicated to Kanya Devi, the Virgin goddess, another form of Parvati, wife of Shiva. Let me tell you, based on numerous sculptures I've seen, it's hard to believe that any form of Parvati could be a virgin. I've inspected the anatomy quite closely, making such astute observations as "What's that between Parvati's legs? Oh. It's Shiva's dick." It's pretty laughable to think that Shiva hasn't gotten around to plumbing the depths of his consort. Shiva doesn't exactly need red wine and a smooth jazz anthology to get the night off to a good start. He's just like "Heeeyyyyyy sugar, why don't we turn these lights off? Or naaww, we should leave them on. That's the universe. Either way you're going to have the night of your life...lives. Yeah, guess how long I can keep going, baby... Eternity."
From the outside the Meenakshi temple already an architectural stunner, but the interior is what really makes it the Ultimate Hindu temple. It's everything you think a Hindu temple should be: A massive labyrinth of dark and mighty corridors painted with exuberant designs that trail off into the darkness. At every turn there is a small carving or an idol smeared with holy paint, pilgrims' dye powders, ceremonial costumery, and garlands. Eery music echoes through the hallways and you're never far from the waft of incense or the flickering of candles. One hallway will take you to a sacred tank in the shadow of the captivating towers, and another will take you into a grand hall with golden pillars, aromatic shrines, and sacred diagrams placed seemingly at random. There are pilgrims everywhere, most of them everyday people reveling in the proximity of the divine, while the legion of priests patter about imperiously attending to the never-ending schedule of truly arcane rituals they are obliged to perform. I was walking through one such massive hallway deep inside the temple, looking up through the darkness to examine the vibrant floral motifs on the ceiling when I heard the jangling of bells approaching me, and out of nowhere comes this elephant, painted all over its face with magical symbols and marks of devotion to Shiva. I spent hours and hours in the temple, stalking groups of pilgrims to see series of rituals, hanging around popular idols to watch offerings, and above all lurking about near where the elephant had been led to dispense its trunk-tapping blessings to the masses. It's pretty much the coolest place ever. You should check out the photos I posted of Madurai (because they're banging).
There's more to Madurai than just the temple. There's also a pretty cool vegetable market, which is the place to go if you want to wander around smelling four-foot high piles of cilantro (and who doesn't?), then walk into the main street and awkwardly hobble over the enormous pools of discarded vegetable matter in the street. There's about four city blocks that are paved almost entirely with carrot stalks and onions, and smashed pools of dry chillies large enough to kill a horse. Some of the other bazaars are actually inside other little temples in the city center, so when I went and had my Awesome Teal Pants made, I hired the services of a local tailor whose foot-powered loom was under a solid black goddess idol draped in flowers, colored paste, and robes. Two Indian dragons flanked the shop from which I bought Learn Tamil In 30 Days.
By the way, I am not learning Tamil in 30 days. Even just learning the system of writing is diabolically complicated. In Tamil not only are all the names really long, but each letter is a convoluted squiggle that is only a teeny bit different on one stroke from the other squiggles. To make matters worse, like Hindi you have to combine letters a bunch, but the Tamils only came up with about three different symbols for twelve or so vowels, so they just shift the ordering of the same symbols around the convoluted squiggles. The overall effect is that Tamil writing looks like Morse code, except that instead of dashes and dots each letter looks like something you would use to tie up sails on a yacht. You couldn't be blamed if you assumed that the writing was a hieroglyphic system and that the scribes concerned themselves only with tapeworms and noodles.
Oh, and also being told that getting my Awesome Teal Pants repaired after my bus accident would be "Impossible", I just found a place that did it in about a minute for ten rupees. The bandages I bought put me back another fifty and my various jets of blood seem to be closing up and should heal pretty soon, so all getting hit by a bus set me back was...about $1.25. Yeah, I had a clash with a bus and won. "But Ghostface," you ask "How can you be left bloodied and pained and still claim a victory???" Ha! You should see the bus!
