So... I promised details about Matancherry and didn't deliver as promised. So here goes, a day late.
Matancherry is just east of Fort Cochin. You get off the ferry and turn left instead of right and there it is.
Bizarrely, its completely different to Fort Cochin. The Fort must have been the British administerial area while Matancherry was the business place as its a bit like the difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It was lovely, but in a different way. Although the buildings were still old-style colonial it was much more colourful and Indian. The streets were amok with colour and people going about their business. Kerala is famous for its spice trade and when you weren't being assailed by the stench of open sewers or goat crap, you were suddenly being overwhelmed by the most wonderful spicey smells! Magical.
Matancherry is not quite as run down as Fort Cochin (all part of the Fort's mysterious, haunting charm), perhaps because more people live and work there. I loved it. No pushy touts, just warm, laughing people. I went hoping to get to the old Pardesi Synagogue, spiritual centre of one of the oldest Jewish communities outside Israel. THere are only a few Jews left now as most have emigrated to Israel since 1948, but streets are still named after them - a Mr Jacob has one in his honour - and the whole region goes under the poetic name of Jew Town. Nice.
Various rickshaw drivers had tried to convince me that teh Synagogue was closed all Friday and Saturday and that I should go with them somewhere else more interesting instead for a negotiable fee. Being half-Jewish, I assumed this was a scam, as the Sabbath doesn't start until the evening of Friday. But alas they were right. It was closed. It looked lovely though and the streets were very atmospheric. I will be back on my last day to have a look.
I stepped into a large cafe to have a rest and a cup of tea. It was quite a swanky place and I didn't expect much. But the tea was fantastic and as I got up to go to the loo, I noticed there was an enormous bookshop. Needing the loo more than books, I was told to go upstairs, and discovered that the building was also an enormous workshop for building wooden statues, cupboards and things. The smell of wood and sawdust was magical and walking past the expertly made merchandise was also magical.
Having done what needed to be done, I headed to the bookshop - and here was another surprise, and another example of how India works. It was a shop given over almost entirely to spiritual/mystical books - Vedas, Upanishads, Bagavad Gita, Ramayana, Osho, Krishnamurti, even, I was amazed to find, books on the Kabbalah (one of which you can't get in the UK!) and on things like the Tao Te Ching. In the UK, all of this would be tucked away on a single shelf or in a strange bookshop nestled apologetically in some windy street. Not so in India. Its all in plain view, largely because it is an essential part of the culture. Indian spiritual literature is more voluminous than any other culture. They are proud of it, not ashamed of it, nor is it regarded as hoodoo or mumbo jumbo. Its who they are. This is true of every bookshop I have been in here. They are very proud of their learning, philosophy and culture.
So the trip wasn't wasted. I bought R K Narayan's version of the Mahabarata, the Tao Te Ching and the Kabbalah book. Good musing reading for India, the land where all of this is allowed. And how fitting to find a rare Kabbalah book thanks to an abortive search for an old Synagogue. Perhaps my half-Jewish soul and its ancestors were at work that day!
Walking back to Fort Cochin, I found myself stymied by a uniquely Indian traffic jam. Three lorries, all existing in their own sublime reality, had got stuck in the stupidly narrow main lane. One had no driver and was parked as labourers unloaded grain. Two others were stuck behind it, flanking each other. Somehow both must have thought they had a chance of getting by. All three were facing in the same direction. God knows where the driver of the first was.
Horns were honked and presently the whole street became involved in the knotty problem. Arms were waved. One of the drivers pushed gearsticks back and forth and looked around. Engines roared, belching out smoke. The labourers continued loading their driverless truck, stolidly oblivious to what was going on. I could see the problem. The driver could not go backwards and if he went too far to the left going forwards would end up in an open sewer. Gradually the whole street came to a halt.
Realising this could go on for some time I cut into a side street and promptly got lost! It wasn't so bad. It was so vivid stepping into a different world of people getting on with their lives I didn't panic. I have no idea what became of the trucks. Maybe they are still there? The next day I read in the paper that an elephant on the way to a festival had run amok in Mattancherry, overturning some stalls. I was quite sorry I missed that and wondered if it just got frustrated stuck behind the lorries.
Eventually I got to the Green Face part of the day - the Kathakali Centre. Kathikali is the ancient form of stylised theatre practised all over India and especially Kerela. Like all theatre from Greek drama to Mystery Plays, its origins are religoius, drawing from shamanic practices from tribesfolk who used to become possessed while playing different Gods and Demons to Temple ritual. Its as stylised as Noh or Kabuki. The costumes and make up are amazing.
Before the show you are allowed to watch the actors putting on each other's makeup. Kathakali depends on strict codes of imagery, dependent upon a limited number of expressions, movements, hand gestures and words. Somehow within this it is incredibly expressive and I was struck by the thought that Ancient Greek Theatre may have been as stylised in its day. As we watched the actors preparing, you could see the vivid faces coming into existence. Of course it was all part of the show, slightly staged for the audience of tourists, but fascinating nonetheless. And just as Dionysus presided over the proceedings in Ancient Greece, an enormous statue of him being wheeled out at the beginning of the Festivities, here Siva presided over the ritual, an image of him as the Lord of the Dance dominating the wall behind the performers.
The performance was preceded by an aged actor telling us a little about it all. Kathakali actors begin their training at the age of ten. It is a way of life. None of this going to a drama school for a few years and getting an agent. Female roles are taken by men 'just as with Shakespeare' as the guy said. Eventually the performance started and, short though it was, it was riveting. As a theatre director, it was fascinating to realise a little of what Peter Brook understood - that just like everything else, theatre styles had evolved differently all over the world and even our own Western obsession with 'naturalism' was just another form of stylisation. A decision if you like. By keeping Kathalaki stylised, the characters did not seem alien but more universal, as they managed to be superspecific rather than specific. We were seeing myth being enacted rather than 'reality' presented and yet it was no less powerful than what we get in the West. It was a deeply resonant experience for someone who has spent 15 years in British theatre trying to understand how to get it 'right'. I realised there was no 'right' and the obsession with policing theatre and art by critics and the intelligensia was another example of culural inward-looking. The world is too diverse and wonderful for all such thinking. Watching the performers and being entranced by how DIFFERENT they were and, indeed, how different India was just made me rejoice at the endless abundance of this world and the people in it in contrast to the drab cynicism I used to always find myself fighting back at home.
I also realised that the rather over the top style of acting we associate with Bollywood and Indian films is nothing more than an evolution from Kathakali. The movies seem odd to us, even comic, because they are often so stylised, declamatory, melodramatic and seem to have such unsubtle acting. We love them, but not because of their 'truth'. Well they do have their own 'truth', its just grown out of as ancient a tradition of acting as ours has, just as Japanese style acting in movies has done. Once again, its yet more evidence of the rich variety of how the world has responded to being human in different ways. Each culture expresses the same experiences in different styles. Some people hate it. They just like their own style - hence detractors of people like Kurosawa in Japan or Ray in India who were regarded as being to 'Western' or hostility towards 'foreign' films by people who think Cinema IS Hollywood. Me, I love the diversity. Give me more!
So more exciting experiences and more food for thought. It was in a state of real happiness that I made my way home at night. I woke up knackered the next day and decided to take it easy. I had booked an Ayurvedic Massage for twelve, rested in the hotel and set off. Instantly I found myself lost in Ernakulam! It wasn't an unpleasant situation, as as I moved around I discovered what a wonderful place it was. Again, miles away from Mumbai and full of the wonderful Keralnans with their goodwill and generosity. Its a prosperous place and clearly on the up. There were still open drains and smelly poo everywhere but it was so alive and colourful and buzzing I felt I could really grow to love the place.
The map wasn't worth shit, and everyone gave me slightly vague directions. Eventually I got into a rickshaw. The driver looked at the address. Looked puzzled for a moment then said '15 rupees' (less than 10p!). He then drove the rickshaw over the road and down a backstreet and there we were!
Ayurvedic medicine goes back thousands of years and is regarded as one of the many 'delusions' of the 'Irrational Health Service' by You Know Who. I am fascinated by it and wanted to know more about its methods, which rely on herbs, oils and a more holistic approach to medicine. Happy to count myself as one of the Deluded (as everyone knows I do) I was led to the massage room. You lie on a kind of table in a cotton thong and are covered in Ayurvedic Herbal Oil which is then massaged into every inch of your body. Its a strange but very relaxing sensation. Turning over is a problem as you are so slippery you fear you might fall onto the floor. The oils work over the body and cleanse the skin. You then sweat them out in a steam bath before a cold shower. After it you feel great... Although by the time I got back to the hotel I felt hot and sweaty again and looked a little green in the mirror because of the herbs! But it was a great experience and one I would recommend to anyone...
Then, a bit of a shock as I checked my bank balance! Clearly I had been spending more than I thought! A quick call to the bank sorted out what the problem was. I need to be a little more prudent, that was all. When I was told a little about interest rates in England my hair stood on end. You simply don't feel the global financial crisis out here but its very real in the UK. Checking exchange rates for the Rupee and the Turkish Lira I was shocked at how enfeebled the Pound had become. What was I going to be coming back to? Hmmm...
Well, a restful evening I think making sure not too much money pours out of my purse. Tomorrow a water cruise in the backwaters of Kerala then the next day a trip to Munnar (all booked before my bank shock!), all organised by the supremely friendly staff of BIJU's, so must conserve my energy!
We shall see what we shall see!
Saturday, 28 February 2009
Friday, 27 February 2009
COOCHIE COCHI AND MATANCHERRY PIE
So here I am two days in to Kerala and Cochi. What has it been like?
Well, arriving at BIJU's didn't look promising. As the rickshaw pootered down street after street and then suddenly turned down an unlit alleyway my worst memories of Mumbai came back and my heart sank. It as very late and the staff were asleep. Didn't look great. I got into my room which was quite spartan and switched on the fan on the ceiling. Then I went to bed, sweating buckets and dreading what I thought was going to be the Mumbai dawn chorus of hooting car horns and shouting and screaming...
And it never happened! Waking up and looking out of the window the view was far from horrendous and the street was relatively quiet. And it went uphill from there.
I guess now with hindsight Mumbai's shock attack was a blessing in disguise, a kind of inoculation as it were. So far everywhere else has been more than manageable - Mangalore, Cochi - likeable even. Maybe if I went back to Mumbai now it wouldn't freak me out so much. And its true - once you start to get used to the 'divine chaos' of Indian towns they are fine. 'Divine chaos' was a term one of the teachers at the school used to describe them. We were talking about the traffic and driving in India and she pointed out how somehow everyone in India knows where they are going and how to avoid crashing - 'divine chaos'. We joked about the famous Siva dancing in the Wheel of Fire as a metaphor for it and its true. We Westerners need order. In India everyone seems telepathically enfolded into how things are. Now I am out of the beautiful bubble/oasis of the school and newly in India I can see it more and more. No matter how delapidated or smelly everything might get, the Indians themselves seem to negotiate it perfectly. I think I mentioned before how elegant all the women look even when walking through shit-filled streets, or how relaxed everyone is on the public transport. When I think of how red-faced and angry we get in the UK if a bus is ten minutes late it is amazing. Getting a bus or a train or a ferry here is an object lesson in democratic humanity. Everyone is in there together and it is wonderful. If you are a misanthrope, if you don't like your personal space invaded on a bus, if you don't like mucking in with the crowd, then don't come to India. Its not the place for you! It really struck me while I was on the ferry coming back from Fort Cochi last night, packed to the rafters with people all laughing and chatting. Somehow, for all the reality of teh caste system, everyone becomes equal when getting around the country. Its wonderful. I've never felt so much a part of all humanity before.
