Loser lines and fast lanes

I was perhaps 10 or 11 years old when the family, including paatti (grandmother), went to Tirupati.  For a visit with the presiding god.  We stayed in one of the cottages owned and operated by the temple trust.

It was a carefully planned trip--as it always was the case with anything that father did--that included special and expensive tickets for us to bypass the long lines of the faithful, and head straight into the temple to spend quality time with the god during a pooja.

I could not understand how a god could allow such separate and unequal treatment of people. His own followers were sifted through the sieve of affluence?  I mildly voiced my question, which went nowhere.

And when paatti twisted her ankle and could not join us for the special pooja, I wondered if it was a lesson from god. Ah, yes, those were the early years when I was a true believer--teenage and rebellion hadn't kicked in yet ;)

The practice of paying for the privilege of getting quickly to the temple gods, and even boasting about it later on, continues in the old country where privileges such as caste never ever seem to go away.  For instance, I read in the newspaper, The Hindu, that there are special tickets that the faithful can buy in order to catch a glimpse of the idol that is brought out every forty years at the Varadaraja Perumal Temple in Kanchipuram.

If one can buy the access to god through money or influence, well, the market can easily take care of that in everyday life, right?

The concept is thought of as an American phenomenon but is now spreading worldwide. Queues can effectively be skipped everywhere from airport security to music festivals. Just buy a fast-track ticket or “VIP access” pass.

An "American phenomenon"?  Did the writer even bother to check the conditions in India's temples? ;)

Does the phenomenon dictate a two-tiered society? It seems the answer is “yes” – but as columnist Baggini points out, that two-tiered society always existed.

Yes, it has always existed.  And it will continue on. After all, even the gods don't care!

At the Varadaraja Perumal Temple (Kanchipuram)

Female empowerment and social progress

In the immediate outskirts of Kanchipuram, we saw three girls in school uniforms pedaling away on their brand new bicycles.  How did we know they were new?  The frames had the thin, filmy, plastic wraps.

My immediate thought was that it was perhaps a government project to give free bicycles in order to make sure that the kids don't drop out of school.  The success has been well documented.

We went to the temple.  As we were ready to leave, the same girls appeared.

I asked them about the bicycles.  Yes, they were new. And provided by the government. The leader of the pack was excited, animated, and eager to share with us how liberating it was for them to now freely go around.  Like this detour that they had taken on the way back home from school--she said that the distance between home and school was about ten kilometers (six miles.)

Girls on bicycles. Girls and women on scooters (Vespas.)  Young women in groups at beaches.  The part of India--way down south in the Subcontinent--has progressed a lot since my childhood days in the old country.

India's south is also where the dynamism is.  People live longer. They have fewer children, so much so that total fertility rates are lower than replacement levels.  Tamil Nadu's rates are on par with many European countries!  As a result, there is a lot of migration from the poorer and populous northern and northeastern parts of the country.

All these further convinced me that the Tamils would have been much better off had the state seceded from the union!

This Brookings Institution briefing notes that India's "economic geography is changing in favor of the southern states."  No surprise there, really, for any India watcher.  "The south has done better in providing basic services, building infrastructure, rejuvenating industry, empowering women, and educating girls."  Female empowerment is the key element here.

The briefing adds:

For a long time, political power, population, poverty, and production were concentrated in the north. As production moves southward, political power will inevitably follow. And as the economic center of gravity moves away from traditional centers of power, it could exacerbate regional tensions. India will have to figure out ways to manage them.

Like I said, Tamil Nadu ought to have been a country of its own, instead of being a part of "India."

Tamil as a world language

Back during the Neyveli years, we went to the local sabha to watch live musical performances and theatre.  I simply assumed then that most of India was into the highbrow cultural life.  And have been disappointed to find out ever since that most of India does not care a shit about the intellectual and cultural lives, even though seemingly every Indian is proud of its rich heritage!

