Just when I thought I’d seen it all…
In case you can’t make it out, it is a (two) man-powered amusement ride, which we saw on the beach in Madras.
Category: photo
The big temple at Thanjavur was the first UNESCO World Heritage Site on our trip, and the rock-cut temples and shrines of Mamallapuram our second.
The Thanjavur temple dates from the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Chola rule of South India was approaching its height. The Chola kingdom was quite powerful, and made its impact all over Southeast Asia, contributing Hindu/Indian culture to that region.
The temples and shrines of Mamallapuram are from the seventh century, from the Pallava kingdom. In case you are not familiar with rock-cut, or monolithic, structures, they are made by chiseling away at a big rock–so while some of these appear to be full-fledged buildings, they are almost more like huge sculptures carved from one stone. We will be visiting more rock-cut temples and shrines at Ajanta and Ellora (the Ajanta caves are particularly ancient and are said to have inspired the Mamallapuram ones). The most impressive rock-cut sites we have seen are those at Lalibela, Ethiopia, which are essentially full-fledged (small) churches that you can enter and worship in, all carved out of a single rock.
Some pictures.
Thanjavur
A sadhu outside the temple.
Schoolchildren visiting the temple.
A view through the entryways.
Detail of entrance to central shrine.
Bicycles parked outside main entry.
Sunset on the tower above the central shrine.
Two views from outside the walls:
Mamallapuram
Local boy on sculpture (relief) inside cave temple.
Lighthouse.
Local boy.
Five Rathas, rock-cut temples.
Children on field trip at Five Rathas.
Krishna’s butterball, a boulder defying gravity.
Relief inside a cave temple.
Shore temple.
Fishermen breaking the waves.
Among the temples that we have visited in South India, the Sri Meenakshi temple of Madurai is by far the most intense and atmospheric. In fact, it is probably one of the most interesting public spaces we have been in, and certainly the single place of worship that we have found most exotic and fascinating. It is not that the architecture of the temple is so outstanding–as impressive as it is, it certainly doesn’t inspire the immediate awe of, say, the Hagia Sophia or the mosques of Istanbul or the greatest cathedrals of Europe. It’s not even the most beautiful Hindu temple we have visited on this trip (that choice may be the Chola era temple at Darasuram). But the space is so chaotic with activity, so full of people engaging in a form of worship that to a Western observer is so foreign, that it simply overwhelms the visitor.
There are many things about the temple which trigger this response, and I thought I would touch on a few.
First is the space itself. The Madurai temple is in the center of the town (I suppose the town was actually laid out to surround it) and huge, the outer walls enclosing a space that is about 250 meters on each side. Because the temple is so ancient (sources say over 2000 years and there have additions at various periods, although much of the structure dates from the 17th century), it is a true jumble of many different buildings, unlike temples that were conceived and built by a single design. This disorganization of layout results in more chaotic flows of human movement, and to the visitor the potential of getting lost, adding to the experience of the visit. The Madurai temple also has fewer spaces that are open to the sun than many other temples, making much of it very dark and cavernous. The many pillars are sculpted, some containing carvings of gods and the ceilings painted with geometric designs. The florescent lights (or the neon, for that matter) used today are unattractive, but one can imagine what the temple was like when oil lamps were used.
Second is the sense of historical continuity. Some of the other temples we have visited, like at Mamallapuram or Thanjavur, were also old but now are really archeological/tourist sites, even if still active places of worship. At Thanjavur, for example, even the Hindu visitors somehow seemed much more like tourists than pilgrims, even while engaging in devotional practice. I think that this is because these sites have a certain museum-like feel, with partially ruined structures being restored and maintained by the Archeological Survey of India. Though ancient the Madurai temple was built in accretion over the centuries, with successive rulers making their contribution to the heritage of the temple, unlike the Thanjavur temple which feels and often is a snapshot of one particular (long dead) king. Madurai could not be a more living and breathing place.
Third is the flow of worshippers. The temple is at times totally packed with people, especially around the entryways (the “queue” at the chappals stand can be quite an ordeal) and surrounding the tank. As at many Hindu temples, the activities of the people present are varied–some are actively performing the circuit of worship, some seemingly lounging about, some more sightseeing than praying and others engaged in some form of business (within Madurai temple one of the halls is reserved for flower/offerings vendors). We saw a very large number of newlyweds taking pictures around the tank (indeed, the first night we had trouble getting a hotel room because so many wedding parties were in town).
