Tales of South India

Meanwhile, in a Small Sliver of South India...

Last evening, my husband and I were at the Asia Society in New York, to attend a reading and performance by William Dalrymple and Vidya Shah and her orchestra. This event was arranged in conjunction with the Society’s current exhibit on Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857. The evening was, for the most part, interesting and entertaining. Dalrymple’s narrative, drawn largely from his book, The Last Mughal, was studded with entertaining anecdotes that brought his characters to life. Vidya Shah complemented and supplemented his stories with songs and poetry from the great and little-known poets and songsters of that era.

A Few Thousand Words

For Kanchipuram, City of a Thousand Temples.

Kailasanathar Temple

Flanked by its belt of defensive jungles is that city
Whose doors are never closed to those who seek the prize
Lovely like the pericarp of the many-petalled lotus
The navel of the dark-hued Lord.....

(From the Sangam poem Perumbanatruppadai, translated by N. Raghunathan)

'Tis the Witching Hour of Night

‘Tis the witching hour of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright,
And the stars, they glisten, glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen,
For what listen they?

John Keats, 1795-1821                                                                                                                          

Years can go by, but the habits of one’s growing-up years never really fade away. I came of age in staid Madras, in an era when the city was dead by 9 o’clock at night. Weekday or weekend, I was dutifully tucked into bed and fast asleep well before 10 o’clock, waking up at the crack of dawn to the raucous cacophony of chants, calls and cinema music from the neighborhood temple, mosque and teashop that each competed to drown the other out.

Nurturing Nature

The state of Tamil Nadu rolls gently and smoothly south-westwards from Madras to Coimbatore. The terrain is mostly flat, save the occasional hills that rise and fall like soft sighs. The scenery is vintage South India: emerald green paddy fields, lush groves of banana and coconut, clumps of tall, dust-kissed trees. It is a landscape of timeless beauty, soothing and serene, and of all the beautiful places in the world, it is this that ignites a spark deep in my heart, that whispers to me, you are home.

From Court to Concert Hall: The Evolution of Carnatic Music Performance

Now the rich stream of Music winds along,
Deep, majestic, smooth and strong,
Now rolling down the steep amain,
Headlong, impetuous, see it pour;
The rocks and nodding groves re-bellow to the roar.
Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy

It is a well known fact that humans have a tendency to view the past through rose-tinted lenses. It is also well known that we dislike most change and are convinced that anything new, anything that is a radical departure from a tried-and-tested way of doing things, has to be treated with suspicion and derision. This is no less the case with Carnatic music, where we have convinced ourselves that its history and evolution from the days of the Sama Veda was one long, glorious golden period of old-fashioned courtesy and graciousness in which its composers and practitioners had but the noblest of intents, were motivated by the highest spiritual values, cared for nothing but the purest musical ideals. Thoughts of money - that crass, degrading, immoral commodity- never entered their minds. And then, alas, this ideal state of affairs crumbled to an ignominious end with the winds of change that gathered force and struck at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Infinite Beauty

On the last Tuesday of January 1913, on a clear, cold winter’s morning in Cambridge University in England, a 35 year old mathematician of rapidly growing fame and esteem opened a letter. The letter, thick and unwieldy, bore the grime and wear-and-tear of a long journey, and a ragged line of stamps, unfamiliar and exotic. It started with the words, “Dear Sir, I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum............”

On the Island of the Gods

 
Straddling the equator in an azure expanse of ocean 3000 miles east of India, on the restless backbone of a volcanic belt, lie hundreds of islands. They form a land-bridge of sorts between India and Australia, emerald-green, beautiful, bewitching and fascinating, a region where a succession of dynasties and civilizations have left their impact. Aborigine, Hindu, Malay, Polynesian, Islamic, European. With names that conjure up such romance and mystery, enchantment and beauty: Java, Sumatra, Celebes, Borneo, Bali.

Tales of the Seven Pagodas

Legions of giggling schoolchildren, high-spirited college students, trysting lovers, coy honeymooners, and tourists, both frivolous and serious, have traveled the 60 odd kilometers from Madras to Mamallapuram. I have made the trek, too, several times, in all these capacities, the first over four decades ago.

The Sublime and the Ridiculous

September blows in with cool winds and dazzling sunlight, the skies awhirl with lazily spinning leaves. A perfect day fades into a long, still night wracked by feverish coughs and disjointed dreams. Wild thoughts bubble up, puncturing the surface of sanity. A cool hand soothes a hot brow and in the twilight zone of delirious reflections and drifting reveries, one phrase repeats itself: plainly mad, plainly mad, plainly mad….

A Luna-tic Rivalry

 The 40th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing, by the crew of Apollo 11 in July 1969, is the inspiration for this post.