One of the plays that we watched was by Kathaadi Ramamoorthy (?)  A character in that play was from Tirunelveli.  This character comes to Madras (as it was known then) and speaks with a strong Tirunelveli dialect that others find it difficult to understand, which then set up many comedic situations. 

Why is the Tirunelveli dialect so distinct?

Turns out that there is a historical linguistic reason, which I did not know until I read David Shulman's Tamil.

As the Pandyas weakened and other kings and invaders from the north attacked the Tamil country, the Vijayanagara forces reached well into the region by the mid-14th century.  They didn't merely attack, raid, and return with the riches, but came to stay, writes Shulman, who adds that Telugu-speaking farmers and merchants also arrived and "settled mostly in the far south of the Tamil country in the basin of the Tamraparani River."  Yes, the same river that is a pleasant walk from my grandmother's old village!

Telugu speech, present from ancient times in the border zones of northern Tamil Nadu, now became a natural presence throughout the southern region.  You can still hear it today in Tirunelveli District--a distinct dialect with archaic features preserved in relative isolation from the evolving fate of Telugu in Andhra and Telengana, somewhat like the Rabelaisian French of Quebec in relation to today's standardized French.

Again, all I have is only one reaction: Mouth wide open!

From this post, six years ago

This was in the mid-14th century, by when the three powerful forces--Pallavas, Cholas, and Pandyas--were in decline.  But, their achievements prior to that had already made Tamil a world language.  Among the many pieces of evidence that Shulman writes about is Quanzhou, which I had also blogged about a while ago.

Throughout all these, Shulman discusses plenty of poetry and literature from those periods, and how the language evolved to become more and more cosmopolitan.  I have a hard time choosing my favorite among them.  I loved his story about the eccentric improv poet Kalamekam (Black Cloud.)  I will outsource that to this reviewer:

Asked to write a poem in the form called venpa about a mountain made to shake by a fly nearby, he ups the ante: “Why not the whole universe?” The venpa is a notoriously tricky verse form, tightly restricted in its cadence, with a complicated pattern of double rhyme. The resulting Tamil poem is a little miracle of assonance and rhythm; Shulman beautifully captures its lyrical eccentricities:

The eight elephants that stand at the cardinal points,
great Mount Meru, the oceans,
the Earth herself—all teetered and tottered
when a fly came buzzing
into the wound left on Vishnu’s body

by the cowherdess with the musical voice

when she struck him
with the thick churning rod.

(It helps to know that in traditional texts the directions are, indeed, guarded by elephants; Mount Meru is the axis mundi; and Vishnu was incarnated in a village of cowherds as the mischievous, larcenous, adorable baby Krishna, whose long-suffering mother Yashoda was forced on occasion to deliver corporal punishment, with cosmic consequences.)

Dandin, the bestselling Pallava author

I had always wondered about the Sanskrit in the names of the big time Tamil kings of the past.  Like Mahendravarman and Narasmimha among the Pallavas, and Raja Raja and Rajendra Cholans.  I mean, these figures loom large among the Tamil imagination and yet they have Sanskrit names?  In comparison, the great Tamil poet and grammarian had a "real" Tamil name--Nakkiran.

David Shulman writes that "modern spoken Tamil is astonishingly rich in Sanskrit loan words.  Indeed, there may well be more straight Sanskrit in Tamil than in the Sanskrit-derived north Indian vernaculars."

The usage of "modern" does not answer the question about Mahendravarman, who lived 1,400 years ago.

Even as I think about all these, Shulman throws me a curve ball.  A googly, to use a cricket equivalent.  He offers an interesting theory, which perhaps the Indologists and Tamil scholars have been arguing it out.  As this reviewer in NYRB notes:

Likely to ruffle some scholars is Shulman’s insistence that this remarkable literary culture was, since its inception, deeply in dialogue with Sanskrit, and that a great many (perhaps most) of its poets partook of the Brahmanical culture that already spanned all of South Asia by the Common Era’s early centuries.