Which is not to say, once again, that its all perfect, but you start to develop some of the detachment and sense of humour the Indians have. An example - the ferry back from Fort Cochin took us past some breathtaking night scenes of hotels and buildings and boats on the waters, but when the ferry approached the jetty, the water was so polluted with sewage it smelled as if a rugby team of giants had all taken a massive group turd in it and forgotten to pull the flush. In the UK, though, you would have written to your MP. Here you just took it in your stride - along with the heaving crowd trying to get on the boat.
Keralans seem like very different people to the Karnatakans I met in Koorg. Perhaps it is just the bonuses of living in a prosperous city or the fact that Kerala is one of the best run and best educated states in India (its administration has been Communist since the 50s and has a strong sense of municipal responsibility) but they seem like a wonderfully relaxed and friendly people. The hawkers and scam-merchants do their stuff with such good humour and such a lack of malice (not the same in Mysore, where they expressed their dissatisfaction when you didn't buy their flute/postcards/strange wooden thing) that you almost want to buy them a drink rather than move on angrily. The staff at the hotel have been terrific and I can heartily recommend BIJU'S TOURIST HOUSE to anyone. Its perfectly situated to get to the ferries and everyone is great, first impressions aside.
I should explain about these ferries. Cochi is, strictly speaking, an amalgam of cities/towns. I am staying on the mainland in Ernakulam, which is a modern, upwardly mobile Indian city like Mangalore. The famous part of Cochi are the two cities on a single island known as Fort Cochin and Mattanchery. To get to them you have to use the ferries which go from the rugby team shit-stinking jetty two minutes walk from the hotel.
Actually its a great walk. The streets around the hotel are very vibrant. As I walked out on Thursday morning to get to the ferry my heart leaped. I was in India!
Thursday I spent in the Fort Cochin end of the island. Its an amazing place, haunted by the ghosts of the past. It was the colonial centre of Cochi proper, a major port which had been in the hands of the Portuguese, Dutch and the British over the years. Its a very strange, mind-expanding place which works its magic on you subtly. It and Mattanchery are completely different to Ernakulam. It feels like you are stepping out of one world and into another. How can I convey it?
The wierd thing about Fort Cochin is that having been a colonial centre it has been colonised by India. The population live and walk through a city scape of rotting old Western buildings, all of which have a strange charm. By the main park you find the famous Chinese fishing nets which are so associated with Kerala. THese are extraordinary and hard to describe. The fishermen don't go out in boats but use these huge hydraulic wooden constructions to lift and drop fishing nets into the water. As I walked along the promenade watching them go about their business with the smell of fresh fish in the air, I could feel the presence of all those colonials around me. I wondered what they had thought of Fort Cochin and India? Did they love it? Did they hate it? Did they think they were exiles or did they feel they were at home there? You couldn't help thinking about vanished Empires and how the world had changed. The old Collector's house stood rotting and locked up by a main road. Children played on the grounds of what was once a parade ground and was now part of a school. Goats and crows were everywhere. Once again you had this extraordinary contrast between rubble and muck and then spanking new buildings in odd places. A hugely colourful market was in motion selling beautiful things (Indian clothes are amazingly vibrant, as if in contrast to the buildings around them). I found myself wandering into a centuries-old Church to St Francis built by the Dutch (or was it the Portuguese?) beautiful and wonderfully cool, where I listened to an Indian guide give a description of the history of the building in flawless French to a group of Gallic visitors.
Another interesting sidenote here for you religion buffs out there. As I wandered through the church, a copy of the Bible was open in a glass box. It was open on Psalms 21, 22 & 23.The two pages were dominated by a Psalm I had never read before which begins 'My Lord, my Lord, why hast though forsaken me?' (number 22 I think), the very words Christ speaks when about to die on the Cross. Have a read of it. Its astonishing. And it sheds some light on what that moment is probably supposed to be about in the Gospels. Whoever the scribe was who decided to reference it in his description of the Crucifixion clearly had it going on!
That is what is so strange about Fort Cochin. There is nothing Hindu about it. The holy sites are all churches - the St Francis church, a small Syrian Christian Church (where three little schoolboys ran up to me and asked to have their photograph taken) and a wonderfully gaudy and eccentric, though open-hearted Basilica - and the architecture is all old-style European, covered in creepers and falling down. A wonderful Narnia-like moment occured when I suddenly foudn myself standing by a Victorian street-lamp in a moss-encrusted corner of a street with an enormous Indian tree sprawling around it. Nothing Hindu about it as I said, and yet now it is an exclusively Indian town, the only Westerners being sweaty, pasty ones like me!
It was wonderful. The rythmn of the place was quiet and relaxed and I found myself ambling around in a dream, feeling myself slipping in and out of the present and the past. Everywhere seemed filled with lazy ghosts, or ghosts who couldn't leave the place after 60 years of independence having loved it so much. FAbulous. I even found Mystical graffiti! On a wall by the sea was an extraordinary piece of writing quoting from the Koran and Christian thinkers about tolerance and spirituality, ending with a description of the Three Ages of the Trinity envisaged by obscure (but massively influential) Christian Mystic Joachim de Flora, who believed we were approaching teh Age of the Holy Spirit when all Empires will cease and Man and God will become One... Only in India would one find such graffiti!
THe ferry back was a wonderful experience. Hot and crowded and involving a conversation with a guy from Delhi who had recognised me from earlier when I had given him my water bottle... I was grateful to be back in Ernakulam at the end of the day though as Fort Cochi had left such an impression on me - all those ghosts! - that I needed the distance to cool off...
And then the next day - Mattenchery... Home of the oldest Jewish community outside Israel... But this has already been a long post! Better wait until tomorrow for the treasures THAT experience held!
Well, arriving at BIJU's didn't look promising. As the rickshaw pootered down street after street and then suddenly turned down an unlit alleyway my worst memories of Mumbai came back and my heart sank. It as very late and the staff were asleep. Didn't look great. I got into my room which was quite spartan and switched on the fan on the ceiling. Then I went to bed, sweating buckets and dreading what I thought was going to be the Mumbai dawn chorus of hooting car horns and shouting and screaming...
And it never happened! Waking up and looking out of the window the view was far from horrendous and the street was relatively quiet. And it went uphill from there.
I guess now with hindsight Mumbai's shock attack was a blessing in disguise, a kind of inoculation as it were. So far everywhere else has been more than manageable - Mangalore, Cochi - likeable even. Maybe if I went back to Mumbai now it wouldn't freak me out so much. And its true - once you start to get used to the 'divine chaos' of Indian towns they are fine. 'Divine chaos' was a term one of the teachers at the school used to describe them. We were talking about the traffic and driving in India and she pointed out how somehow everyone in India knows where they are going and how to avoid crashing - 'divine chaos'. We joked about the famous Siva dancing in the Wheel of Fire as a metaphor for it and its true. We Westerners need order. In India everyone seems telepathically enfolded into how things are. Now I am out of the beautiful bubble/oasis of the school and newly in India I can see it more and more. No matter how delapidated or smelly everything might get, the Indians themselves seem to negotiate it perfectly. I think I mentioned before how elegant all the women look even when walking through shit-filled streets, or how relaxed everyone is on the public transport. When I think of how red-faced and angry we get in the UK if a bus is ten minutes late it is amazing. Getting a bus or a train or a ferry here is an object lesson in democratic humanity. Everyone is in there together and it is wonderful. If you are a misanthrope, if you don't like your personal space invaded on a bus, if you don't like mucking in with the crowd, then don't come to India. Its not the place for you! It really struck me while I was on the ferry coming back from Fort Cochi last night, packed to the rafters with people all laughing and chatting. Somehow, for all the reality of teh caste system, everyone becomes equal when getting around the country. Its wonderful. I've never felt so much a part of all humanity before.
Which is not to say, once again, that its all perfect, but you start to develop some of the detachment and sense of humour the Indians have. An example - the ferry back from Fort Cochin took us past some breathtaking night scenes of hotels and buildings and boats on the waters, but when the ferry approached the jetty, the water was so polluted with sewage it smelled as if a rugby team of giants had all taken a massive group turd in it and forgotten to pull the flush. In the UK, though, you would have written to your MP. Here you just took it in your stride - along with the heaving crowd trying to get on the boat.
Keralans seem like very different people to the Karnatakans I met in Koorg. Perhaps it is just the bonuses of living in a prosperous city or the fact that Kerala is one of the best run and best educated states in India (its administration has been Communist since the 50s and has a strong sense of municipal responsibility) but they seem like a wonderfully relaxed and friendly people. The hawkers and scam-merchants do their stuff with such good humour and such a lack of malice (not the same in Mysore, where they expressed their dissatisfaction when you didn't buy their flute/postcards/strange wooden thing) that you almost want to buy them a drink rather than move on angrily. The staff at the hotel have been terrific and I can heartily recommend BIJU'S TOURIST HOUSE to anyone. Its perfectly situated to get to the ferries and everyone is great, first impressions aside.
I should explain about these ferries. Cochi is, strictly speaking, an amalgam of cities/towns. I am staying on the mainland in Ernakulam, which is a modern, upwardly mobile Indian city like Mangalore. The famous part of Cochi are the two cities on a single island known as Fort Cochin and Mattanchery. To get to them you have to use the ferries which go from the rugby team shit-stinking jetty two minutes walk from the hotel.
Actually its a great walk. The streets around the hotel are very vibrant. As I walked out on Thursday morning to get to the ferry my heart leaped. I was in India!
Thursday I spent in the Fort Cochin end of the island. Its an amazing place, haunted by the ghosts of the past. It was the colonial centre of Cochi proper, a major port which had been in the hands of the Portuguese, Dutch and the British over the years. Its a very strange, mind-expanding place which works its magic on you subtly. It and Mattanchery are completely different to Ernakulam. It feels like you are stepping out of one world and into another. How can I convey it?
The wierd thing about Fort Cochin is that having been a colonial centre it has been colonised by India. The population live and walk through a city scape of rotting old Western buildings, all of which have a strange charm. By the main park you find the famous Chinese fishing nets which are so associated with Kerala. THese are extraordinary and hard to describe. The fishermen don't go out in boats but use these huge hydraulic wooden constructions to lift and drop fishing nets into the water. As I walked along the promenade watching them go about their business with the smell of fresh fish in the air, I could feel the presence of all those colonials around me. I wondered what they had thought of Fort Cochin and India? Did they love it? Did they hate it? Did they think they were exiles or did they feel they were at home there? You couldn't help thinking about vanished Empires and how the world had changed. The old Collector's house stood rotting and locked up by a main road. Children played on the grounds of what was once a parade ground and was now part of a school. Goats and crows were everywhere. Once again you had this extraordinary contrast between rubble and muck and then spanking new buildings in odd places. A hugely colourful market was in motion selling beautiful things (Indian clothes are amazingly vibrant, as if in contrast to the buildings around them). I found myself wandering into a centuries-old Church to St Francis built by the Dutch (or was it the Portuguese?) beautiful and wonderfully cool, where I listened to an Indian guide give a description of the history of the building in flawless French to a group of Gallic visitors.
