Tales of South India

Auld Lang Syne

A sure sign of growing old is that you start developing an interest in the past. You wish you had paid better attention to all those stories, those reminiscences, that your parents repeated countless times over; you find yourself turning into your parents, pushing past the rolled eyes and glazed expressions as you tell your own children, yet again and only minimally embellished, about how hard you had it as a child and how your great-aunt’s father-in-law brought glory to the family by securing the 57th rank in the ICS examinations; there is a longing that begins to stir awake, to thaw to life from the cavernous deep freeze of the brain’s memory vault, to visit old childhood haunts. By these standards, I am assuredly on the path to doddering dotage.

 

Cry, The Beloved City

It is chilly here in New York, with bright sunshine, but all I see is rain, warm rain, relentless rain. The rain that has devastated my beloved Madras, taken lives, destroyed homes and livelihoods. I shudder to think of what lies ahead, the long and arduous road to recovery, the outbreak of diseases that will surely follow.

Service Without a Smile

I have just arrived in Madras and already the madness of the world I have left behind - gun violence, racial tension, lunatic Presidential contenders, turbulent stock markets - has faded away like mist dissolving in sunlight. I find myself engulfed in a very different kind of madness, a uniquely Madras brand of craziness and chaos that reminds me with a visceral jolt every time I encounter it, of just how much I love this place and why I miss it so much when I’m away.  And of how it drives me up the wall and forces me to reach deep into my Zen Zone and makes me discover and mine the rich vein of comedy that runs through the aggravating irritants of everyday life.

Kolly Goes Bolly

Some weeks back, thanks to a warm introduction from a friend, I was invited to write an article for Swarajya Magazine. I accepted eagerly; a little over eagerly, perhaps, because, after all, this was the present-day incarnation of the legendary weekly with a storied history. No less a person than the great C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), a man of soaring intellect and integrity, was deeply involved with and has written for this publication in India's heady post-Independence years. So it was only natural that I accepted the assignment with keen delight. Just give me the word, and I will write about anything you want me to, I said breezily, and the next day the word arrived.

What's In A Name?

For some years now, Indian cities and towns (and maybe even villages) have been engaged in a frenzy of name-changing - of roads, neighborhoods, and city names themselves. Bombay has become Mumbai, Calcutta is now Kolkata and my beloved Madras has morphed into Chennai. This post can run to several pages just listing the changes, but do not be alarmed, I will spare you that. The reasons are as varied as the politicians who are behind the changes: claiming pride in our heritage, demonstrating excessive enthusiasm to "Indianize" India to the greatest extent possible, erasing all traces of our colonial oppressors, obliterating references to caste, propitiating numerology, reviving the names and memories of Indian heroes of yore, however obscure, synchophantic flattering of those who wield power - my imagination has run dry at this point, but I am sure there are many more, some as unfathomable and mysterious as some of the names themselves.

And Now For Something A Bit Different

I love it when boundaries are blurred, worlds bleed into each other, stereotypes are shattered. This is life, as it should be - vibrant, dynamic, curious, seeking and journeying to new destinations, open, embracing. I suppose it is comforting to erect barriers, to pigeonhole identities, to surround ourselves with people whose ideas, ideals, interests and beliefs align with ours. But that is so boring, so limiting. And even if that is what we want, situations and events have a habit of finding and wandering down unusual pathways. Life likes to toss things around and mix them up and and then sits back and enjoys a quiet chuckle at the resulting spectacle.

The Twelve Days of Convalescence

I was in Madras recently, to be with my parents as my father had just come home after a major surgery. It’s never easy to see a beloved parent reduced to a shadow of his former self and in pain; writing, with an eye on the funny side of things and the endearing quirkiness that life in Madras is so full of,  is one way of coping with the situation. So, without further ado, and with a doff of the hat to that old classic, the Twelve Days of Christmas, here is my strongly spiced, tongue in cheek version of some of my experiences during my time there.

 

Shopping for Liquid Gold

No, not that gold. Let me state outright that I loathe gold and jewelry. Apparently that makes me a deviant weirdo, but so be it. I do not wear - and never did - a thaali, the gold chain and special pendant that every self-respecting married Tamil Hindu woman is supposed to proudly adorn herself with. Having anything hanging around my neck makes me ill-tempered, I told my husband in the heady early days of our courtship, the ideal time to sneak in such notions; besides, I saw no reason why I should wear a symbol of being married while my husband was not similarly obliged.

Strange Bedfellows

I have observed the fusion of Carnatic music with many things: Hindustani music, Jazz, Bollywood, Pop and Rap, but a few days back I witnessed its foray into an unlikely arena: athletics. I listened, by turns enthralled, excited, puzzled, annoyed, distressed and vexed, as the music went through bouts of wrestling, racing, jumping and gymnastic contortions, a veritable Olympic multi-event that shook the very foundations of Carnatic music and propelled it into a brave new world.

Roger-Roger Cholan

I cannot say I wasn’t warned.