Mar 6, 2010
Halfway There, Whoaaooah-oh
Yesterday I was at the southernmost point in all of India, and it felt good. Well, it felt good if you discount having to peel my sweaty clothing off at night with pliers and a chisel. The place is called Kanniyakumari, and like India itself it is beautiful and ogre-fucking-ugly. There's a lighthouse here where the Indian Ocean meets the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, to prevent sailors from any of these waters from wrecking themselves upon Cape Comorin. Like the lighthouse, the dilapidated concrete piles of the town itself serves as a warning to those arriving by sea. "DANGER", Kanniyakumari warns, "Here lieth a strange land, and it doth look like shit".
Aside from its geographical location,Kanniyakumari has some actual attractions to boast. For instance, you can see the sunrise on one horizon and the sunset on the other. This is fun, I suppose. I guess you could lock someone in a dark cell for a few months, then bring them out and play "pin the tail on the donkey", except make them guess whether they are facing the direction in which the sun is going into or out of a homogeneous expanse of water. Once a year in April you can actually see the sunset (or sunrise?) at the exact same moment the full moon is rising. Let's see...it's March. Never mind.
The real heart of Kanniyakumari is actually about 400 meters out to sea...because it got hit by the tsunami. OK, no actually it's because there are two sacred rocks just offshore and these have developed into full-fledged religious sites. One rock holds the Vivekananda Memorial, a shrine to a 19th-century Hindu saint who did many important things such as...well, I haven't done my research for my Kanniyakumari article yet, but he's important. The other rock is now the base of a colossal Statue of Liberty-esque sculpture of the Tamil saint and poet Thiruvalluvar, who is best known for his masterpiece...I'm not even going to look that up.
You get to the rocks via boat, which is a nuisance, but the short ride ultimately proved supremely enjoyable. The ferry operators insist that every passenger wear a crusty old lifejacket. The sight of some two hundred Indians from all walks of life -jowly businessmen, bearded Saddhus, Gujarati nomads, bored housewives, Catholic nuns, hip muscular dudes with their hair shaved off for Shiva, turbaned Rajasthani farmers, and a veritable gallery of frumpy mustachioed men- all awkwardly fumbling with their stupid orange lifejackets is a memory I will carry to my deathbed. It was my greatest wish to go on a photographic frenzy.
I envisioned taking this ferry for weeks and publishing a renowned coffee-table book and winning prizes for my captivating art. But the ferrymen wouldn't let me. They have a very strict no photography rule on the boat. For security. To prevent terrorists from gleaning useful information about the design of ferryboats. Oh, how right they are. We all know every terrorist hails from a sandy Ayrab country that hasn't seen a drop of any fluid besides camel spit since the Prophet fled to Medina, so not a single member of Al-Qaeda has ever seen the general scheme of a damn boat in his entire life. It's this type of vigilance that keeps the forces of terror from ever striking in Ind...shit.
The ride was worth it. The Vivekananda memorial is a pretty good place to just hang out, get a little bit of culture and watch other people look at the ocean. You also get great views of the colossus in profile, and can sit about enjoying the breezes until you return to the shore.
On the mainland there's also a temple (which you can't visit) and a Gandhi memorial, commemorating the place from where his ashes were scattered into the three seas. The outside is a rather bizarre modern attempt at blending Hindu, Muslim, and Christian architecture, though I must say it is much more pleasing to the eye than most of the British "Indo-Saracenic" cack that attempted the same feat. Inside it is rather bare. It was explained to me that this was because the seaside memorial got utterly walloped by the tsunami. This part of the country took a beating that day, and over 8000 people in Kanniyakumari district alone lost their lives. The caretaker of the memorial told me he was there when it happened, and that the sea twice receded out beyond the statue rocks, both times returning to wreck utter devastation. He was in the memorial itself, and climbed to the upper level before the second wave hit, probably saving his life but leaving him blind in one eye from where the sea battered him with currents of sand. The town is pretty much rebuilt, and has that look of neglectful decay common to other Indian communities, but every now and then you see a suspiciously empty building and you just have to wonder if its decrepitude can be traced to the fateful day Kanniyakumari paid the price for being on the tip of a continent.