Another interesting sidenote here for you religion buffs out there. As I wandered through the church, a copy of the Bible was open in a glass box. It was open on Psalms 21, 22 & 23.The two pages were dominated by a Psalm I had never read before which begins 'My Lord, my Lord, why hast though forsaken me?' (number 22 I think), the very words Christ speaks when about to die on the Cross. Have a read of it. Its astonishing. And it sheds some light on what that moment is probably supposed to be about in the Gospels. Whoever the scribe was who decided to reference it in his description of the Crucifixion clearly had it going on!
That is what is so strange about Fort Cochin. There is nothing Hindu about it. The holy sites are all churches - the St Francis church, a small Syrian Christian Church (where three little schoolboys ran up to me and asked to have their photograph taken) and a wonderfully gaudy and eccentric, though open-hearted Basilica - and the architecture is all old-style European, covered in creepers and falling down. A wonderful Narnia-like moment occured when I suddenly foudn myself standing by a Victorian street-lamp in a moss-encrusted corner of a street with an enormous Indian tree sprawling around it. Nothing Hindu about it as I said, and yet now it is an exclusively Indian town, the only Westerners being sweaty, pasty ones like me!
It was wonderful. The rythmn of the place was quiet and relaxed and I found myself ambling around in a dream, feeling myself slipping in and out of the present and the past. Everywhere seemed filled with lazy ghosts, or ghosts who couldn't leave the place after 60 years of independence having loved it so much. FAbulous. I even found Mystical graffiti! On a wall by the sea was an extraordinary piece of writing quoting from the Koran and Christian thinkers about tolerance and spirituality, ending with a description of the Three Ages of the Trinity envisaged by obscure (but massively influential) Christian Mystic Joachim de Flora, who believed we were approaching teh Age of the Holy Spirit when all Empires will cease and Man and God will become One... Only in India would one find such graffiti!
THe ferry back was a wonderful experience. Hot and crowded and involving a conversation with a guy from Delhi who had recognised me from earlier when I had given him my water bottle... I was grateful to be back in Ernakulam at the end of the day though as Fort Cochi had left such an impression on me - all those ghosts! - that I needed the distance to cool off...
And then the next day - Mattenchery... Home of the oldest Jewish community outside Israel... But this has already been a long post! Better wait until tomorrow for the treasures THAT experience held!
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
INDIA BY ROAD AND RAIL
So yesterday I finally came to the point which had to come - leaving the Babs (albeit temporarily) and heading off into India. I spent the day travelling - four hours on a government bus to Mangalore and then ten on a train to Cochi... The adventure begins!
The Babs gave me the most beautiful send-off. It had been a fairly intense few days as the moment of leaving approached. I had really come to love them and the place. Rarely have I felt so happy, so part of something, so wanted and welcome - by teachers and kids alike - and so satisfied that what I was doing was of value. And spiritually it was so enriching. On the penultimate day I went up into the Koorg hills for a final walk on my own and found myself justing sitting and staring, my heart bursting at the beauty of the place. As I said before, the landscape here is the greatest Temple of all. Just beautiful. Like nothing I have ever seen or encountered. And all there for free. I spent most of the time trying to burn the landscape onto my memory...
But this was coupled with some real sadness and doubt. Was I able to leave the love and support and safe haven of the school behind? Could I wrench myself away from the beautiful kids? I began fighting new doubts and sadnesses and fears.
Then things got quite intense. One of the kids, one of the littlest, Little Suresh (or 'Baldy Suresh' as he became known after his hair had been cut) found his way into my hut and walked off with all my little Indian statues which he then hid and forgot where he had hidden them. It was very odd as I loved Suresh and regularly carried him on my back, played with him and gave him hugs all the time. It was a very strange thing for this to happen. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the school and its enclosed feel which intensified it but it felt traumatic. Everyone agreed. Perhaps Suresh was subconsciously not wanting me to leave? Who knows?
Two of the statues - a Siva and a Ganesh - were found. Ironically, just on the eve of a major festival to Siva which was to take place. This is known as Sivaswati and devout Hindus stay up all night chanting to Siva. Not liking group rituals much - they freak me out - I agreed to take part and we went up into the hills to light a fire for the festival while the kids built Lingams to commemorate Siva. It was very intense and after an hour of everyone chanting and throwing rice into the fire I couldn't take much more. For all my interest in this stuff I don't like intruding on a festival, not because I don't take it seriously but because I DO take it seriously. I feel like an imposter and am also very aware and sensitive to the energies flying about. PLus Siva is a pretty intense God - the Destroyer - and I wasn't sure what I was really taking part in. Exhausted, I went to bed. Perhaps Siva was doing his bit to continue to smash up the vestiges of resistance I was still putting up to India so as to open me up to what was to come. Who knows?
People may be surprised by my reaction to this. The truth is that had I lived in those days I would probably have been a solitary, a contemplative, seeking my own communion in my own way rather than in a large group. So as to keep people guessing, all my experience of this stuff has been private, internal and not external. Its about my own Soul, not ritual or gatherings. Its why I don't belong to any religion or group. A spiritual Lone Gunman if you like!
Anyway, the next day the other two statues appeared - Brahma and Krishna, the counterbalance to Siva and Ganesh. My last day with the kids was very moving, but a last trip into Madikeri freaked me out again. Its a poor city and the pain there struck me once more. Was this what I was leaving the School to encounter?
Returning to the School for the last evening, however, the Babs gave me this beautiful send off which just lefty a vast sense of love and kindness in my heart. They performed all the little plays I had been working on with them and did them wonderfully - with real heart. And the kids watching were so absorbed and loving towards them that I was reminded of the energy of theatre when it has no pretensions about it. THey sang me songs and overwhelmed me with a massive group hug - 'We love you, Uncle' they all cried and wouldn't let me go. For several hours afterwards as I was packing they appeared at my door with little drawings and messages they had written thanking me for all I had done and how I had helped them overcome shyness. It was beautiful.
I slept well and they were there to see me off the next day. Baldy Suresh gave me a big hug and a number of kisses on my cheek and I set off to get my bus, deciding I would return in my last week in India to see them before I go. Now when I think of their smiling faces I feel very strong - little Amitha, whose eyes are so vivid and full of energy but with the voice of a 60-year old smoker (!!!), pixie-like Devi whose spriteliness never stops, wise Anjinama who I would trust with my life with her kindness and loyalty, Marti, whose smile would stretch across continents, Manjanath, whose sensitivity and wisdom beyond years has him have visions when he sleeps, Navindra and Rajindra, lovely brothers who watch out for each other, space-cadet Siva, who looks as Chinese as an Indian can and has a war-cry 'GINGER! GINGER!' which became the war-cry of the school, Baldy Suresh, who showed me how wonderful it was to be 4 and unself-conscious... and so many others... I won't forget them!
So then buses and trains. What a wonderful experience! The four hour bus journey across the most stunning landscape was unforgettable. I took out a book to read but didn't open it for the whole time, so glued to the window was I. And then a glimpse of the Arabian Sea as we arrived in Mangalore.
From then on an auto-rickshaw to the Station which is exactly as you would imagine it: a sun-baked sea of people of all cultures and hues (including a few sweaty Westerners like me!) all looking to go somewhere. Getting on the train the heat was unbearable. Sweat was literally dripping off me in huge globs. I looked in the mirror and realised I was covered in shit from the bus journey. WHat had started out as a white T shirt was now brown. But no matter. A fine Hindu gentleman who was on a trip to see his Swami befriended me and welcomed me to the train. His warmth was very important in helping me settle! His grandkids were there and they played up and down. Realising how exhausted I was, I lay down and rested for a few hours, occasionally looking out of the window at the gasp-inducing landscape going by - pal-trees as far as the eye can see, football pitch-sized schoolyards filled with children, women wandering through forests with baskets on their heads, all elegant in their saris, sudden glistening rivers appearing out of the foliage with vast bridges stretching across them. Truly, I thought, the real wonder of this country is its landscape. Tough though life may be, the natural beauty around everything makes the mind explode with wonder...
And then I was engaged in conversation by a couple of Indian gents who were travelling home on the train after a day's business. How freaked out one would be if this happened in the UK. But this is India, where people are different (and the journeys very long). They gave me so much travel advice which I would not have had otherwise. They also made sure I got some food on the way. I felt very welcome and very safe.
Then at midnight Ernakalum station where I was getting off. As if to ensure I did, various Indian travellers appeared who offered to help me get off with them. THe heat of the night hit me - Kerala is very hot! - and then the organised chaos of teh rickshaws and the journey to the hotel.
So here I am, about to head out to Fort Cochin. THe next part of the adventure begins! Watch this space!
The Babs gave me the most beautiful send-off. It had been a fairly intense few days as the moment of leaving approached. I had really come to love them and the place. Rarely have I felt so happy, so part of something, so wanted and welcome - by teachers and kids alike - and so satisfied that what I was doing was of value. And spiritually it was so enriching. On the penultimate day I went up into the Koorg hills for a final walk on my own and found myself justing sitting and staring, my heart bursting at the beauty of the place. As I said before, the landscape here is the greatest Temple of all. Just beautiful. Like nothing I have ever seen or encountered. And all there for free. I spent most of the time trying to burn the landscape onto my memory...
But this was coupled with some real sadness and doubt. Was I able to leave the love and support and safe haven of the school behind? Could I wrench myself away from the beautiful kids? I began fighting new doubts and sadnesses and fears.
Then things got quite intense. One of the kids, one of the littlest, Little Suresh (or 'Baldy Suresh' as he became known after his hair had been cut) found his way into my hut and walked off with all my little Indian statues which he then hid and forgot where he had hidden them. It was very odd as I loved Suresh and regularly carried him on my back, played with him and gave him hugs all the time. It was a very strange thing for this to happen. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of the school and its enclosed feel which intensified it but it felt traumatic. Everyone agreed. Perhaps Suresh was subconsciously not wanting me to leave? Who knows?
Two of the statues - a Siva and a Ganesh - were found. Ironically, just on the eve of a major festival to Siva which was to take place. This is known as Sivaswati and devout Hindus stay up all night chanting to Siva. Not liking group rituals much - they freak me out - I agreed to take part and we went up into the hills to light a fire for the festival while the kids built Lingams to commemorate Siva. It was very intense and after an hour of everyone chanting and throwing rice into the fire I couldn't take much more. For all my interest in this stuff I don't like intruding on a festival, not because I don't take it seriously but because I DO take it seriously. I feel like an imposter and am also very aware and sensitive to the energies flying about. PLus Siva is a pretty intense God - the Destroyer - and I wasn't sure what I was really taking part in. Exhausted, I went to bed. Perhaps Siva was doing his bit to continue to smash up the vestiges of resistance I was still putting up to India so as to open me up to what was to come. Who knows?
People may be surprised by my reaction to this. The truth is that had I lived in those days I would probably have been a solitary, a contemplative, seeking my own communion in my own way rather than in a large group. So as to keep people guessing, all my experience of this stuff has been private, internal and not external. Its about my own Soul, not ritual or gatherings. Its why I don't belong to any religion or group. A spiritual Lone Gunman if you like!
Anyway, the next day the other two statues appeared - Brahma and Krishna, the counterbalance to Siva and Ganesh. My last day with the kids was very moving, but a last trip into Madikeri freaked me out again. Its a poor city and the pain there struck me once more. Was this what I was leaving the School to encounter?
Returning to the School for the last evening, however, the Babs gave me this beautiful send off which just lefty a vast sense of love and kindness in my heart. They performed all the little plays I had been working on with them and did them wonderfully - with real heart. And the kids watching were so absorbed and loving towards them that I was reminded of the energy of theatre when it has no pretensions about it. THey sang me songs and overwhelmed me with a massive group hug - 'We love you, Uncle' they all cried and wouldn't let me go. For several hours afterwards as I was packing they appeared at my door with little drawings and messages they had written thanking me for all I had done and how I had helped them overcome shyness. It was beautiful.