It wouldn’t be all fun and games, they said, there would be a lot of work involved.  A big load of responsibility.  A cramp on our lifestyle. As parents of grown children, we could finally have the freedom we had sometimes yearned for during those endless years of child-rearing. The flexibility and luxury to do things spontaneously, a dinner out, a quick jaunt to a fun destination. Family members suggested that this was probably some mid-life crisis, that I should calmly breathe my way out of it and then take a quick trip somewhere to show myself what I would be denying myself.

But here’s what they didn’t foresee:

That I would say that the greatest of the Chola kings was Roger-Roger Cholan. Or that I would sing about Sri Roger-Gopala. Or babble something about Roger-Rojeshwari. Or that I would twirl around to a rousing rendition of Roger! Rogerthi Roger! to the appalled horror of my family who thought they had seen the worst of what I could be.

They should have known, teetering as I was on the edges of err…dottiness… that I would not enter into this thing in a calm, level-headed manner as befitted a middle-aged lady of a certain vintage.  That I would lose my heart and what precious little remained of my sanity so completely, so hopelessly.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I know your patience is wearing thin. Enough of this meaningless drivel.

 

A Tree in the Forest

I visit Madras from New York several times a year, to meet family, to reclaim my Indianness, to realign an off-kilter inner compass. While some things take more adjusting to than others, driving a car is not among them. I slip seamlessly from driving on the right side of the road to driving on the left side, from diligently following road signs and signals to regarding them as mere helpful suggestions, from dodging a crazed Chinese food delivery bicyclist pedalling maniacally in the wrong direction against a stream of outraged New Yorkers driving maniacally in the other direction to squeezing past a wall of sputtering auto-rickshaws  and rumbling buses and the assorted animals and birds who share the road with the craziest variety of vehicles I have seen.

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.

The Street Wall Journal

For as long as I can remember, the walls abutting the streets of my beloved Madras have been a canvas, a battleground, for all manner of posters, paintings and graffiti. Depending on my inclination and mood for the moment, I viewed those walls as riotously colorful, madly imaginative,often hilarious representations of the city's political and entertainment landscape, or as messy, garish, tasteless eyesores that defaced every inch of blank wall space. One look at those walls, and you got an instant picture - literally - of who was in power, and who was vying for it, with political party members and supporters falling over themselves to outdo one another in their fawning, often ridiculous depictions of their political leaders. Come election time, the poster madness rose to a fever-pitched frenzy, and they were often the only means by which many of the city's residents were made aware of who the candidates were, and what party they represented. Movie stars, gods and goddesses, mythological demons and revered, long-dead heroes of yore, all made their appearance on the walls of Madras, taking these already larger-than-life candidates into the glorified realms of the divine, the super-hero and the noble, or the vile, despicable and beastly. In America, television is the primary medium for election campaigning. In Madras, it was the walls.

Here and There

North and South, West and East, the cities of New York and Madras would appear to have nothing in common. And indeed, the ways in which they differ are too numerous to list here, and would serve perhaps as a useful exercise to while away time on a rainy day. Yet, both these places, founded as early-modern colonial cities within a few years of each other (New York came into being around 1624, as New Amsterdam; Madras, in 1639), can proudly claim to be among the most culturally vibrant and diverse in their respective countries. And I, resident of one in body and the other in spirit, am the happy beneficiary of this.

Thatched Roof Memories, and a Mystery

 

The words are like a magic incantation: Dhalankuthakadhiku thaka thadhinginathom. Chanted to a rhythmic marching beat of one-two-three-four. The years fall away, and I am back in dance - Bharata Natyam - class. There is a pervasive memory of heat and humidity.  In my reminiscence, it is always May, when schools and colleges are closed for the summer holidays.

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 Science of the Kolam

 

 

Let me begin with a doff of the hat to the Math and Science Gene (MSG). He has marched tirelessly through countless generations of my family, far, far back into the cobwebbed recesses of ancestral lore and memory. He has worked hard, ceaselessly, relentlessly, without ever skipping a single progeny of my clan. To be sure, there were some dangerously close brushes with the Lunatic Gene (LG) (known in polite circles as the Quirky Gene), but the MSG always prevailed, always managed to nudge the LG, that over-ambitious and irreverent upstart, aside. In a daring attempt at a coup, the Slothful Gene once ventured to sabotage an entire sub-branch of my family, but the MSG pulled them out of that potential morass, that almost-blight on the family name, by sheer force of will.

'Tis the Season for the Season

The city of Madras is magical in the months of December and January.  The blazing heat of the summer is but a dim memory, and the monsoon-lashed skies have calmed into a brilliant blue. The days are perfect, mild and sunny, and the city goes about its business with a cheery spirit that is infectious.

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.

A Tale of South India

Please don't groan. This is not a bad, sad or plainly mad tale. It is relatively short. Relatively.  Because, once I start writing, I find it hard to stop. But today, I thought I'd spare you (by and large) the verbiage. And give you something to smile about.  I guarantee it. Promise.