Through most of the second half of the twentieth century, the Cold War and the conflicts, tensions and competition between the United States and the USSR and their allies dominated world politics. Its icy tentacles froze thought and reason, destroyed lives and economies and drove a sharp wedge between the good guys and the bad. Who you regarded as the good guys or the bad ones depended, of course, on where you lived and what your government and newspapers led you to believe. Big Brother cast his dark shadow over the lands he surveyed. The scale of this war was enormous. It strained beyond its earthly boundaries, and exploded into outer space, resulting in the Space Race of the 1960s and 1970s (and on a much smaller, far less thrilling scale, the 1980s). The lunar landings were the most daring, audacious and electrifying of all, completely mind-boggling in how (almost) perfectly they were executed with the technology of the time that today seems simple, unsophisticated and even primitive.

The Abode of the Virgin Goddess

The Call of the South: Part Three: Kanyakumari

 It is impossible to write a simple and straightforward account of anything in India. Say you want to write about a place. You start gathering your information, your memories, your thoughts. And you find you have stepped into Looking Glass Land, a mare’s nest of goddesses, demons and kings, ancient travelers, age-old feuds and modern politicians. The strangest of bedfellows clamor for your attention, and you cannot afford to ignore or dismiss any of them. You have mythology rubbing shoulders with history.  You have to consider politics, religion, culture, science and economics, each with its attendant brood of issues and points of contention. The past and the present are inseparably intertwined. You step back and view this lively patchwork, this teeming tapestry. And you say, wow.

Weaving a Tale: Of Istria and South India

Indulge me for a little while as I lay out for you a few threads of history. They will seem to have nothing to do with one another – for how can it be possible that little-known Istria, and the glamorous and lovely Venice, and ruthlessly cold-blooded Dalmatian pirates, and just-as-equally ruthless and cold-blooded merchants, and pepper, cloves, ginger and cinnamon, and South India, be connected in any way? Restrain your impatience, hold your sharp comments, and allow me to assure you that they are, as I pick up the threads and weave my story. I have to confess that since my own knowledge of the facts is a bit shaky I will avoid too many details which might maroon me in treacherous waters, and merely skim the surface to present to you – tada!! – the Istria-South India connection, as a preamble to my account of my time in Istria - Groznjan in particular - which will follow.

The Curtain Descends.....Temporarily

Dear Readers,

This blog will fall silent for several weeks. I am going on a voyage, to a place called Groznjan, in the Istrian Peninsula of Croatia. It is, I am told, a small, medieval, hilltop village, charming and picturesque, with cobble-stoned streets and old stone houses. Gazing across the hills over the Mirna River, there are vineyards and olive groves and glimpses of the Adriatic Sea glinting in the distance. For centuries, Groznjan was ruled by Venice, and the Italians call it Grisignana. The Slavs and the Austrians wrested control when they could from the Venetians, and little Groznjan flourished with all the attention. Today, there are remains of town walls, ramparts, a renaissance loggia, churches, stone cottages and other Venetian influences that still survive.

After the geopolitical juggling and wrangling of the post-World War II years, Groznjan became part of Yugoslavia, and life bled slowly out of the little village as people deserted it for more prosperous shores. The streets lay silent and forlorn. Then in the 1960s, it had a rebirth - as an artists and musicians colony. The Jeunesses Musicales International Cultural Center was born, and the cobble-stoned streets of Grozjnan have been ringing with the sounds of music ever since, and painters, potters and sculptors grace its homes and many art galleries. 

This will be my home for the weeks to come. I will be teaching at an international vocal workshop, and I think I can safely say that the hills of Istria will echo with the sounds of Carnatic Music for the first time in their storied history! For those who are interested, go to this link: http://artsynergy.net

So, farewell, and I will be back next month with many tales to tell, many pictures to share with you.

Till then,

Kamini.

The Journey of Bharata Natyam

 

 
Nataraja, Musee Guimet,  Paris

Many, many years ago, in a world filled with bitterness, greed, jealousy and ugliness, the people of the earth yearned for something beautiful and enchanting, a thing of grace and wonder that would cut through the gloom and chaos and light up their world. In despair, they approached Brahma the Supreme Creator and begged him to create something that all the people could enjoy with all their senses, and that would take their minds off the wretchedness and misery of their lives.

Bangkok Blast: Day Two

Continued from here:

Today was our big sightseeing day, as it was my last full day in Bangkok. We woke up at 6.30am, and met as planned at 7.30am in our hotel’s restaurant for the free American Set breakfast. Expecting no more than coffee and rolls, we were pleasantly surprised to find that orange juice, eggs and bacon/ham/sausages/mushrooms were included as well. The menu card stated in a big, bold, strict, finger-wagging font that no more than one cup of coffee or tea was allowed per person, but that was fine by us.

Bangkok Blast

Continued from here:

Packed like sardines into an ancient Bangkok Airways aircraft, we bid farewell to Siem Reap and headed north to Bangkok, our final leg on this trip.

An hour later, we landed in Bangkok's gleaming, if somewhat sterile, Suvarnabhumi Airport. The airport was festooned with banners that proclaimed, “Long Live the King”, with photos of a grim and bespectacled, but youthful-looking King Bhumipol Adulyadej, or King Rama IX. As is so often the case, appearances were misleading: King Bhumipol is a ripe 80 years of age, but perhaps neither he, nor his adoring subjects, want to acknowledge this.