I slept well and they were there to see me off the next day. Baldy Suresh gave me a big hug and a number of kisses on my cheek and I set off to get my bus, deciding I would return in my last week in India to see them before I go. Now when I think of their smiling faces I feel very strong - little Amitha, whose eyes are so vivid and full of energy but with the voice of a 60-year old smoker (!!!), pixie-like Devi whose spriteliness never stops, wise Anjinama who I would trust with my life with her kindness and loyalty, Marti, whose smile would stretch across continents, Manjanath, whose sensitivity and wisdom beyond years has him have visions when he sleeps, Navindra and Rajindra, lovely brothers who watch out for each other, space-cadet Siva, who looks as Chinese as an Indian can and has a war-cry 'GINGER! GINGER!' which became the war-cry of the school, Baldy Suresh, who showed me how wonderful it was to be 4 and unself-conscious... and so many others... I won't forget them!
So then buses and trains. What a wonderful experience! The four hour bus journey across the most stunning landscape was unforgettable. I took out a book to read but didn't open it for the whole time, so glued to the window was I. And then a glimpse of the Arabian Sea as we arrived in Mangalore.
From then on an auto-rickshaw to the Station which is exactly as you would imagine it: a sun-baked sea of people of all cultures and hues (including a few sweaty Westerners like me!) all looking to go somewhere. Getting on the train the heat was unbearable. Sweat was literally dripping off me in huge globs. I looked in the mirror and realised I was covered in shit from the bus journey. WHat had started out as a white T shirt was now brown. But no matter. A fine Hindu gentleman who was on a trip to see his Swami befriended me and welcomed me to the train. His warmth was very important in helping me settle! His grandkids were there and they played up and down. Realising how exhausted I was, I lay down and rested for a few hours, occasionally looking out of the window at the gasp-inducing landscape going by - pal-trees as far as the eye can see, football pitch-sized schoolyards filled with children, women wandering through forests with baskets on their heads, all elegant in their saris, sudden glistening rivers appearing out of the foliage with vast bridges stretching across them. Truly, I thought, the real wonder of this country is its landscape. Tough though life may be, the natural beauty around everything makes the mind explode with wonder...
And then I was engaged in conversation by a couple of Indian gents who were travelling home on the train after a day's business. How freaked out one would be if this happened in the UK. But this is India, where people are different (and the journeys very long). They gave me so much travel advice which I would not have had otherwise. They also made sure I got some food on the way. I felt very welcome and very safe.
Then at midnight Ernakalum station where I was getting off. As if to ensure I did, various Indian travellers appeared who offered to help me get off with them. THe heat of the night hit me - Kerala is very hot! - and then the organised chaos of teh rickshaws and the journey to the hotel.
So here I am, about to head out to Fort Cochin. THe next part of the adventure begins! Watch this space!
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
MORE FROM MYSORE
And as if by magic, having made that statement about Polytheism and its potentially confusing nature, the next day everything was made clear to me. Well, sort of… Saying ‘everything was made clear to me’ is a little bit of an overstatement. The full range of Hindu culture doesn’t get ‘explained’ just like that… Perhaps it would be better to say 'a few things were made clearer to me'...
After a full day at Mysore, which had seen me take in the Palace, the monkey-infested Temple at Chamundi Hill, where the Goddess Chamundi is said to have killed a buffalo demon thus founding the city, the neo-Gothic St Philomena’s Church and Tippu Sultan’s castle and palace, plus a pretty delicious veg meal in the Hotel, the next day my driver, Manju, took me to the Temple at Somnathpur, where so much was explained to me. Somnatphur is an 800 year old Temple dedicated to Vishnu built by the Hoysala dynasty. Its now defunct, or has been since the 15th Century, when invading Moghul armies, deeming it idolatrous, and therefore a Bad Thing, damaged some of its statues. As the guide told me, in Hindu tradition, if a statue gets the slightest scratch its connection with the Deity is severed and the Temple becomes inactive. Since its desecration, Somnathpur lay forgotten and disused, covered in jungle until 1958, when the Indian equivalent of the National Trust thought it might be a Good Thing to clean it up, renovate it and turn it into a museum.
And thank God they did, because its amazing. Clearly the Moghuls thought so too, because when you visit it you find the actual extent of the damage is a chip here, a broken arm on a statue there. Presumably they rushed in, shouting ‘Idols! Idols! Destroy! Destroy!’, took one look and went, ‘Idols! Idols! Des- Er, ok, that’s pretty impressive… Hm… Er… Um… Destroy a little bit… Over there perhaps… Yes, just there… Leave the rest… Good! Ok! That’s desecrated! Excellent… Now let’s go and find something else to do…’ and ran off in search of more conquest. It’s the only way I can explain why it is in such a wonderful state.
I could have stood there for hours. The whole thing is reached after about an hour’s bizarre drive from Mysore. Even Manju had to stop about forty times to ask directions. Dust and heat, paddy fields on either side of the road, nonchalant cows holding up traffic (this really is a good country to be incarnated as a cow. No-one bothers you at all, except for a little milk) until eventually you come to a few shacks at the end of the road which reveal the Temple itself. As you approach, you see stone walls concealing three high towers, all rather like those you see on most Hindu Temples. Outside the entrance is a big column, almost Greek in appearance, where, I was told, a permanent flame used to burn to help pilgrims find it (its also thought it may have been surmounted by a statue of Vishnu’s ‘vehicle’, an Eagle, but more of this later). When you go in, you see backed sand and stone, in the centre of which are the three tall soapstone pillars of the Temple itself, built on a raised platform in the shape of a many pointed star. As with all such geometric designs, you can’t see this properly unless you are floating above the Temple which, short of a helicopter or an ability to Astrally Project, is impossible. Nevertheless, the architects must have felt this design was important… Put simply, the whole thing is symbolic of a kind of Celestial Vehicle. It is quite stunning.
The Temple venerates Vishnu in three of his incarnations: Vishnu himself, Keshawar and Krishna. Because its defunct, it’s a completely different experience to visiting the other Temples I have been to so far. There is no ceremony taking place and it is very clean. Its customary to take your shoes off before you go into a Temple which is still being used (which is a bit rich as most people’s feet are pretty honking anyway) but you don’t have to at Somnathpur. Although the other Temples were also fascinating, they were pretty dusty and smelly while this one, because it’s a museum is well-maintained.
A strange feature of all of the ones I have seen is how low and claustrophobic they are. They are also very dark, as they are made of heavy stone with very little light coming through. It’s a stark contrast to the high ceilings and copious light of Churches we have in the West. But this is all in part because Hindu worship is very different to Christian. Hindu Temples are like Roman and Greek ones were. You don’t all go en masse, necessarily. You come when you want and receive blessings etc when you need.. Thus there is no congregation in the same way, although when there are a lot of people present there is quite a crush. Somnathpur was no different in this way. The effect of this is to make all worship within the Temple much more intimate. There simply isn’t space for hundreds or even tens of people.
A guide appeared and offered to show me round. He really knew his stuff and I was immediately impressed. He explained to me how there were almost 5000 statues on the site and how about 50 different sculptors were involved in making it. It was he who told me about the Moghul desecration and the history of the Temple. Fascinatingly, it was built in the late 1200s, the same age in which spirituality was exploding all over Europe, with the Cathars, the Templars, the Kabbalists, the Sufis etc, when popular spirituality was erupting in a second burst of enthusiasm everywhere, and the forces of reaction and inspiration became locked in battle. I asked him whether this was a great age for Hinduism and he said it was. Clearly something was sweeping the planet at that time even though since then it has been pretty much downhill all the way.
The Temple is covered in countless images of Vishnu and his consorts, as well as nods to Hanuman the Monkey King, Brahma and Siva. There are also many images from the epics the Ramayana and Mahabarata as well as a few fruity erotic poses from the Karma Sutra. It was as the guide was explaining them all to me that so much fell into place… I found it fascinating… Here is the gist of what he said…
Hinduism has no less than 3 million Gods and Deities but all of them are aspects of the central three and their consorts. This three are Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, known as the Trimurti. Above them is Brahman, the Spirit Supreme, who is the formless spiritual energy which pervades everything and maintains the existence of the Cosmos. Brahman has no personal aspect, he/she/it is just Spirit and Consciousness, closer to the idea of th Tao or the Ain Sof of Kabbalah. All Creation, including the Gods themselves, are emanations or Avatars of this Spirit Supreme. Thus, quite literally, all is one.
Thus Hinduism is actually monotheistic, but all the Gods within Brahman and the multiplicity of Creation within that reflect the central idea of the One in the Many and the Many in the One, which is why, without an awareness of Brahman, one can experience that sense of confusion I mentioned before(and I am by no means certain that the average Hindu is aware of this either). Perhaps one could call it a Monotheistic Polytheism or a Polytheistic Monotheism.
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva represent the primary forces at work in the Universe and in Man. Brahma is the Creator, and is one step down from Brahman. He is represented by four heads, each looking in one of the four directions – North, West, East and South. Brahma, having created everything for Brahman (rather like Plato’s Demiurge), enters a state of Meditation or Trance, and plays no further role other than maintaining the Cosmos’ form. Vishnu, known as ‘the Protector’ or ‘the Preserver’, represents stability, honour, justice and is called upon to protect the innocent and serve humanity. If there is a counterpart in the West, it would be Apollo or Christ. Siva, his counterpart, is known as ‘the Destroyer’ and is a far more anarchic, independent figure, most akin to Dionysus. In other legends, it is Siva who is ‘dreaming’ the Universe, his eyes always closed, for if he awakens the Universe will be destroyed. Siva is also depicted as the Lord of the Dance in that classic image of the multi-limbed figure dancing in the wheel of fire, standing on the demon Ignorance. Thus he becomes another image of Cosmic Man understanding the true nature of the Cosmos, able to transcend the many and bewildering buffets of Time and Space in an image of joyous harmony…
Thus Hinduism recognizes the interaction of these three energies in everything, removing at a stroke any anxiety about how evil or destruction can exist in a Universe created by a just God. If Creativity, Preservation and Destruction are part of the Trimurti, all these energies are seen as being essential parts of the cycles and processes of the Universe. Thus there is no duality. While we in the West get stuck in knots trying to reconcile a loving God with war, famine, death and natural disaster, Hinduism sees them as One. Is this a good thing? You decide, but it perhaps explains why we as a culture have set about trying to defeat war, famine, death and natural disaster while in the East there is more of an awareness of these things as part of life’s process. Does this breed passivity? Possibly. Does our way breed neurosis? Possibly. I guess its spiritual swings and roundabouts… but further evidence, if evidence were needed, of how the Mind of a culture adapts to the world around it. In fact this is something which is occupying me more and more out here. From this distant perspective, even our own Western mindset with its obsession with money, control, fame and belief in progress and a science which believes that human consciousness is an illusion and nothing else seems like just another construction of our mind. One gets an overwhelming sense of the human race creating its own reality everywhere and believing in it 100 per cent. That, perhaps is part of the problem. If we were able to have a more pluralistic and wide-ranging view we might be able to work through some of our problems. Instead we all sit in our different parts of the world convinced that we have 'the Truth' when in fact that Truth is a lot more subtle and slippery than we think.
