Orienting to the Dawn
Orienting to the Dawn
Directions #2: Tasting the flavours of India
Although I grew up with an interesting range of Hindu rituals and techniques at home (particularly for a white boy in 1980s Norfolk), it was all a little semi-detached from India itself. The way I sought to rectify things and get a better overview of this part of my unusual upbringing was to tackle a tertiary programme at a well-known institution specialising in 'Oriental Studies'. Edward Said had already attacked the Romanticising of the East but somehow that name for everything east of Europe stuck; still conjuring up images of hookahs and flying carpets when it simply means the place we know because the Sun comes up over there. I needed to find some orientation in my personal biography.
I had thought to study Buddhism in the academy, but the lecturer was an angry Russian with a vodka habit, about as far from Buddhist practice as I thought was possible. I instead aimed squarely at the impossible galaxy of ideas behind 'Hinduism' (which just means "Indian-ism"), a term Yogananda gave for a host of religious impulses, so he would be allowed into the Parliament of World Religions a century and a bit ago. Along the way I picked up elementary Sanskrit, taught not by some devotee but by a Germanic expert on six dead languages, who was as interested in ancient Finno-Ugric as she was in translations of the Vedas and thus rather confusing when it came to understanding spiritual concepts. I got to grips with some great Indian writers in English or translated from the vernacular. And I grinned gently in the talks by our humble, very English Hinduism lecturer, who gave us much more and much less than would hold the sacred thread together.
It was at this time that I had my first - though certainly not my last - encounter with ideas drawn from Tantra. It was characterised for us by the above sweet academic as essentially orthodox Hindu practices turned deliberately on their heads, so very much a part of the Hindu quest to escape duality. Dancing in cremation grounds, drinking alcohol and eating meat, all with intention and awareness. Pretty accurate, though there was more to come. Sitting in a student residence with a number of young women and one or two other young men, we watched a VHS tape of a Californian lecturer speaking on the same topic. He oozed a certain kind of smarm as he described Tantra as an opportunity for communion with the goddess, and then went on to describe taking part in group rituals of lovemaking with Her human female representatives. At this point we giggled hysterically, turned it off and went to the pub instead to drink too much, chat ironically and academically, and avoid any and every sexual feeling we undoubtedly had for each other for the rest of the evening so that the red in our cheeks could calm down.
A typically Western detached approach to studying Eastern philosophies does not make much sense, really. Perhaps this is why the West still gets stuck on Aristotle and co when the Upanishads are potentially so much more practically interesting; they really require you to get up and out of your tree. And so I did, venturing off to look at India up close. This via my first long haul flight and a night time stop in Dubai airport, where the duty free booze and the jazz piano all rippled disturbingly like in some disconnected spaceport. Delhi awaited.
My first day there was enough to stock up on sculptural images of scantily clad goddesses, in museums, and realise there was something of a disconnect in India too, between a licentious world a thousand years ago and what had happened in between, with moralistic invaders ingratiating themselves successively into the culture, and promoting those existing aspects of Indian society that were more prudish and patriarchal. It was all a bit of a con: alongside the ubiquitous Bollywood posters were others for locally-made pornographic films, invariably featuring white actresses, as these days apparently only Western women were decadent enough for sexual stories. All a little strange to ponder when entering a Shiva temple and seeing the very obvious symbolism of lingam and yoni, adorned by the faithful. India was going to take a while to get used to. Victorian moustaches and oiled hair were very much out of fashion in metrosexual nineties London but seemed to be de rigueur in this former colony; though of course in other respects Indian fashion was a marvel of colourful fabrics for saris and well tailored shirts and pyjamas.