I am willing to buy into this idea.  Shulman writes:

What we can say with confidence is that speakers of Vedic Sanskrit were in contact, from very ancient times, with speakers of Dravidian languages, and that the two language families profoundly influenced one another."

Dandin helps me understand such a possibility.

I had no idea about a historical character named Dandin until I read this book.  Seriously, how did a fellow who was born in Waterloo, Iowa, who immigrated to Israel, manage to understand all these, and then write in a delightfully simple prose so that even idiots like me--born a Tamil--can understand and appreciate the richness of the language and the people going back centuries?

Shulman writes:

Dandin, a native Tamil speaker, chose to compose his work on poetics in Sanskrit, the cosmopolitan language accessible to scholars throughout India and beyond--and indeed, the Kavyadarsa became one of India's bestsellers, known throughout Asia and eventually translated/adapted into Tamil (Tantiyalankaram, possibly twelfth century), Tibetan, and other languages.  The Pallava court was clearly open to the pan-Indian world of erudition and artistic production couched in Sanskrit and also eager to contribute to that world.

There is only one way to respond to this: Mouth wide open!

Now, when I look at the photos like the one above that I have from my visits to Kanchipuram, I wonder about the backstory is of this person who could very well be a scholar from China visiting the highly cosmopolitan Pallava capital!

In terms of political and social dynamics, a northern-oriented, highly Sanskritic state centered in Kancipuram and the Tondai plain complemented the southern kingdom of Pandya Madurai with its Tamil-centric ideology.  Powerful literary works in Tamil appeared a little later in the Pallava north than in the Pandya south, though we should not forget a great narrative poem such as the Perumpanatrupatai, from the Ten Songs.

They never even hinted about any of these in my high school history!

Verse 72 from
The Tiruviruttam of Nammāḻvār
Source

I hope Server Sundari does not have a drunk for a husband

After my day-long roaming about at Kanchipuram two years ago, I knew that I would not turn down any opportunity to go there again.  The city is rich with history and art and architecture, and there is a lot of lost time I need to make up for, I suppose.

So, when father suggested that we drive down to Kanchipuram on Christmas day, I was all too happy to sign on--though my secular goals were very different from his religious reasons.

We were barely a few minutes into the drive a little after sunrise when we passed one of the strangest sights that reminded me that, well, it is very much India.

By the roadside in the thick of the city, and a few feet away from an ultra-low-income home, a woman, perhaps about thirty, was beating a man with a cane.  He was sitting on the floor with his hands above his head to deflect the cane, and a few others--neighbors perhaps--were standing around witnessing the drama.

As we drove past, we commented in the car that this was perhaps yet another case of the husband coming home drunk after spending whatever little money that the family had, and the wife decided she had to do something, even if only to beat the crap out of him.  Quite a gift for the drunk on Christmas morning!

I tell ya, we men are a disgrace and have no idea how and why the women put up with such deadbeats!

At Kanchipuram, the stone carvings on pillars were far too impressive even for the art-challenged person that I am.  I wandered around and took photographs while the rest of the family headed into the temple core for the worship.  My pilgrimages are different from theirs.

Believers or atheists, the human biology is the same and we were all famished.  A young woman wearing a restaurant shirt over her outfit approached our table.  "Anything to drink?" she asked with a wonderfully smiling face.

We told her that we were ready to order.  "I am ready" she replied with a smile.

Which is when I noticed that all the wait-staff were women. All women. How fascinating!  In a very traditional town of Kanchipuram!  India is certainly changing, and changing quite fast.

She smiled with everything she said and did. All of us noticed her pleasant demeanor.  As we got up after settling the bill, father asked her about her employment. She had come to this after undergoing a certificate training program--in nursing. I bet she has her own reasons for being a waitress as opposed to working as a nurse's aide.

I was the last one to leave the table. I added twenty rupees to the tip that father had already left for her. "It is for your smiles" I told her.

She smiled once more.