The guide went on to answer my questions. He explained, for instance, why Hindu Gods are many-limbed. Each pair of arms denoted a different level of divinity. The first pair were always human while the second, third and so on symbolized multidimensionality. Vishnu has anything from two sets of arms to thirty-six, each of which carries an object or is making a gesture which reveals a new aspect of the Deity. I asked him why Krishna only had two and he explained immediately that Krishna was the most human of all of Vishnu’s incarnations. I should explain briefly that Vishnu is the only God of the Trimurti to incarnate in our world, Krishna being the last, unless you count the Buddha which some Hindus do (although I have a suspicion the Buddha would have had something to say about that, given that he spoke against worship of Gods of any kind! Still, it’s a wonderful sign of the ebullient generosity of Hinduism to include him!). The bomb that went off in my mind was when I asked the guide what the symbolism of Vishnu’s first incarnation, a great fish, was. He immediately said that this was because the human race began in the sea…
And then it hit me. It meant that the whole progression of Vishnu’s incarnations were a record of the history of human evolution, starting from the fish, through the mammals (bull, lion), to the most human, Krishna himself. In other words the whole allegory of Vishnu was another sign of the whole history of the human race from our early origins in the sea to now (another one in the eye for Richard Dawkins!) with our own Divine nature flowing throughout, with Krishna the Divine Human at his most accessible. And, rather wonderfully, the whole cycle from Brahman to Krishna is echoed in the names of those that dominate the Old and New Testament, Abraham and Christ. Once again, the Gods or God is/are within us. Forget that fact, think they are external, and we miss the message.
This may seem academic to everyone else but it hit me with the force of an express train. A friend of mine in the UK told me I would have mystical experiences in India. Others both there and here have told me how India is the oldest uninterrupted culture in the world and the fountainhead for all spirituality, philosophy and learning. Well its true and no matter how many times it is invaded, from the Aryans to the Moghuls to the British, it has never gone away and never had its culture erased. Indeed, if anything, it has transformed and infused the invading culture. And that is what is so beautiful about this place. For all the social difficulties, it is like going back in time as well as staying in the present. As you drive through the countryside and the cities, everything seems to merge into one. Cars share the roads with carts drawn by oxen, teenagers wear jeans and T Shirts and carry mobiles while women in Sarees carry wood or baskets on their heads, children roll tyres along the pavement with sticks for entertainment while internet cafes connect you with far off countries. Inevitably the imagination runs riot and with all these different cultures with their monuments across the landscape, one can’t help engaging with everything. The mind just flows. And everything is out there for discussion. All the things people tend to have to covert about in the West – such as the things I am discussing here – one doesn’t have to be embarrassed about. Open a national newspaper and on page two you find a discussion about Chakras. Where would you find that in a Western newspaper? Certainly not in the Guardian! On the next page you will find a discussion about a Bollywood star or an equally partisan article about the stupidity of religion. Its all there.
Its not all terrific, of course. On Valentine’s Day the papers were full of discussions about the reactionary Right Hindu party’s Shiv Sena’s announcement that it would physically attack anyone seen celebrating Valentine’s in public. It was deemed un-Indian and would not be tolerated. The government responded by arresting the leaders of the party for the day (they were threatening violence, after all) while the public responded by sending hug deliveries of pink underpants to their HQ. Th Shiv Sena (or SS!) responded to THAT by announcing that they would burn all the pink pants… If only all extreme political debate were carried out in such a way!
So anyway, Somnathpur was amazing and took me somewhere very special.. Wandering around the Temple towers and walls I was shown all the different hand-carved images of Vishnu, Parvati, Brahma, Sita, Rama, Hanuman, Ganesh etc. Rather wonderfully, before I left I was shown a carving of Vishnu in his ‘vehicle’, the Eagle, looking very much like the winged image of Ahura Mazda of Zoroastriainism, and as we drove away to return to Madikeri and the school, an eagle flew above us, following us for about half an hour. Who knows? Maybe Vishnu himself was watching out for us?
The drive home was as spectacular as it was coming out. I mentioned that the countryside is the greatest Temple I had encountered and I mean it. Its not difficult to realize where the great spiritual history and wisdom of this country came from. The landscape is breathtaking and utterly magical. It’s a form of meditation just to drive through it or even just sit and look at it, as we did when we got back to Madikeri and my driver showed me the amazing view from the little park just above the town. People like to guess what I actually ‘believe’ in (ie am I a Christian, a Kabbalist, a Muslim etc). I like to keep them guessing but if you want to get closest, read the Upanishads, which is the text I think is at the heart of everything. Here is where you will learn about Brahman, the Spirit Supreme incarnate in everything, including Man. In India, looking at the trees, the hills, the mountains, the forests, the lakes, the rivers, you find the spirit of these great Scriptures flowing everywhere… It made me aware of how much we lose by the continuing urbanization of our culture, even though this obviously brings prosperity and security to us (I’m not naïve enough to think that we would all be better off living as people live over here) and of how we have banished discussion of the heart and the Soul from our daily discourse. It isn’t healthy for us. We need to get our connection with that back. Here in India, for all the hardship and suffering, there is nevertheless an openness about these things which is incredibly liberating..
And side by side with it, all the bizarre contradictions of being alive. I have spoken of the darker side of things here and I am sure I will see more of that, but there is also an endearing, funny side. Spelling and grammar are rather wonderful, for instance. I have seen adverts for LOUXOURY BUSES for instance and signs on statues saying DON’T TOUTCH ME. I have even thought of going into business as a freelance speller for people. Shop names get better and better too, from the demurely inviting lingerie store called BRA AND PANTY and the tagline for another underwear shop for women which reads THE SHOP THAT SATISFIES ALL WOMEN’S SENTIMENTS (whatever that may mean!). Its very inspiring in its eccentricity..
And its not all wonderful spirituality and insight either. I finally managed to get to the Tibetan Buddhist refugee camp near the school and it was a very depressing sight. Its hard for us in the West to imagine what being a refugee might be like but it was clear from the tiny bit of land these Tibetans were living on that its not easy. Nor is it good for the Spirit, as wandering around the Buddhist Temple buildings indicated to me. The Golden Temple looked very unhappy, a kind of Disney construction with no real soul to it at all and wandering into a room full of Buddhist monks chanting in front of giant-sized statues of the Buddha was very dispiriting. It felt like compulsory chapel, with all the monks yawning, looking depressed, gazing out of the window and not feeling anything. Its not surprising. These Tibetans have been stuck here since 1949, their leader in the north of the country, with sons being sent to be monks so that they can be taken care of. Refugee life can damage the soul, and little Enlightenment was going on it felt to me. It was very bleak and very sad to behold people deracinated from their culture and not able to draw any real sustenance from it. I wondered what the Buddha himself would have made of it all. Like JC, I don’t think he ever encouraged anyone to build Temples but to look within and I think he would have been miserable to see so many people supposedly following him but only really following the externals. I imagine it would have sent him out on the road again…
And that was the second part of my weekend. For me, it was wonderful stuff, even the apparently negative experience at the Refugee camp, and made me look forward more and more to what was to come. When I got back to the school the kids gave me a welcome that almost made me cry. They came rushing up to me at the gate as I got out of the car and hugged me, saying how much they had missed me. It was so lovely to be cared about in such a way. One came into my hut as I was unloading my bags and said ‘When you are gone, when I look at the stars, I will know that you are right here with us’.
To the future… and more adventures…
After a full day at Mysore, which had seen me take in the Palace, the monkey-infested Temple at Chamundi Hill, where the Goddess Chamundi is said to have killed a buffalo demon thus founding the city, the neo-Gothic St Philomena’s Church and Tippu Sultan’s castle and palace, plus a pretty delicious veg meal in the Hotel, the next day my driver, Manju, took me to the Temple at Somnathpur, where so much was explained to me. Somnatphur is an 800 year old Temple dedicated to Vishnu built by the Hoysala dynasty. Its now defunct, or has been since the 15th Century, when invading Moghul armies, deeming it idolatrous, and therefore a Bad Thing, damaged some of its statues. As the guide told me, in Hindu tradition, if a statue gets the slightest scratch its connection with the Deity is severed and the Temple becomes inactive. Since its desecration, Somnathpur lay forgotten and disused, covered in jungle until 1958, when the Indian equivalent of the National Trust thought it might be a Good Thing to clean it up, renovate it and turn it into a museum.
And thank God they did, because its amazing. Clearly the Moghuls thought so too, because when you visit it you find the actual extent of the damage is a chip here, a broken arm on a statue there. Presumably they rushed in, shouting ‘Idols! Idols! Destroy! Destroy!’, took one look and went, ‘Idols! Idols! Des- Er, ok, that’s pretty impressive… Hm… Er… Um… Destroy a little bit… Over there perhaps… Yes, just there… Leave the rest… Good! Ok! That’s desecrated! Excellent… Now let’s go and find something else to do…’ and ran off in search of more conquest. It’s the only way I can explain why it is in such a wonderful state.
I could have stood there for hours. The whole thing is reached after about an hour’s bizarre drive from Mysore. Even Manju had to stop about forty times to ask directions. Dust and heat, paddy fields on either side of the road, nonchalant cows holding up traffic (this really is a good country to be incarnated as a cow. No-one bothers you at all, except for a little milk) until eventually you come to a few shacks at the end of the road which reveal the Temple itself. As you approach, you see stone walls concealing three high towers, all rather like those you see on most Hindu Temples. Outside the entrance is a big column, almost Greek in appearance, where, I was told, a permanent flame used to burn to help pilgrims find it (its also thought it may have been surmounted by a statue of Vishnu’s ‘vehicle’, an Eagle, but more of this later). When you go in, you see backed sand and stone, in the centre of which are the three tall soapstone pillars of the Temple itself, built on a raised platform in the shape of a many pointed star. As with all such geometric designs, you can’t see this properly unless you are floating above the Temple which, short of a helicopter or an ability to Astrally Project, is impossible. Nevertheless, the architects must have felt this design was important… Put simply, the whole thing is symbolic of a kind of Celestial Vehicle. It is quite stunning.
The Temple venerates Vishnu in three of his incarnations: Vishnu himself, Keshawar and Krishna. Because its defunct, it’s a completely different experience to visiting the other Temples I have been to so far. There is no ceremony taking place and it is very clean. Its customary to take your shoes off before you go into a Temple which is still being used (which is a bit rich as most people’s feet are pretty honking anyway) but you don’t have to at Somnathpur. Although the other Temples were also fascinating, they were pretty dusty and smelly while this one, because it’s a museum is well-maintained.
A strange feature of all of the ones I have seen is how low and claustrophobic they are. They are also very dark, as they are made of heavy stone with very little light coming through. It’s a stark contrast to the high ceilings and copious light of Churches we have in the West. But this is all in part because Hindu worship is very different to Christian. Hindu Temples are like Roman and Greek ones were. You don’t all go en masse, necessarily. You come when you want and receive blessings etc when you need.. Thus there is no congregation in the same way, although when there are a lot of people present there is quite a crush. Somnathpur was no different in this way. The effect of this is to make all worship within the Temple much more intimate. There simply isn’t space for hundreds or even tens of people.
A guide appeared and offered to show me round. He really knew his stuff and I was immediately impressed. He explained to me how there were almost 5000 statues on the site and how about 50 different sculptors were involved in making it. It was he who told me about the Moghul desecration and the history of the Temple. Fascinatingly, it was built in the late 1200s, the same age in which spirituality was exploding all over Europe, with the Cathars, the Templars, the Kabbalists, the Sufis etc, when popular spirituality was erupting in a second burst of enthusiasm everywhere, and the forces of reaction and inspiration became locked in battle. I asked him whether this was a great age for Hinduism and he said it was. Clearly something was sweeping the planet at that time even though since then it has been pretty much downhill all the way.