My next stop was Hyderabad, the capital at the time of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, far from the beaten track of the average tourist. Here there were plenty of short-haired men wearing black outfits, often driving their families precariously around on Vespas past potholes, part of a newly popular Hindu cult. The state language of both Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana (the northern part, including Hyderabad, which is nowadays a separate state), is Telugu, spoken today by slightly more first language speakers worldwide than French. We drove round the suburban hills of the city, frequented by stars of the Telugu cinema whose existence I was previously unaware of. Indian English was used too though: on the rush hour arteries there were large signs requesting "No Pissing", beneath which were rows of men ignoring the injunction. I was surprised by many superficial things (wooden scaffolding, Ambassador cars, spicy local alternatives to Coke), and in this big city far from the tourist trail there was plenty to be surprised by. And a minibus of well meaning whities was also something of a surprise for the locals in smaller towns, who crowded round us like a zoo exhibit when we stopped, while the children called out "Anglia!" and pointed. Hyderabad was in the central part of the subcontinent and as such seen as a good base for the Indian military, whose charming motto was "Bash On Regardless". Schoolchildren passed, wearing uniforms long ditched in England by kids of equivalently young age.
I was volunteering alongside some rather sanctimonious elderly North Americans, and preferred to spend my days hanging out with Murthy the driver. Thus all parts of me became familiar with deep fried green chillies, a favourite newspaper-wrapped Andhra roadside snack, as well as discovering the surprise that, though most food was definitely curry oriented, there were still Chinese restaurants in the big cities, like anywhere else. We stopped at Warangal, medieval ruins of a dynasty I'd never heard of. It would take me a long time to get my bearings. Visits into villages that appeared on no maps, where the buildings were made of crumbling red clay rather than fired brick, but the daily chalk drawings on the verandahs spoke of a different pace of life. I was wonderfully lost.
One reason for being in Andhra Pradesh was to assist agricultural scientists with research into traditional organic farming methods. Like soaking seeds in cow urine to increase their fertility: I learned that the sacredness of the cow was a very practical thing, based in its extraordinary relationship with other parts of a farm's ecosystem. (A biodynamic wine farmer in the Cape, who keeps a herd to graze through the vineyards, told me how the cow's stomachs work out what nutrients the soil is missing and give more of them back with their urine and dung). Yet of course, although it was all very interesting, I spoke no Telugu so my ability to "assist" was limited: my role seemed principally to be a kind of reverse PR. Instead of being the White Man from the Company coming to offer pesticides, I was coming to ask elderly locals what they knew, and help restore pride in it, before it was lost forever. And along the way to observe the men watching and drinking palm wine while women harvested, part of that awkward traveller thing of not wanting to intervene in an obvious wrong when you could easily make things worse through ignorance of other social issues. It was a taste, not an immersion; perhaps I should have just stuck to looking at the Taj Mahal, and sipping the sweet tea of the chai-wallahs at the train stations, though I think it certainly broadened my perspective on life.
Hopefully we made a dent in the fabric, but overall the message from Andhra was ghastly into the new millennium. Pesticides, herbicides, the chemical-based "green revolution" that had long since run out of steam. Monocultures and the prospect of GM foods that would worsen farmers' dependence on Monsanto and co, and attempts to prevent farmers saving and using their own seeds. You know the story, or if you don't, you should. Terrible rates of farmer suicide as the debt mountain rose; protests and fightback and the wisdom of Vandana Shiva.
Meanwhile I knew none of this, and left Andhra Pradesh for states further south, to contemplate less worldly things for a while. Though spirit and matter always gets mixed up in India: Krishna Removals, Durga Mechanics, ChristuRaja (Christ the King) Motor Works. Images of a green Christ at all the markets next to Saraswati with her sitar; Jesus being just another favourite local deity apparently to pop in the masala, another option to pray to when on the road facing a large bus armed with a larger horn.
At a railway station in Tamil Nadu state I met a tall, equally lost foreigner. He was an Indian South African from Durban, exploring India for an origin story, like I was, at a time when apartheid had finally collapsed, and finding India more confusing than he had expected. My own first experience of Durban (South Africa's eastern metropole with many people originally from south Indian backgrounds) some years later was of the similarities and contrasts with that India trip. A subtropical climate, a colonial town hall amidst lush trees, a noisy spice market, and yet also a fast-car suburban landscape that Chennai (then still Madras) didn't offer: the potholes and sewage into the sea that have arrived since have probably made Durban closer to the Madras model, and India has apparently got a lot more cars than in those days of tuk-tuks, cows and camels. I recall the Anglican graveyard in Madras though, where eighteenth century colonials dead from malaria seemed to remind me to tuck in that mozzie net; Durban is still rather tamer in many respects.