Kanniyakumari is in the state of Tamil Nadu, which is full of Tamil-speaking Tamil people. I just purchased a book called Learn Tamil In 30 Days. We'll see about that. I bought it because the Tamils are so fond of their ancient tongue that they are even more obstinate than other South Indians about not learning or writing in Hindi, except they take it so far that there is a notable dropoff in English signage. In short, I'm learning the basics of Tamil as fast as I can so I know which unidentifiable cow-infested crater to jump off the bus in.
Even for South India, Tamil has some pretty crazy writing. Here's a sample for those of you who are fly enough to have web browsers with Dravidian language unicode enabled:
தமிழ் நாடு கன்னியாகுமரி மதுரை திருசாப்பள்ளி கோயம்புத்தூர்
I must admit that as much as I look forward to leaving my General Ghostface Sherman swathe of destruction through the heart of India's deep south, I sort of miss Kerala a bit, so I came to a compromise. I did a little day trip to the palace at Padmanabhapuram, the capital of the Travancore kings of yore, a little dot of exquisite Keralan culture just inside Tamil Nadu. It's a huge wooden palace, the largest in Asia, and I found it very charming. All the interiors are made of finely carved dark wood, with screen-like walls that keep the breezes blowing through the dim chambers. It's ornate and exotic, but it exudes that familiar charm of going into a well-off relative's dark wood study to poke about at his collection of musty old encyclopedias and prewar commentaries on Roman history.
Just outside the palace gates there is a typical South Indian canteen, albeit a little grubbier than those I usually frequent for my midday rice-and-slop combo. I asked for the thali, fully expecting a pile of rice and a series of spicy and direly overcooked vegetables of indeterminate origin, but was delighted to hear that the thali here comes with fried fish. I sat down and merrily waited in anticipation. When the plate arrived it consisted of rice, two incredibly insipid soups, and a small portion of hot chili paste that looked like it could fell a moose. Where the fish should be was what I will call "a little taste of history", because it was three horrific piscine forms that appeared to predate the palace itself. I stared in disgust at the near-fossilized carcasses and wondered how it was possible to safely fry something that was only a week or so away from becoming a form of coal. I took my fill of the rice and sauces, but when the proprietor came to take my plate he looked at me with puppy-dog eyes and whimpered "No feeeshes?". I went to settle the bill, and saw that the "special fish thali" was 80 damn rupees. "50 is for the fish", the owner said. I gave him a look which he must have understood immediately because before I could open my mouth to insinuate that he would have better luck getting 50 rupees for those fish from the state archaeological society, he sheepishly said sorry. Let that be a lesson. Never trust a man with a fish.
I returned to Kanniyakumari and took care of some business, namely resting on my laurels. I've made it down the entire west coast of India, from the barren beaches of Kutch in the north to Kanniyakumari in the south, and now I'm going up the east.
I also had one other piece of business, being at the undeniable end of India and all. I walked up to some hawkers on the cape and asked them curtly "Where is the nearest cow?" I found the beast a few hundred yards away in a side-alley off the market. It must have known it was the Last Cow in India and what that meant, because before I could get within ten yards, it let out a loud MUUUUOOOOOOOOOOO and turned in flight, trotting up a lane of wonky stairs in complete rout. As I stood there smirking in the market, a woman offered to sell me a flower garland. I think that's what they call "being greeted as a liberator."
But getting to the end of India isn't what was most special for me. It just so happened that my arrival in Kanniyakumari coincides almost exactly with the halfway point of this journey. By the time I reached the tip of India, I covered over 16,300 kilometers of this country, mile by plodding mile. I look back at everything I've done so far, and my first reaction was "WHAT? That was only HALF the trip?" And that was supposed to be the easy half. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Anyways, I'm alive and kicking and I'm halfway there...and no, I am not about to quote that Bon Jovi song. I haven't a need for any prayer. Though there be a thousand faiths and a million gods in this country, all I need to know is that I shake my fist at the sky in defiance of them all. If a prayer must be, let it be this prayer, made timeless when uttered by Conan the Barbarian
Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, THEN TO HELL WITH YOU!