The Temple is covered in countless images of Vishnu and his consorts, as well as nods to Hanuman the Monkey King, Brahma and Siva. There are also many images from the epics the Ramayana and Mahabarata as well as a few fruity erotic poses from the Karma Sutra. It was as the guide was explaining them all to me that so much fell into place… I found it fascinating… Here is the gist of what he said…
Hinduism has no less than 3 million Gods and Deities but all of them are aspects of the central three and their consorts. This three are Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, known as the Trimurti. Above them is Brahman, the Spirit Supreme, who is the formless spiritual energy which pervades everything and maintains the existence of the Cosmos. Brahman has no personal aspect, he/she/it is just Spirit and Consciousness, closer to the idea of th Tao or the Ain Sof of Kabbalah. All Creation, including the Gods themselves, are emanations or Avatars of this Spirit Supreme. Thus, quite literally, all is one.
Thus Hinduism is actually monotheistic, but all the Gods within Brahman and the multiplicity of Creation within that reflect the central idea of the One in the Many and the Many in the One, which is why, without an awareness of Brahman, one can experience that sense of confusion I mentioned before(and I am by no means certain that the average Hindu is aware of this either). Perhaps one could call it a Monotheistic Polytheism or a Polytheistic Monotheism.
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva represent the primary forces at work in the Universe and in Man. Brahma is the Creator, and is one step down from Brahman. He is represented by four heads, each looking in one of the four directions – North, West, East and South. Brahma, having created everything for Brahman (rather like Plato’s Demiurge), enters a state of Meditation or Trance, and plays no further role other than maintaining the Cosmos’ form. Vishnu, known as ‘the Protector’ or ‘the Preserver’, represents stability, honour, justice and is called upon to protect the innocent and serve humanity. If there is a counterpart in the West, it would be Apollo or Christ. Siva, his counterpart, is known as ‘the Destroyer’ and is a far more anarchic, independent figure, most akin to Dionysus. In other legends, it is Siva who is ‘dreaming’ the Universe, his eyes always closed, for if he awakens the Universe will be destroyed. Siva is also depicted as the Lord of the Dance in that classic image of the multi-limbed figure dancing in the wheel of fire, standing on the demon Ignorance. Thus he becomes another image of Cosmic Man understanding the true nature of the Cosmos, able to transcend the many and bewildering buffets of Time and Space in an image of joyous harmony…
Thus Hinduism recognizes the interaction of these three energies in everything, removing at a stroke any anxiety about how evil or destruction can exist in a Universe created by a just God. If Creativity, Preservation and Destruction are part of the Trimurti, all these energies are seen as being essential parts of the cycles and processes of the Universe. Thus there is no duality. While we in the West get stuck in knots trying to reconcile a loving God with war, famine, death and natural disaster, Hinduism sees them as One. Is this a good thing? You decide, but it perhaps explains why we as a culture have set about trying to defeat war, famine, death and natural disaster while in the East there is more of an awareness of these things as part of life’s process. Does this breed passivity? Possibly. Does our way breed neurosis? Possibly. I guess its spiritual swings and roundabouts… but further evidence, if evidence were needed, of how the Mind of a culture adapts to the world around it. In fact this is something which is occupying me more and more out here. From this distant perspective, even our own Western mindset with its obsession with money, control, fame and belief in progress and a science which believes that human consciousness is an illusion and nothing else seems like just another construction of our mind. One gets an overwhelming sense of the human race creating its own reality everywhere and believing in it 100 per cent. That, perhaps is part of the problem. If we were able to have a more pluralistic and wide-ranging view we might be able to work through some of our problems. Instead we all sit in our different parts of the world convinced that we have 'the Truth' when in fact that Truth is a lot more subtle and slippery than we think.
The guide went on to answer my questions. He explained, for instance, why Hindu Gods are many-limbed. Each pair of arms denoted a different level of divinity. The first pair were always human while the second, third and so on symbolized multidimensionality. Vishnu has anything from two sets of arms to thirty-six, each of which carries an object or is making a gesture which reveals a new aspect of the Deity. I asked him why Krishna only had two and he explained immediately that Krishna was the most human of all of Vishnu’s incarnations. I should explain briefly that Vishnu is the only God of the Trimurti to incarnate in our world, Krishna being the last, unless you count the Buddha which some Hindus do (although I have a suspicion the Buddha would have had something to say about that, given that he spoke against worship of Gods of any kind! Still, it’s a wonderful sign of the ebullient generosity of Hinduism to include him!). The bomb that went off in my mind was when I asked the guide what the symbolism of Vishnu’s first incarnation, a great fish, was. He immediately said that this was because the human race began in the sea…
And then it hit me. It meant that the whole progression of Vishnu’s incarnations were a record of the history of human evolution, starting from the fish, through the mammals (bull, lion), to the most human, Krishna himself. In other words the whole allegory of Vishnu was another sign of the whole history of the human race from our early origins in the sea to now (another one in the eye for Richard Dawkins!) with our own Divine nature flowing throughout, with Krishna the Divine Human at his most accessible. And, rather wonderfully, the whole cycle from Brahman to Krishna is echoed in the names of those that dominate the Old and New Testament, Abraham and Christ. Once again, the Gods or God is/are within us. Forget that fact, think they are external, and we miss the message.
This may seem academic to everyone else but it hit me with the force of an express train. A friend of mine in the UK told me I would have mystical experiences in India. Others both there and here have told me how India is the oldest uninterrupted culture in the world and the fountainhead for all spirituality, philosophy and learning. Well its true and no matter how many times it is invaded, from the Aryans to the Moghuls to the British, it has never gone away and never had its culture erased. Indeed, if anything, it has transformed and infused the invading culture. And that is what is so beautiful about this place. For all the social difficulties, it is like going back in time as well as staying in the present. As you drive through the countryside and the cities, everything seems to merge into one. Cars share the roads with carts drawn by oxen, teenagers wear jeans and T Shirts and carry mobiles while women in Sarees carry wood or baskets on their heads, children roll tyres along the pavement with sticks for entertainment while internet cafes connect you with far off countries. Inevitably the imagination runs riot and with all these different cultures with their monuments across the landscape, one can’t help engaging with everything. The mind just flows. And everything is out there for discussion. All the things people tend to have to covert about in the West – such as the things I am discussing here – one doesn’t have to be embarrassed about. Open a national newspaper and on page two you find a discussion about Chakras. Where would you find that in a Western newspaper? Certainly not in the Guardian! On the next page you will find a discussion about a Bollywood star or an equally partisan article about the stupidity of religion. Its all there.
Its not all terrific, of course. On Valentine’s Day the papers were full of discussions about the reactionary Right Hindu party’s Shiv Sena’s announcement that it would physically attack anyone seen celebrating Valentine’s in public. It was deemed un-Indian and would not be tolerated. The government responded by arresting the leaders of the party for the day (they were threatening violence, after all) while the public responded by sending hug deliveries of pink underpants to their HQ. Th Shiv Sena (or SS!) responded to THAT by announcing that they would burn all the pink pants… If only all extreme political debate were carried out in such a way!
So anyway, Somnathpur was amazing and took me somewhere very special.. Wandering around the Temple towers and walls I was shown all the different hand-carved images of Vishnu, Parvati, Brahma, Sita, Rama, Hanuman, Ganesh etc. Rather wonderfully, before I left I was shown a carving of Vishnu in his ‘vehicle’, the Eagle, looking very much like the winged image of Ahura Mazda of Zoroastriainism, and as we drove away to return to Madikeri and the school, an eagle flew above us, following us for about half an hour. Who knows? Maybe Vishnu himself was watching out for us?
The drive home was as spectacular as it was coming out. I mentioned that the countryside is the greatest Temple I had encountered and I mean it. Its not difficult to realize where the great spiritual history and wisdom of this country came from. The landscape is breathtaking and utterly magical. It’s a form of meditation just to drive through it or even just sit and look at it, as we did when we got back to Madikeri and my driver showed me the amazing view from the little park just above the town. People like to guess what I actually ‘believe’ in (ie am I a Christian, a Kabbalist, a Muslim etc). I like to keep them guessing but if you want to get closest, read the Upanishads, which is the text I think is at the heart of everything. Here is where you will learn about Brahman, the Spirit Supreme incarnate in everything, including Man. In India, looking at the trees, the hills, the mountains, the forests, the lakes, the rivers, you find the spirit of these great Scriptures flowing everywhere… It made me aware of how much we lose by the continuing urbanization of our culture, even though this obviously brings prosperity and security to us (I’m not naïve enough to think that we would all be better off living as people live over here) and of how we have banished discussion of the heart and the Soul from our daily discourse. It isn’t healthy for us. We need to get our connection with that back. Here in India, for all the hardship and suffering, there is nevertheless an openness about these things which is incredibly liberating..
And side by side with it, all the bizarre contradictions of being alive. I have spoken of the darker side of things here and I am sure I will see more of that, but there is also an endearing, funny side. Spelling and grammar are rather wonderful, for instance. I have seen adverts for LOUXOURY BUSES for instance and signs on statues saying DON’T TOUTCH ME. I have even thought of going into business as a freelance speller for people. Shop names get better and better too, from the demurely inviting lingerie store called BRA AND PANTY and the tagline for another underwear shop for women which reads THE SHOP THAT SATISFIES ALL WOMEN’S SENTIMENTS (whatever that may mean!). Its very inspiring in its eccentricity..
And its not all wonderful spirituality and insight either. I finally managed to get to the Tibetan Buddhist refugee camp near the school and it was a very depressing sight. Its hard for us in the West to imagine what being a refugee might be like but it was clear from the tiny bit of land these Tibetans were living on that its not easy. Nor is it good for the Spirit, as wandering around the Buddhist Temple buildings indicated to me. The Golden Temple looked very unhappy, a kind of Disney construction with no real soul to it at all and wandering into a room full of Buddhist monks chanting in front of giant-sized statues of the Buddha was very dispiriting. It felt like compulsory chapel, with all the monks yawning, looking depressed, gazing out of the window and not feeling anything. Its not surprising. These Tibetans have been stuck here since 1949, their leader in the north of the country, with sons being sent to be monks so that they can be taken care of. Refugee life can damage the soul, and little Enlightenment was going on it felt to me. It was very bleak and very sad to behold people deracinated from their culture and not able to draw any real sustenance from it. I wondered what the Buddha himself would have made of it all. Like JC, I don’t think he ever encouraged anyone to build Temples but to look within and I think he would have been miserable to see so many people supposedly following him but only really following the externals. I imagine it would have sent him out on the road again…
And that was the second part of my weekend. For me, it was wonderful stuff, even the apparently negative experience at the Refugee camp, and made me look forward more and more to what was to come. When I got back to the school the kids gave me a welcome that almost made me cry. They came rushing up to me at the gate as I got out of the car and hugged me, saying how much they had missed me. It was so lovely to be cared about in such a way. One came into my hut as I was unloading my bags and said ‘When you are gone, when I look at the stars, I will know that you are right here with us’.
To the future… and more adventures…
Saturday, 14 February 2009
I SAW MYSORE ON THE SEASHORE
Well, not strictly on the seashore. Mysore is landlocked in Karnataka, but I thought it sounded good so let it go..