My father had been traveling to India by then for over a decade and we spent some weeks touring together with him showing me round. At Mahabalipuram the shore temples pose as many questions as the sphinx (as do their offshore undersea relatives, noted by fishermen and seen during the 2004 tsunami). At Cidambaram we had to sleep in the station as the small city had been overwhelmed by temple pilgrims, liable to happen in India at a moment's notice if you're not up-to-date with the calendar of festivals. After the monsoon came great chariots pulling gods hauled on huge ropes by crowds, Shiva and Shakti making their way through the city. The most famous chariots of course are of Jagannath Lord of the universe - juggernauts. English has borrowed a lot of Indian words for massive things. To Shaivites (those who see God through the lens of Shiva, more prominent in the south), Jagannath is Bhairava, Shiva the Avenger. Whereas to Vaishnavites (who see God through the lens of Vishnu and his multiple incarnations), he's a version of Vishnu's most popular incarnation, Krishna. The global Hare Krishna sect is popular among Indian South Africans and they have set up Jagannath chariot events in Durban and Cape Town over the years: my small daughters loved Jagannath's curiously cartoon appearance. Indeed, the gopurams (huge entrance towers) in those big Tamil temples, like Meenakshi in Madurai, are like Disney on acid. Riotous creativity, showing what happens when you suggest there might be 330 million gods as a kind of religious starting point.
After all that, an idli (soft rice patty) is probably what you want for breakfast. While the Americans ate their eggs somewhere, I sat in the standard vegetarian restaurant getting basic idlis with a little thali. Which I ate by hand, a practice for eating rice dishes I continue with since that trip: eating without utensils gets me so much more into the savours and flavours of Indian food as well as forcing me not to rush if the food is hot. Of course it's common in Africa too; difficult to eat noodles by hand perhaps, so the chopstick was developed. Only in Europe did the fork make it from Italy into France and beyond in the sixteenth century, after which Europeans unfortunately decided that was the sophisticated way to consume.
Since I was studying, I remember walking into a Chennai bookshop and being bowled over by the number of books printed in English I'd never heard of before, for a large clientele, since there are more Indians with competent (if idiosyncratic) English than any other country outside the US. Much of what I saw though was using other forms of communication - principally via mudras and the body, often accompanied by musicians in tune with the actors/dancers. Koodiyattam in Kerala, the oldest continuously practiced theatre form in the world, where a performance of a small scene from a small part of a ginormous epic could take place very slowly over the course of a week, the performer raising an eyebrow at a key moment or stretching a finger or twisting the neck now and then. No ego-flattering applause at the end of traditional Indian shows: performance always seen as a sacred ritual, keeping the engine of the universe moving, allowing creativity to be safely expressed, allowing the dilation of experience and time, the audience dipping in and out and leaving in a state of contemplation. And the whole thing offered up to Shiva, traditionally; the Nataraja, dancing King in his ring of creative fire.
Summing up a trip to India, even the few weeks I spent there thirty years ago, is impossible; this has just been a case of sharing sparks to which I will need to return, just as I know I must return to India (hopefully still in this incarnation). I watched a small part of a test match waiting for a plane home. Cricket, like law, is a classic example of something the British brought that has turned out to be better suited to Indian culture: five days (or, in the case of the law courts, many years) of playing a slow game that ends in a draw, but what intense drama along the way!
Here in Muizenberg the widest beach is known as Sunrise. When we head out there on special mornings, like the beginning of a birthday or a Solstice, that sun appears to us a few hours after it rose in Kolkata. According to ancient Vedic principles of 'vastu' - which are concerned with the best way to align a building so it can be a place of positive energy - you want to capture plenty of that magical first light from the East. A place of beginnings, and forgiveness, which we get to revisit with gratitude every dawn, and salute.