Finally, the form of worship. To a Christian visitor, even a Catholic one well familiar with worship before idols, Hindu worship is exotic and foreign. People pray before reliefs and sculptures of elephants (Ganesh), phalluses (Shiva lingam) and other representations of exotic gods, and cover their foreheads with dots and lines of ash and other powder (some of which are actually on the carvings themselves, see below). Brahmin priests, shirtless but strung with decoration, stand and chant before shrines, lighting oil lamps and bathing the statues. The occasional sadhu, or itinerant ascetic, goes by, looking generally like someone who may be committed back home. Not to be offensive, but all this seems so medieval or pagan (in the pre-Christian sense)–to me it really felt like a trip back in time, what religious worship must have been like in the west and near east long, long ago.
Below are some pictures from Madurai.
Facing the western gopuram down the street.
Gopuram detail.
Hallway near southern entrance.
Column detail.
Worshippers in a main part of the temple.
Some people we encountered.
Temple flagstaff, with sunlight streaming in.
Statue with paste for placing on forehead.
View into central shrine, with sunlight streaming in.
I realized that many of my recent postings have not really touched on what we’re seeing here in India, what we have been spending our time doing. The answer is, principally, at least sightseeing-wise, temples. Tamil Nadu has an extremely rich and ancient collection of Hindu temples, including the seventh century Pallava temples in Kanchipuram and Mahabalipuram (where I am now), the great eleventh and twelfth century Chola temples in and near Thanjavur and the amazing Sri Meenakshi temple in Madurai, which dates largely from the seventeenth century Nayaks although its foundation is far more ancient. I will post separately on the rock-cut shrines of Mahabalipuram, the Sri Brihadisvara temple of Thanjavur and the intense Sri Meenakshi temple once we have sorted through some of the photographs. But in this post I want to give a brief overview of the general structure of a South Indian (or Dravidian) (Hindu) temple.
The temple I have selected for this exercise is Jalakantesvara temple, which is a small and beautiful sixteenth century Vijaynayagar temple located inside Vellore Fort. The Vijayanagars ruled one of the greatest empires of South India from their base at Hampi in Karnataka state, which we visited in 2003 and recommend for any India itinerary.
First, to enter a temple, you have to take off your shoes, which you keep at a stand generally for a small fee (or sometimes for free). Given that the temple complexes are huge, with birds, bats, cows and an occasional elephant residing within, walking barefoot can be tricky, but I guess one of the trials of religious devotion. The picture below is actually from a different temple (although all of the other ones are from Vellore).
Surrounding temples, and often lining the principal entryway, are shops, selling offerings including coconuts, bananas and flowers but also other, really random items. At the great temple at Srirangam, which is truly monstrously large and has seven concentric walls, the first few courtyards contained everything from tailors to souvenir shops to restaurants. At Vellore, most of the shops were selling small stone carvings of Hindu gods, as well as necklaces and toys.
The rectangular area of the temple is defined by fairly high walls, so that from the outside you see only the tops of the tallest structures. The walls are often painted with red and white vertical stripes, although not at the Vellore temple. The entryways, which can be at all four cardinal points but sometimes fewer, are topped with highly decorated pyramidal towers, or gopurams. The base is usually solid, carved rock and the higher levels made of plaster. At Vellore, these were painted white but at other temples the decorations are a gaudy technicolor, crowded with carvings of gods and the great Hindu epics.
Note the carvings on the doorway, as well as the huge studded doors, in this picture looking out from the first courtyard inside the first set of doors.
Inside this first courtyard are columned halls along the walls, as is typical. In the Vellore temple, you see immediately on the left a very beautiful columned hall, or mandapam, one of the most intricately carved we’ve seen. [This being a late Vijayanagar temple, I wondered whether in styles of art ornamentation generally increases as the years pass, as a principal elaboration/corruption of the style becomes ornamentation, until it is supplemented by another style.] The back of the mandapam is adjoined to the wall, so that the mandapam can be seen as an enlargement of the columned hallways lining the lengths of the walls. At the largest temples, there are thousand-pillared mandapams.
Immediately on the right is a tank, or reservoir, another typical feature of temples. Of course, the water inside many temple tanks is said to be holy and have therapeutic properties.