A Trip to Angkor Cambodia: The Last of the Temples

Continued from here:

We staggered out of the air-conditioned cocoon of our restaurant, squinting into the sun-bleached air. The temperature was rising, steadily. The bustling crowds we had seen a short while back had thinned, sensibly keeping indoors for the hottest part of the day. We, however, still had a few temples to visit. This was our last day here, and so, heroically braving the heat, we left to see some of the oldest temples of this civilization, collectively called the Roluos Temples.

Lolei detail

A Trip to Angkor Cambodia: Day 3 - Angkor Wat!

Continued from here:

Buddha shrine, Angkor Wat
 

This was our last full day in Siem Reap, and we saved it for the Big One: Angkor Wat. We allowed ourselves the luxury of sleeping in a little longer (the tyrant was reset to awaken us at 6am), since Sarng advised us that arriving there too early was not a good idea, as the place would be thronged with people all trying to catch a glimpse of the temple at sunrise. Angkor Wat actually faces west, unlike the other temples, and is supposed to be at its most spectacular at sunset, but the sunrise views are also said to be lovely.

A Trip to Angkor Cambodia: Day Two

 

Banteay Srei Temple

Continued from here

The plan was to see some of the farther-out temples today, and to reserve the Big One, Angkor Wat, for tomorrow. So, early in the morning, after equipping ourselves with a generous supply of 10 baguettes (yesterday's 2 baguettes were pitifully inadequate), we departed for Banteay Srei, a temple about 20 km north of Siem Reap. It was a lovely drive through very scenic, although poor, Cambodian countryside. On either side of the road were cashew, mango and banana trees, many of them laden with early-season fruit. Most of the village homes were made of wood, and were atop stilts, with bicycles, farm equipment, and cattle kept in the area underneath. In spite of the very evident poverty (there were no power lines in sight, and apparently many of these villages lack electricity) everything was very clean.

A Trip to Angkor Cambodia: Day One

Continued from here:

(A note to my readers: I apologize for the messed-up formatting of this post.  After spending an entire morning cursing and trying to fix it (more the former than the latter, I must confess), I gave up in despair. Rahu Kalam, perhaps?)

 

Golden Temple Villa: our hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia

Prelude

I got off the plane at Siem Reap, into the blazing heat of a tropical afternoon. What a change from the sleet, wind and miserable cold in New York! I had a joyous reunion with the rest of my group, which had arrived earlier in the day from Madras. Along with them was our guide for the trip, Sarng, a gentle, always-smiling young man whom you took to instantly.

We decided to stop on the way to our hotel to buy our passes for the various temples. En route, we passed Angkor Wat! I could not believe my eyes. What a miracle modern travel is! Just a few hours on a plane, and you emerge into another world altogether, so different from the one that was left behind. I could not believe that we were looking at the Real Thing! As in the case of  the Taj Mahal and so many of the world’s wonders, no picture can actually do it full justice, but not everybody is lucky enough to be able to see it, so here is one, taken from our vantage point across the moat.

Angkor Wat from across the moat: first glimpse!

A Trip to Angkor Cambodia

 

Deep in the Cambodian jungles lie some of the world’s most astonishingly beautiful temple ruins. Built between the 9^th and 15^th centuries, during the years of the Khmer Empire, they are mind-boggling in their sheer exquisiteness, complexity, intricacy, variety, symmetry and numbers.

And the Mystery Place is.....

First, a tantalizing glimpse:

And now, the answer.....

On a Hot Day in August

A promise: this will be a brief (and hopefully painless) lesson in history. For those of you whose hearts start racing (for all the wrong reasons) and whose mouths go dry and who convulse in horror at the mere mention of history - don't worry, I understand. Memories of unendurably boring history classes are seared into my brain, to remain unerased by time or age. In school, our history "lesson" consisted of the teacher reading out, verbatim, as many pages from the history text book as she could cram into the lesson. For an entire hour, we were subjected to her low drone, completely devoid of any tonal variation. Those of us (which, on most days, was most of our small class of 12) who attempted to relieve the dreary tedium of the "lesson" by talking to our neighbors or falling asleep were made to stand on our desks for the remainder of the period. Perhaps you have similar memories of history class. So, if you fear that a short, heavily diluted (and very likely inaccurate) history lesson might do irreparable harm to your psyche, go ahead and scroll down to the pictures. I won't feel hurt.

(For a wonderful personal memoir and history of Madras, go here )

On a hot day in August (possibly July) 1639, Francis Day, an ambitious and industrious (and, some gossipy tongues maintain, a womanizing, alcoholic, gambling-addicted) employee of the English East India Company, set off on a voyage down the Coromandel Coast of India in search of a suitable piece of land for a textile factory. He went with the blessings and high hopes of his boss, Andrew Cogan, who was the Chief of the Machilipatnam factory.