Big times! A lot has happened since my last post. A LOT! Its been amazing. And I am only three weeks in. I am writing this from a luxury hotel in Mysore where I am staying for two nights before returning to the school for my last week. I never thought I would end up in a luxury hotel but I did, and not through my agency! One of the two brothers from Madikeri who are involved with the school runs a tour agency and I asked him to organise a visit to Mysore for me. He did, but didn't tell me what kind of hotel he had booked. I was astonished to wind up in this luxury pad last night and even more astonished to discover that my stay will cost a pocket-blasting fifty pounds! How will I cope???
But I am running ahead of myself. What has been going on?
Well, for another week or so I was still having a great time at the school, but then hit a crisis. For one, all the drama work I was doing with the kids was fab but exhausting, It involved a lot of running around, banging drums and being exuberant. Couple that with getting used to the Indian climate, sleeping on a rock-hard bed in a dusty little hut and still being a little freaked out by everything and you have a recipe for overload. And overload I did. I was running around playing a chasing game with the kids last Saturday and then WHAM I knocked myself out on a beam from one of the huts. I blacked out and found myself lying on the floor with all the kids around me. I went to bed, having been looked after by the other teachers and woke up feeling very wonky and emotional. I decided to go back to the house I had stayed in nearby for some rest and in my fragile state plunged into a Dark Night Of The Soul. All sorts of stuff came up which had been bothering me all week - what was I doing out here? What was I going to do when I got home? How could I go about travelling around this vast and often overwhelming (and sometimes terrifying!), unfamiliar country? Who was I? What was I doing? Had I made a terrible mistake? Was I going to die out here? Was a I horrible failure? In short, it was not much fun.
THe next day, I resolved to speak to some of the other teachers about what I had gone through. I had already had some wonderfully rich conversations with them and I thought they might understand. And thank God I did, because one in particular, Laurie, put me completely straight. She said that everyone went through what I was going through, that India was very intense and at first any Westerner feels totally freaked out and thrown by it, that the coming up of all sorts of big emotional stuff was all part of it and an IMPORTANT part of it and that I shouldn't worry and just let it happen.
Knowing that what I was going through was a common experience immediately helped me. I realised how I had become kind of schizophrenic - one part of my mind in India trying to come to terms with it all, the other part clinging to England to protect itself. No wonder I had cracked my head. I took it to be myself telling myself to stop running around so much and to stop thinking so much. Laurie told me that if I needed to rest I should take the morning off and I did. I lay in my little hut and had the most extraordinary three hours of just total letting go. It felt like a complete death and rebirth and when I reemerged feeling refreshed and strong again, I realised that I had gone through an immense change.
I almost wrote 'my little cell' there rather than 'my little hut'. As the days have gone by, I have realised that the school is the nearest thing to a kind of monastery or religious community I have been part of. I had been living in my little hut like a kind of ascetic, and the Dark Night Of The Soul I have described had really happened. Something old had died and for the first time I was relaxed and unafraid. It was as if I had given msyelf permission to be in India for the first time. I remember reading how the Cathars, as part of their initiation in the state of being a Parfait, spent three days in a sealed cave so as to reenact the time in the Tomb of Christ. When the reemerged, their old self was 'dead' and they had been 'resurrected' into a new self. Suddenly this made perfect sense to me. I also remembered the defining experience of Maharshi Ramana (whose Ashram it emerges a friend of mine has just been on and which I hope to visit) which was one of going through a kind of 'death' experience which he said purged him of all fear of mortality and enabled him to live as he did from then onwards.
What I had experienced wasn't on that level but it was a kind of death and rebirth nevertheless. I have said in conversation before that death & reincarnation/resurrection is something we go through periodically in life and now I realise more and more that it is true. We shouldn't be afraid of these things. More, its a measure of the ethos of the school that I felt I could talk about these things to people I had known for barely a fortnight. How hard it is to share one's vulnerability in our normal lives! How afraid we are of admitting problems or fear to those around us in our working experiences. And yet being able to share these things meant I could work through them.
Anyway, enough embaressing stuff. Since that turnaround things have just got richer and richer. Being with the kids is wonderful and has been bringing up enormous thought processes. I think a lot about my family's history out here, not just my grandparents but those members of my family who served in Wingate's Chindits. I began to think about how those ordinary soldiers, from the Raj to the Second World WAr (which was the Raj of course) must have coped being taken from the UK to other side of the world where everything was so different. I thought about my own distress and confusion at adjusting to India and then instantly understood why how for so long the bulk of our colonial ancestors, faced with a culture they did not understand which was so different to theirs, just shut down on it and kept separate from it. And yet even this was not total - as you live here you recognise how subtle and complex the relationship between the British and India was and still is. The two psyches were fascinated and repelled by each other. They still are, most probably, When you see a fellow Westerner out here, looking red or pasty, either pretending not to be all at sea or looking like a cliched hippie traveller, you recognise how silly we must seem and how we are still enacting the same confusions our ancestors did in an alien culture, albeit in not so violent a way...
And then as time goes by, one ceases to be quite so freaked out by Indian society and begin to recognise that it is not so unlike our own. In the end, the social problems the world faces are the same everywhere, as are the spiritual and emotional ones. We just all do it slightly differently...
So lots of new things - as well as a strange reliving and reclaiming of my own childhood. Memories are coming up as I teach and play with the kids. Memories of my own upbringing and home and my time at boarding school. I have said befoer what astonishing kids these are. And they are. THey are like a family - and one of real, genuine love. Every visitor who comes to the school remarks upon their quality and the enriching experience of being with them. One Swedish guy was discussing with me the horrors these kids had seen but also the wonder that they were experiencing at the school. He had only been there a few days but when I said I hoped that the darkness they had experienced hadn't scarred them, he said, with no trace or irony or sentimentality, 'One would hope that the love they are experiencing here will take care of that.' And he was right. It is a tangible thing here. We in the cynical West, or perhaps cynical England, get so embarressed even by the idea of discussing love as a concept. And yet it IS transforming. It has transformed me in the past and it is transforming me now. Its very real here. One doesn't need all the Scriptures which tell us it to be the truth to experience it. Perhaps we need to give ourselves to it more...
Of course it involves great risk, as one might get hurt, but here in this school I am experiencing it as a very real thing.
So... Mysore... Well, Mysore is great. Still a bit bonkers, but a terrific antidote to the shell-shock of Mumbai. Mysore is one of the great cultural centres of Karnataka, home of Tipu Sultan, who kicked British bum successfully for many years until the Duke Of Wellington shut him up. Its dominated by an amazing Palace which the ruling family lived in until the end of the Raj. I was there today. Its amazing. Surrounded by sixteen temples - of which I was able to see those dedicated to Vishnu, Lakshmi and Krishna (Krishna's being the one I really responded to) - it still comes as a surprise to discover that it was completed in the 1930s and was designed by a British architect! A wonderful explosion of Hindu, Muslim and European design ideas it is a real stunner of a place to visit. Your breath is taken away one minute by a hall of green and gold, then a vast chamber with stained glass ceilings covered in peacocks and then shocked to find a naff piece of pseudo-classical sculptuer of Hermes charging at you from out of a pillar. Oddest of all is a life-sizs statue of one of the RAjahs which is fully painted and looks like it might get up and talk to you (even the Rough Guide mentions this)...
THe Temples weer fascinating, although none of them struck me as the Jain temple in Mumbai had done. These were all Hindu temples and are so different in mood to Churches et al that it is a wonder to behold. On the one hand they are very old (and a bit run down) but on the other they are very quirky. In one I found the priest in traditional semi-naked robes catching up on the latest news in the local daily. But the sensuality and richness of the temples is fascinating, as is their informality. People come and go, take blessings, talk, worship, pray as the please and the Priest gives them the blessings they need. This informality is hugely appealing and is reflected in the richness of the temples' imagery. One thing you quickly spot is the fact that all Hindu Gods look happy. THey smile and dance, look well-fed and without exceptions have lovers. Vishnu, Siva, Krishna et al all have wives with whom they enjoy life with. Krishn even had mass group sex with a load of Gopis for God's sake!
Jung described Hindu temple entrances as anthills with Gods crawling all over them and in a sense he is right. Hindu temples are covered in hosts fo dancing Gods, smiling and sometimes making love. On one mobile temple I saw in Tipu Sultan's fort a woman was depicted having sex with a donkey! The sense of celebration and fecundity of the imagery is wonderfully rich. Being taken into the 9th Century temple in Tipu Sultan's fort one became overwhelmed by the number of Gods inside, most of which I had never heard of, and I thought I was well-informed about the Hindu pantheon! Polytheists take note - there is a wonderful delight to be had in the profusion of Gods out here, but one can also see how lost you can become within that! Fascinatingly, when we eventually went to Tipu's own palace and walked in his gardens, the breathtaking formal layout was a real contrast to the more intuitive, freeform sprawl of the rest of India. It was a classic example of the precision and focus of the Islamic mind at its best. I'm not saying it was BETTER than the Hindu mind (far from it!), only that one could see the contrast. Hinduism is so prolific, so rich and multifarious, so aware of the cyle of things and the onenes of things one can forget the equally fascinating formality and precision of Islam when it is really creative.
And this is what is so fascinating already about India. Yes, people still try to scam and cheat you (a group of rickshaw owners tried to spin me a yarn about how nothing was open today because it was Valentine's Day (!!!) but offered to take me to somewhere else. Happily my driver was at hand and once I had checked the truth of all this with the hotel I just spent the day with him, which was great as he knew where everything was and stopped me from being cheated), but all you see is the most incredible diversity. In amongst the teeming colours and noise and bustle of the streets you see a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks in their orange robes strolling around, a group of Muslims in their distintive dress doing some shopping and then, most bizarrely, an enormous neo-Gothic church rising up out of nowhere with its own Indian take on the iconography of Christ and the Virgin Mary. THroughout all this one is thrown back into thinking about all the different ways in which we have expressed ourselves spiritually over the ages. After a day of Hindu Gods in all their rich profusion, for instance, visiting the Church of St Philomena made me suddenly aware of something we have completely lost sight of in the West - just how humanistic Christianity was intended to be. THe delight of the Hindu Gods, which give us an insight into how it must have been to understand oneself in terms of the Egyptian, Greek, Celtic or Norse Gods, are many-armed, animal-headed, strange, unfamiliar creatures which, although they inspire us with their vitality, also remind us of their separateness from us (with the possible exception of Krishna, the one I relate to the most). Going into the Church, all you see are humans - Christ, Saints, Mary etc. You realise how the attempt was to show how the Divine was located in humans and not 'out there' beyond us. Of course, that's not how it worked out as we know, but the purity of that and the focus of that was brought home to me today.
So a day of the relative energies and merits of what we call Islam, Hinduism and Christianity... I don't want to chose between any of them, and would rather have them in the plural than in the singular. I am even more of the opinion that the Dawkinsian ability to be utterly umoved or unimpressed by the richness of their expression is a sign of deficiency rather than sophistication. They are part of teh rich inheritance of the human race and our imaginative/emotional/spiritual life. One is struck by how dangerous it becomes when we forget their central message - that God, nay all Gods are within us - and think they are entirely external and independent of us, but would I want religion entirely banished from the earth as I recently saw on a website? What do you think?
The Temple which has struck me the most out here has been the Jain one I saw in Mumbai. But in fact even this was dwarfed by the greatest Temple I have encountered out here: the Indian landscape. THe most mind- expanding, heart-filling experience I have had so far was the drive from the school to Mysore... But that can wait for another day...