How do you say Quanzhou in Tamil?

Every day there is more evidence on how much of a false idea it is when we think that globalization is something new.  We humans have always been curious about the world outside our respective villages, but were constrained by the technological limitations of the times, as much as our deep space explorations are limited now because we simply do not have the abilities to go where no man has ever gone before.

In addition to the curiosity, we humans have an economics gene in us.  Way back, when humans figured out that we do not have to live the way other animals do, and that we can divvy up the workload and then trade for goods and services, that gene started playing an increasingly important role.

Today's evidence on such a commerce-led globalization comes from India.
No, from China.
Ok, from both these countries.

Caption at the source:
A panel of inscriptions of the God Narasimha adorns the entrance to the main shrine of the temple,
believed to have been installed by Tamil traders who lived in Quanzhou in the 13th century. 

 The Chedian shrine is just one of what historians believe may have been a network of more than a dozen Hindu temples or shrines, including two grand big temples, built in Quanzhou and surrounding villages by a community of Tamil traders who lived here during the Song (960-1279) and Yuan (1279-1368) dynasties.

At the time, this port city was among the busiest in the world and was a thriving centre of regional maritime commerce. 

By now, are you thinking what I am thinking?  Where the hell is Quanzhou?


View Larger Map

Across the waters from Taiwan!

And these traders from Tamil Nadu got to Quanzhou a thousand years ago?  Cool!

Wait a second; there's more:

Ms. Wang says the earliest record of an Indian residing in Quanzhou dates back to the 6th century. An inscription found on the Yanfu temple from the Song Dynasty describes how the monk Gunaratna, known in China as Liang Putong, translated sutras from Sanskrit. Trade particularly flourished in the 13th century Yuan Dynasty. In 1271, a visiting Italian merchant recorded that the Indian traders “were recognised easily.”

Sixth century?

The distance between South India and Quanzhou 1,400 years ago might have felt like the distance between Earth and Mars now!

The most striking legacy of this period of history is still on public display in a hidden corner of the 7th century Kaiyuan Buddhist Temple, which is today Quanzhou’s biggest temple and is located in the centre of the old town. A popular attraction for Chinese Buddhists, the temple receives a few thousand visitors every day. In a corner behind the temple, there are at least half a dozen pillars displaying an extraordinary variety of inscriptions from Hindu mythology. A panel of inscriptions depicting the god Narasimha also adorns the steps leading up to the main shrine, which houses a Buddha statue. ...
A few kilometres from the Kaiyuan temple stands a striking several metre-high Shiva lingam in the centre of the popular Bamboo Stone Park. To the city’s residents, however, the lingam is merely known as a rather unusually shaped “bamboo stone,” another symbol of history that still stays hidden in plain sight. 

Something new every day.

I wonder if my fellow-explorer of all things under the sun, Ramesh, who spent a few years in China, has been to these places.  Or Indu, with her China experience, who seems to occasionally swing by this blog.

If even "cockles" can get my curiosity, then it is not difficult to imagine me getting all excited about this topic, right?  Google directed me to this, where the author notes:

A Chinese source states that in 720 the Pallava king Narasimhavarman II "constructed a temple [in Tamil Nadu] on account of the empire [i.e. China]", and another text cites the existence of three Hindu temples in southern China where "Brahmans" resided during the eight century.   

Pallava King.  Ah, yes, my mind rewound my clock to my sabbatical year, when I was able to travel around a lot more in India than I normally would have been able to.  I spent an entire day at a few temples in Kanchipuram--the capital city of the Pallava Empire.  At one of those temples, the guide directed my attention to a 1,300-year old stone-carved panel depicting a Chinese guy:

Was this that temple that Narasimhavarman II built?  Curiosity means the exploration never ends and, dammit, all the stories are so inter-connected too!

I suppose between this Chinese guy and a South Indian in Quanzhou, we somehow ended up with the சீனா சட்டி ("cheena chatti"--a wok); ah, recalling the taste of dosai made in that chatti makes me drool!