Inside the first courtyard is another set of walls, with another gateway. Directly through this door in the second courtyard is a shrine to Ganesh, the elephant son of Shiva and Parvati. The Vellore temple is a Shiva temple, as most of the temples we have seen in South India have been. Shiva is the creator and destroyer and one of the Hindu “trinity,” which also includes Brahma and Vishnu, although temples to Shiva and Vishnu are more common. One core feature of Shiva temples is the sculptural depiction of his “vehicle,” Nandi the bull, which usually sits loyally facing the central shrine. Directly above the Ganesh shrine you can see the gold topped vimana, which is the tower directly above the central shrine, or garbhagriha. This temple therefore has a tripartite structure, with the first set of doors leading you to the courtyard with the tank, the second to a smaller courtyard with the ganesh shrine and then finally the central shrine, or garbhagriha, containing the principal god of the temple.
In some ways, and I do not mean to offend, Hindu practice reminds me of what Christian practice must have been like before the Reformation. On this sign, promises of blessings to come with a donation of two rupees (around five cents). Temples feature many price lists, most of which are not translated into English but are clearly for different pujas (or worships/ceremonies). [Of course, Christian churches charge for ceremonies too, from weddings to funerals.] Temples are given a further commercial flavor by small businesses (some related to worship, others not) that operate within the compound, although there isn’t much at the Vellore temple.
Inside the second courtyard is also the temple flagstaff, or dvajasthambam. In wealthier/more famous temples, this can be plated with gold.
We happened to be at the Vellore temple when an elderly couple was celebrating their 80th wedding anniversary. Musicians were hired, playing South Indian temple music. Another common sound you hear at Shiva temples in South India is a recording of a chant of “Om Shiva” or a particular devotional song we have heard repeatedly. At some point I will try to put up my recordings.
Finally, the central temple. The garbhagriha is fully enclosed and ceilinged, and therefore dim in light, especially when stepping in from the hot South Indian sun. They tend to smell a bit like a dank basement of somebody who owns cats (perhaps the smell of bat droppings). They are also less decorated than the external parts of the temple, as you are supposed to focus less on the structure of the temple and more on the icon of the god residing within. In the outer area of the central temple in Vellore was a shrine to Nataraja, Shiva as Lord of the Cosmic Dance, a form with which you are likely familiar. You can see that the figure of the god is dressed and decorated with flowers. At the shrines, or at least the principal ones, Brahmin priests stand ready to intermediate between you and the god. The act of witnessing the god at the shrine is called darshan, and this sight is considered essential to the act of worship. Upon worship the brahmin will offer some ash, which you can place on your forehead, as a tilaka, often as a dot but also as a stripe. In big temples, you see worshippers walking around with multiple and various forehead markings.
Inside the heart of the central temple, the garbhagriha features a Shiva lingam. Some temples will allow non-Hindus to enter the sanctuary while others do not. Photography is generally not allowed.
We’ve visited several former French colonies now (Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos, Madagascar, Quebec) and if they have one thing in common, it’s a large number of French tourists. I suppose this may be true with Spanish tourists as well (though they blend in pretty well in Latin America), but the French really seem to like to visit the places that they used to own. In Quebec and to a lesser extent in Madagascar this can be chalked up to language (speaking French can get you by in those places and so they make linguistically easier destinations for those French who do not speak English well), but of course in many places (Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos and Pondicherry included) English has surpassed French in use.
Former French colonies generally also have beautiful civic and residential colonial architecture (or at least architecture that decays beautifully–as in Kampot and Kep in Cambodia and Luang Prabang in Laos), and a good gastronomic culture (Madagascar very much so, Pondy not so much).
Anyway, in this post pictures of some French institutions in Pondicherry. I’m not sure how many French citizens currently live in Pondicherry, but as you can see there is a full complement. These were taken on a little ride through town we took on a cycle rickshaw.
A few historical notes: The French arrived in and established themselves in Pondicherry in the late seventeenth century, not long after the British East India Company arrived in now Madras. In the 1740s, the French briefly conquered the British holdings up the coast, and I suppose had they been successful in retaining them India could have ended up being a French empire. Alas, the British were able to retake now Madras and eventually control almost all of South India, although Pondicherry remained French. Pondicherry peacefully joined India in the 1950s soon after independence–please see my earlier blog for a brief history of the formation of India.