Big times! A lot has happened since my last post. A LOT! Its been amazing. And I am only three weeks in. I am writing this from a luxury hotel in Mysore where I am staying for two nights before returning to the school for my last week. I never thought I would end up in a luxury hotel but I did, and not through my agency! One of the two brothers from Madikeri who are involved with the school runs a tour agency and I asked him to organise a visit to Mysore for me. He did, but didn't tell me what kind of hotel he had booked. I was astonished to wind up in this luxury pad last night and even more astonished to discover that my stay will cost a pocket-blasting fifty pounds! How will I cope???
But I am running ahead of myself. What has been going on?
Well, for another week or so I was still having a great time at the school, but then hit a crisis. For one, all the drama work I was doing with the kids was fab but exhausting, It involved a lot of running around, banging drums and being exuberant. Couple that with getting used to the Indian climate, sleeping on a rock-hard bed in a dusty little hut and still being a little freaked out by everything and you have a recipe for overload. And overload I did. I was running around playing a chasing game with the kids last Saturday and then WHAM I knocked myself out on a beam from one of the huts. I blacked out and found myself lying on the floor with all the kids around me. I went to bed, having been looked after by the other teachers and woke up feeling very wonky and emotional. I decided to go back to the house I had stayed in nearby for some rest and in my fragile state plunged into a Dark Night Of The Soul. All sorts of stuff came up which had been bothering me all week - what was I doing out here? What was I going to do when I got home? How could I go about travelling around this vast and often overwhelming (and sometimes terrifying!), unfamiliar country? Who was I? What was I doing? Had I made a terrible mistake? Was I going to die out here? Was a I horrible failure? In short, it was not much fun.
THe next day, I resolved to speak to some of the other teachers about what I had gone through. I had already had some wonderfully rich conversations with them and I thought they might understand. And thank God I did, because one in particular, Laurie, put me completely straight. She said that everyone went through what I was going through, that India was very intense and at first any Westerner feels totally freaked out and thrown by it, that the coming up of all sorts of big emotional stuff was all part of it and an IMPORTANT part of it and that I shouldn't worry and just let it happen.
Knowing that what I was going through was a common experience immediately helped me. I realised how I had become kind of schizophrenic - one part of my mind in India trying to come to terms with it all, the other part clinging to England to protect itself. No wonder I had cracked my head. I took it to be myself telling myself to stop running around so much and to stop thinking so much. Laurie told me that if I needed to rest I should take the morning off and I did. I lay in my little hut and had the most extraordinary three hours of just total letting go. It felt like a complete death and rebirth and when I reemerged feeling refreshed and strong again, I realised that I had gone through an immense change.
I almost wrote 'my little cell' there rather than 'my little hut'. As the days have gone by, I have realised that the school is the nearest thing to a kind of monastery or religious community I have been part of. I had been living in my little hut like a kind of ascetic, and the Dark Night Of The Soul I have described had really happened. Something old had died and for the first time I was relaxed and unafraid. It was as if I had given msyelf permission to be in India for the first time. I remember reading how the Cathars, as part of their initiation in the state of being a Parfait, spent three days in a sealed cave so as to reenact the time in the Tomb of Christ. When the reemerged, their old self was 'dead' and they had been 'resurrected' into a new self. Suddenly this made perfect sense to me. I also remembered the defining experience of Maharshi Ramana (whose Ashram it emerges a friend of mine has just been on and which I hope to visit) which was one of going through a kind of 'death' experience which he said purged him of all fear of mortality and enabled him to live as he did from then onwards.
What I had experienced wasn't on that level but it was a kind of death and rebirth nevertheless. I have said in conversation before that death & reincarnation/resurrection is something we go through periodically in life and now I realise more and more that it is true. We shouldn't be afraid of these things. More, its a measure of the ethos of the school that I felt I could talk about these things to people I had known for barely a fortnight. How hard it is to share one's vulnerability in our normal lives! How afraid we are of admitting problems or fear to those around us in our working experiences. And yet being able to share these things meant I could work through them.
Anyway, enough embaressing stuff. Since that turnaround things have just got richer and richer. Being with the kids is wonderful and has been bringing up enormous thought processes. I think a lot about my family's history out here, not just my grandparents but those members of my family who served in Wingate's Chindits. I began to think about how those ordinary soldiers, from the Raj to the Second World WAr (which was the Raj of course) must have coped being taken from the UK to other side of the world where everything was so different. I thought about my own distress and confusion at adjusting to India and then instantly understood why how for so long the bulk of our colonial ancestors, faced with a culture they did not understand which was so different to theirs, just shut down on it and kept separate from it. And yet even this was not total - as you live here you recognise how subtle and complex the relationship between the British and India was and still is. The two psyches were fascinated and repelled by each other. They still are, most probably, When you see a fellow Westerner out here, looking red or pasty, either pretending not to be all at sea or looking like a cliched hippie traveller, you recognise how silly we must seem and how we are still enacting the same confusions our ancestors did in an alien culture, albeit in not so violent a way...
And then as time goes by, one ceases to be quite so freaked out by Indian society and begin to recognise that it is not so unlike our own. In the end, the social problems the world faces are the same everywhere, as are the spiritual and emotional ones. We just all do it slightly differently...
So lots of new things - as well as a strange reliving and reclaiming of my own childhood. Memories are coming up as I teach and play with the kids. Memories of my own upbringing and home and my time at boarding school. I have said befoer what astonishing kids these are. And they are. THey are like a family - and one of real, genuine love. Every visitor who comes to the school remarks upon their quality and the enriching experience of being with them. One Swedish guy was discussing with me the horrors these kids had seen but also the wonder that they were experiencing at the school. He had only been there a few days but when I said I hoped that the darkness they had experienced hadn't scarred them, he said, with no trace or irony or sentimentality, 'One would hope that the love they are experiencing here will take care of that.' And he was right. It is a tangible thing here. We in the cynical West, or perhaps cynical England, get so embarressed even by the idea of discussing love as a concept. And yet it IS transforming. It has transformed me in the past and it is transforming me now. Its very real here. One doesn't need all the Scriptures which tell us it to be the truth to experience it. Perhaps we need to give ourselves to it more...
Of course it involves great risk, as one might get hurt, but here in this school I am experiencing it as a very real thing.
So... Mysore... Well, Mysore is great. Still a bit bonkers, but a terrific antidote to the shell-shock of Mumbai. Mysore is one of the great cultural centres of Karnataka, home of Tipu Sultan, who kicked British bum successfully for many years until the Duke Of Wellington shut him up. Its dominated by an amazing Palace which the ruling family lived in until the end of the Raj. I was there today. Its amazing. Surrounded by sixteen temples - of which I was able to see those dedicated to Vishnu, Lakshmi and Krishna (Krishna's being the one I really responded to) - it still comes as a surprise to discover that it was completed in the 1930s and was designed by a British architect! A wonderful explosion of Hindu, Muslim and European design ideas it is a real stunner of a place to visit. Your breath is taken away one minute by a hall of green and gold, then a vast chamber with stained glass ceilings covered in peacocks and then shocked to find a naff piece of pseudo-classical sculptuer of Hermes charging at you from out of a pillar. Oddest of all is a life-sizs statue of one of the RAjahs which is fully painted and looks like it might get up and talk to you (even the Rough Guide mentions this)...
THe Temples weer fascinating, although none of them struck me as the Jain temple in Mumbai had done. These were all Hindu temples and are so different in mood to Churches et al that it is a wonder to behold. On the one hand they are very old (and a bit run down) but on the other they are very quirky. In one I found the priest in traditional semi-naked robes catching up on the latest news in the local daily. But the sensuality and richness of the temples is fascinating, as is their informality. People come and go, take blessings, talk, worship, pray as the please and the Priest gives them the blessings they need. This informality is hugely appealing and is reflected in the richness of the temples' imagery. One thing you quickly spot is the fact that all Hindu Gods look happy. THey smile and dance, look well-fed and without exceptions have lovers. Vishnu, Siva, Krishna et al all have wives with whom they enjoy life with. Krishn even had mass group sex with a load of Gopis for God's sake!
Jung described Hindu temple entrances as anthills with Gods crawling all over them and in a sense he is right. Hindu temples are covered in hosts fo dancing Gods, smiling and sometimes making love. On one mobile temple I saw in Tipu Sultan's fort a woman was depicted having sex with a donkey! The sense of celebration and fecundity of the imagery is wonderfully rich. Being taken into the 9th Century temple in Tipu Sultan's fort one became overwhelmed by the number of Gods inside, most of which I had never heard of, and I thought I was well-informed about the Hindu pantheon! Polytheists take note - there is a wonderful delight to be had in the profusion of Gods out here, but one can also see how lost you can become within that! Fascinatingly, when we eventually went to Tipu's own palace and walked in his gardens, the breathtaking formal layout was a real contrast to the more intuitive, freeform sprawl of the rest of India. It was a classic example of the precision and focus of the Islamic mind at its best. I'm not saying it was BETTER than the Hindu mind (far from it!), only that one could see the contrast. Hinduism is so prolific, so rich and multifarious, so aware of the cyle of things and the onenes of things one can forget the equally fascinating formality and precision of Islam when it is really creative.
And this is what is so fascinating already about India. Yes, people still try to scam and cheat you (a group of rickshaw owners tried to spin me a yarn about how nothing was open today because it was Valentine's Day (!!!) but offered to take me to somewhere else. Happily my driver was at hand and once I had checked the truth of all this with the hotel I just spent the day with him, which was great as he knew where everything was and stopped me from being cheated), but all you see is the most incredible diversity. In amongst the teeming colours and noise and bustle of the streets you see a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks in their orange robes strolling around, a group of Muslims in their distintive dress doing some shopping and then, most bizarrely, an enormous neo-Gothic church rising up out of nowhere with its own Indian take on the iconography of Christ and the Virgin Mary. THroughout all this one is thrown back into thinking about all the different ways in which we have expressed ourselves spiritually over the ages. After a day of Hindu Gods in all their rich profusion, for instance, visiting the Church of St Philomena made me suddenly aware of something we have completely lost sight of in the West - just how humanistic Christianity was intended to be. THe delight of the Hindu Gods, which give us an insight into how it must have been to understand oneself in terms of the Egyptian, Greek, Celtic or Norse Gods, are many-armed, animal-headed, strange, unfamiliar creatures which, although they inspire us with their vitality, also remind us of their separateness from us (with the possible exception of Krishna, the one I relate to the most). Going into the Church, all you see are humans - Christ, Saints, Mary etc. You realise how the attempt was to show how the Divine was located in humans and not 'out there' beyond us. Of course, that's not how it worked out as we know, but the purity of that and the focus of that was brought home to me today.
So a day of the relative energies and merits of what we call Islam, Hinduism and Christianity... I don't want to chose between any of them, and would rather have them in the plural than in the singular. I am even more of the opinion that the Dawkinsian ability to be utterly umoved or unimpressed by the richness of their expression is a sign of deficiency rather than sophistication. They are part of teh rich inheritance of the human race and our imaginative/emotional/spiritual life. One is struck by how dangerous it becomes when we forget their central message - that God, nay all Gods are within us - and think they are entirely external and independent of us, but would I want religion entirely banished from the earth as I recently saw on a website? What do you think?
The Temple which has struck me the most out here has been the Jain one I saw in Mumbai. But in fact even this was dwarfed by the greatest Temple I have encountered out here: the Indian landscape. THe most mind- expanding, heart-filling experience I have had so far was the drive from the school to Mysore... But that can wait for another day...
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