I wonder if the Quanzhou connection was also how came to enjoy the dish of சேவை (sevai)?  Hmmm ... More drool!

Hyundai and Foxconn buses. Near Chennai, not in China

"I will be back in a minute, sir" the autorickshaw driver, "L," said as he stopped the vehicle in the shade. 

Right from the first minute of the drive, I engaged him in conversations--in Tamil, of course--about Kanchipuram and other topics.

The first question I had for him was whether the name on the vehicle, "S," was his.  "No, sir, it is my son's."  Which is also when he told me his name was "L."

I would never have guessed that he was a father of a kid; he seemed way too young for fatherhood.  I suppose this is better than the Tony Randall route to becoming a father at an age when quite a few would have become great-grandfathers!

"L" drove me from one old temple to another.  As we were driving, I spotted two large white buses with "Hyundai" written on them.  A number of companies--multinationals and Indian alike--run their own buses to transport employees.  Thus, it was not the bus itself that caught my attention, but the fact that these two buses were in Kanchipuram.  Perhaps a few employees were on a tour?  Or, perhaps visiting Hyundai managers were on a sightseeing trip?

"What is the Hyundai bus doing here?" I asked "L."

When he didn't reply, I thought he probably didn't hear me.  I asked him again.

"I don't know what is written on the bus, sir.  I don't know to read much."

"Oh ... how many years did you go to school?"

He answered with three fingers for three years.  The manner in which he responded makes me wonder whether that was an exaggeration--perhaps he is barely literate and that is it?

Later, on my bus ride back to Chennai, I spotted two white buses with the words Foxconn.  While I am all too familiar with Hyundai, Ford and the automobile industry in Chennai (hmmm ... my sabbatical work!) I had no idea that Foxconn has operations in India, and that too in Chennai.

Back in Oregon, I routinely require students to read this essay about Foxconn.  It always shocks most of them.  It troubles them that a workplace has nets around the buildings in order to minimize employee suicides.  I am hoping that Foxconn employees in India get a better deal--after all, at least on the books there are labor laws that Foxconn has to follow, which is a step above China's situation.

Oddest question at Kanchipuram: "What is your gothram, sir?"

The driver warned me that I would not be able to go inside the Varadaraja Perumal Temple because it would be closed during lunch time, from noon until four.

I was awfully tempted to ask him whether god has lunch and takes a siesta as well; but, am glad I resisted that urge to wisecrack that way in a town of a thousand temples :)

A thousand-year old structure, with a great deal of history and art.  A century or two older than the the Leaning Tower of Pisa, for instance, which is one heck of a tourist attraction.  (Yes, been there, done that!)  The tower at this temple hasn't leaned in any way over all these years.

To the inquisitive tourist that I am, there is a lot to see in Kanchipuram and I had to pick and choose.

There was no skipping this temple, though.

Even the doorway is massive and impressive.  The doors, with solid wood and iron reinforcements has a stone doorstop, which itself deserves a photograph.

I was almost through the doorway when a thirty-something looking brahmin came rushing.

He pointed to my camera, and then pointed up to the sign that said there was a five rupee fee to use the camera within the temple grounds.

"Where do I pay for the ticket?" I asked him.

The brahmin, clad in a traditional dhoti and bare-chested with the namam on his forehead, said he would get the ticket for me.

"No problems.  Just show me where the office is" I cautiously replied.  I know I have become one paranoid American tourist.  But, that is better than to cry later!

"I can help you.  I can even open those closed gates and you can take photos there" the brahmin said.

"No, thanks.  I will get the camera ticket and look around on my own."

"Why are you so afraid?  I only want to help you."

I laughed.  "Well, things are that way these days" I said, and gave him a five rupee coin.

"You be here, and I will bring you the ticket."

Of course, there was no way I was going to trust this guy--I walked right behind him.  From behind a tree materialized a guy with a receipt book and the brahmin traded the coin for a receipt, which he handed to me.