Aside from its geographical location,Kanniyakumari has some actual attractions to boast. For instance, you can see the sunrise on one horizon and the sunset on the other. This is fun, I suppose. I guess you could lock someone in a dark cell for a few months, then bring them out and play "pin the tail on the donkey", except make them guess whether they are facing the direction in which the sun is going into or out of a homogeneous expanse of water. Once a year in April you can actually see the sunset (or sunrise?) at the exact same moment the full moon is rising. Let's see...it's March. Never mind.
The real heart of Kanniyakumari is actually about 400 meters out to sea...because it got hit by the tsunami. OK, no actually it's because there are two sacred rocks just offshore and these have developed into full-fledged religious sites. One rock holds the Vivekananda Memorial, a shrine to a 19th-century Hindu saint who did many important things such as...well, I haven't done my research for my Kanniyakumari article yet, but he's important. The other rock is now the base of a colossal Statue of Liberty-esque sculpture of the Tamil saint and poet Thiruvalluvar, who is best known for his masterpiece...I'm not even going to look that up.
You get to the rocks via boat, which is a nuisance, but the short ride ultimately proved supremely enjoyable. The ferry operators insist that every passenger wear a crusty old lifejacket. The sight of some two hundred Indians from all walks of life -jowly businessmen, bearded Saddhus, Gujarati nomads, bored housewives, Catholic nuns, hip muscular dudes with their hair shaved off for Shiva, turbaned Rajasthani farmers, and a veritable gallery of frumpy mustachioed men- all awkwardly fumbling with their stupid orange lifejackets is a memory I will carry to my deathbed. It was my greatest wish to go on a photographic frenzy.
I envisioned taking this ferry for weeks and publishing a renowned coffee-table book and winning prizes for my captivating art. But the ferrymen wouldn't let me. They have a very strict no photography rule on the boat. For security. To prevent terrorists from gleaning useful information about the design of ferryboats. Oh, how right they are. We all know every terrorist hails from a sandy Ayrab country that hasn't seen a drop of any fluid besides camel spit since the Prophet fled to Medina, so not a single member of Al-Qaeda has ever seen the general scheme of a damn boat in his entire life. It's this type of vigilance that keeps the forces of terror from ever striking in Ind...shit.
The ride was worth it. The Vivekananda memorial is a pretty good place to just hang out, get a little bit of culture and watch other people look at the ocean. You also get great views of the colossus in profile, and can sit about enjoying the breezes until you return to the shore.
On the mainland there's also a temple (which you can't visit) and a Gandhi memorial, commemorating the place from where his ashes were scattered into the three seas. The outside is a rather bizarre modern attempt at blending Hindu, Muslim, and Christian architecture, though I must say it is much more pleasing to the eye than most of the British "Indo-Saracenic" cack that attempted the same feat. Inside it is rather bare. It was explained to me that this was because the seaside memorial got utterly walloped by the tsunami. This part of the country took a beating that day, and over 8000 people in Kanniyakumari district alone lost their lives. The caretaker of the memorial told me he was there when it happened, and that the sea twice receded out beyond the statue rocks, both times returning to wreck utter devastation. He was in the memorial itself, and climbed to the upper level before the second wave hit, probably saving his life but leaving him blind in one eye from where the sea battered him with currents of sand. The town is pretty much rebuilt, and has that look of neglectful decay common to other Indian communities, but every now and then you see a suspiciously empty building and you just have to wonder if its decrepitude can be traced to the fateful day Kanniyakumari paid the price for being on the tip of a continent.
Kanniyakumari is in the state of Tamil Nadu, which is full of Tamil-speaking Tamil people. I just purchased a book called Learn Tamil In 30 Days. We'll see about that. I bought it because the Tamils are so fond of their ancient tongue that they are even more obstinate than other South Indians about not learning or writing in Hindi, except they take it so far that there is a notable dropoff in English signage. In short, I'm learning the basics of Tamil as fast as I can so I know which unidentifiable cow-infested crater to jump off the bus in.
Even for South India, Tamil has some pretty crazy writing. Here's a sample for those of you who are fly enough to have web browsers with Dravidian language unicode enabled:
தமிழ் நாடு கன்னியாகுமரி மதுரை திருசாப்பள்ளி கோயம்புத்தூர்
I must admit that as much as I look forward to leaving my General Ghostface Sherman swathe of destruction through the heart of India's deep south, I sort of miss Kerala a bit, so I came to a compromise. I did a little day trip to the palace at Padmanabhapuram, the capital of the Travancore kings of yore, a little dot of exquisite Keralan culture just inside Tamil Nadu. It's a huge wooden palace, the largest in Asia, and I found it very charming. All the interiors are made of finely carved dark wood, with screen-like walls that keep the breezes blowing through the dim chambers. It's ornate and exotic, but it exudes that familiar charm of going into a well-off relative's dark wood study to poke about at his collection of musty old encyclopedias and prewar commentaries on Roman history.
Just outside the palace gates there is a typical South Indian canteen, albeit a little grubbier than those I usually frequent for my midday rice-and-slop combo. I asked for the thali, fully expecting a pile of rice and a series of spicy and direly overcooked vegetables of indeterminate origin, but was delighted to hear that the thali here comes with fried fish. I sat down and merrily waited in anticipation. When the plate arrived it consisted of rice, two incredibly insipid soups, and a small portion of hot chili paste that looked like it could fell a moose. Where the fish should be was what I will call "a little taste of history", because it was three horrific piscine forms that appeared to predate the palace itself. I stared in disgust at the near-fossilized carcasses and wondered how it was possible to safely fry something that was only a week or so away from becoming a form of coal. I took my fill of the rice and sauces, but when the proprietor came to take my plate he looked at me with puppy-dog eyes and whimpered "No feeeshes?". I went to settle the bill, and saw that the "special fish thali" was 80 damn rupees. "50 is for the fish", the owner said. I gave him a look which he must have understood immediately because before I could open my mouth to insinuate that he would have better luck getting 50 rupees for those fish from the state archaeological society, he sheepishly said sorry. Let that be a lesson. Never trust a man with a fish.
I returned to Kanniyakumari and took care of some business, namely resting on my laurels. I've made it down the entire west coast of India, from the barren beaches of Kutch in the north to Kanniyakumari in the south, and now I'm going up the east.
I also had one other piece of business, being at the undeniable end of India and all. I walked up to some hawkers on the cape and asked them curtly "Where is the nearest cow?" I found the beast a few hundred yards away in a side-alley off the market. It must have known it was the Last Cow in India and what that meant, because before I could get within ten yards, it let out a loud MUUUUOOOOOOOOOOO and turned in flight, trotting up a lane of wonky stairs in complete rout. As I stood there smirking in the market, a woman offered to sell me a flower garland. I think that's what they call "being greeted as a liberator."
But getting to the end of India isn't what was most special for me. It just so happened that my arrival in Kanniyakumari coincides almost exactly with the halfway point of this journey. By the time I reached the tip of India, I covered over 16,300 kilometers of this country, mile by plodding mile. I look back at everything I've done so far, and my first reaction was "WHAT? That was only HALF the trip?" And that was supposed to be the easy half. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Anyways, I'm alive and kicking and I'm halfway there...and no, I am not about to quote that Bon Jovi song. I haven't a need for any prayer. Though there be a thousand faiths and a million gods in this country, all I need to know is that I shake my fist at the sky in defiance of them all. If a prayer must be, let it be this prayer, made timeless when uttered by Conan the Barbarian
Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad. Why we fought, or why we died. All that matters is that two stood against many. That's what's important! Valor pleases you, Crom... so grant me one request. Grant me revenge! And if you do not listen, THEN TO HELL WITH YOU!
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