Now, we were standing very close to each other and there was no breeze.  I smelled alcohol breath on him.  Yes, alcohol. At about 1:45 in the afternoon.  In a place religious Hindus consider to be one of the holiest of holy temples.  As Shakespeare wrote, "So are they all; all honorable men."

"What is your name, sir?"

"Sriram."

"You are from ....?"

"From Madras.  But, been in America for a very long time."

"I see. What is your gothram, sir?"

I laughed big time.  "I gave up on those things decades ago."

Meanwhile, another "guide," who was wearing a pair of pants and a shirt that was tucked in, walked up to us. He had been siting a few feet away, beside a White European-looking woman.  I wasn't sure if he was coming up to try to rescue me, or to assist the brahmin into trapping me.  Am I paranoid about people, or what!

The brahmin looked at him and said, in Tamil, "he is Sriram from Madras. He has been abroad. And seems to doubt me."

With a chuckle that "guide" replied, "maybe he will trust you if you are a real iyengar."

I walked away, but always watching out for the alcohol-smelling iyengar who wanted to know my gothram.

On seeing a Chinese guy in Kanchipuram!

After visiting Mahabalipuram for the first time in my life, I was all the more convinced that I ought to visit the old temple structures in Kanchipuram.  Which is what I did.

As one who doesn't care for any religion-based explanations for where everything came from and what happens after we die, my interest in this old town with a gazillion temples is in its history, art, and architecture.

Thus, I was especially interested in two old temples that are now under the care of the government's archeology folks: Kaliasanathar Temple, and Vaikuntha Perumal Temple.

The two have been decommissioned, so to say, to borrow from the modern technological vocabulary. Believers no longer go to these because the main and ancillary idols have been uninstalled. Non-patronage, therefore, creates maintenance problems different from those resulting from huge numbers showing up.  As the driver who took me there remarked, "only foreigners come here, sir."

Anyway, one of these days, the nerd in me will read up and get a clearer idea of when this was built with respect to the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram.

Why is this important?  Because ... 

... Even to the art-challenged me, it was evident that the sculpture styles are so similar at this temple, at Kailasanathar Temple, and Shore Temple. It was, therefore, a wonderful pleasure, when the archeology department employee, who doubled up as a guide for an informal fee, pointed out the following on the wall:

The guide said it shows the Pallava king on the left celebrating, and the Shore Temple on the right.

I asked him which king it was, but he pretended that he didn't hear me.  When students pretend they didn't hear me in the classroom, I repeat the question all over again; here, I chose not to :)

The carvings and frescoes will, I am sure, have recorded a lot about the major events during those years.  There are quite a few inscriptions in the old Tamil script.  I am not sure how much have of those treasures have been appropriately documented and studied.

As I tried to keep up with the guide's show-and-tell, I realized how difficult it was for me to absorb them all.  I wished he would slow down. To take his time in sharing with me whatever he knew.

Meanwhile, another foreigner came in.  The driver was right on the money!

So, we backtracked a tad for her to catch-up with whatever I had seen by then.

Poor woman; she struggled even more than me because (a) the guide's accent made it very difficult, and (b) she was unfamiliar with the content.

Anyway, after a while, we were now two tourists trying to keep up with this guide.  I asked her where she was visiting from. "Perth." And then after a very slight pause, "Australia."

I was reminded that Australian tourists--and from Perth, to boot--marked my own vacation beginnings.  And then my brother's visit.  I wonder where else, and how many more, Aussies are going to pop up over the rest of the travels here.

The guide then stopped and dramatically pointed at something.  We also looked.

"A Chinese man came to the Pallava court" said the guide.

See the Chinese guy on the left side of this panel?  How awesome!  1,300-plus years ago, a guy from China comes all the way to this southern part of south India and becomes a part of the history. 

It was a small world even back then, and it is rapidly getting smaller and smaller and smaller ...