French consulate general
Traveling to India, one knows to expect good food. Indian cuisine, after all, is one of the most flavorful and richest in the world. Even with our relatively high hopes, however, the food in South India has far exceeded expectations.
In 2003, when we were traveling around the tourist circuit in northern India (Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, etc.), we found that we were too often faced with eating somewhat mediocre food along with other tourists. In bigger towns, such as Jaipur or Bombay, there was of course a wide variety of restaurants frequented by more affluent Indians, which served tremendously good food (including one restaurant in Bombay that we thought had some of the best cooked food in the world, and which we plan to revisit later on our trip). But too many meals were just so-so (no doubt much of this was also due to our inexperience and lack of know-how in finding good food). Not in South India. Outside of a couple mediocre meals in Cochin (eaten mostly with other tourists), almost every meal has been terrific. I think this is because the more basic eating establishments catering to locals in South India are generally cleaner and appear more welcoming to tourists, and because South Indian food is delicious in a more simple way that can be achieved by more restaurants. Since South Indian food is not as frequently offered on Indian menus, especially in areas without large Indian communities, I thought I would give a brief overview of some of the items most commonly found.
The most common restaurant meal in South India is the thali, which is available at lunchtime at pretty much any restaurant. In South India, thalis are usually served on banana leaves, either on a platter or directly on the table (you rinse the fresh leaf with water before servers come and plop portions of food on it). The starch of the thali is plain white rice (with surprisingly large grains in Kerala, though we were told that the fat grain rice comes from Andhra Pradesh), and you are also usually given a crispy thin wafer called an appallam as well. A thali generally costs about 25-35 rupees (or less than $1), and is refillable–servers come with shiny little metal buckets to give you more of whatever you want. I can’t name all of the various “side dishes” (reminiscent of Korean banchan), but there are generally at least three or four, as well as pickle and yoghurt to be used as dressings. The main sauce for the rice, called sambar (which must be the same word as “sambal” used in other cuisines), is poured directly on top. In nicer places you also get dessert, and in one place we were offered ghee (clarified butter) and a powder to use for the rice in place of sambar.
The first thali we ever had was at the mess hall at Ranakpur Jain Temple in Rajasthan (which by the way is amazingly beautiful, though we hear that Mt. Abu is yet more). Puris and simple curries were served in very small portions, and constantly refilled, with the cost around 10 rupees (~25 cents). At the time, due to our ignorance, we thought that this manner of serving was somehow guided by religion–not only does it ensure a minimum of waste but nobody walks away hungry, which seem to me laudable spiritual goals, where food is concerned. Of course we now know that there’s nothing holy or sacred about it, but it still appeals to me, for those reasons. An all-you-can-eat or buffet in the U.S. (or in Asia for that matter) is usually a setting for overindulgence and gluttony. The concept is generally extravagance (though of course the quality of the food at a buffet can be highly variable); the result, overeating. In parts of Asia, buffets are also often luxurious, and therefore exclusive. I imagine there are tons of waste, either on the plates of people whose eyes were larger than their appetites or food never taken. The thali, while satisfying the requirement that people should eat to their satisfaction, is the opposite–there is a minimum of waste, since serving portions are small though refillable, it is highly affordable and therefore available to many and the relatively more limited number of dishes makes it much harder to overeat (although it could also be said that people coming by to refill your plate of your favorite items could result in overeating, while at a buffet you at least have to get up to refill). Something else about the limited number of dishes–a typical buffet while communal (people gather food from the same table) seems to me individualistic, because the number of dishes leads to selection and an expression of individual preference and choice. Thalis, on the other hand, result in everyone eating (more or less of) exactly the same food, served from the same buckets by the same hands, and therefore is much more a shared experience.
Outside of thalis, the most common food eaten by locals and tourists in restaurants is in the “snack” category, and here South Indian cuisine shows its sense of fun as well as flavor. These snacks are often eaten for breakfast, although for dinner as well.
The one that is probably most familiar to you is the dosa. A crispy-fried crepe-like dish, it is folded or rolled and often filled with curried potatoes. This one was served with other sauces as well and a deep-fried savory dough called a vada (the one that looks like a spicy doughnut).
An idly is a little flying saucer shaped rice pillow, bland alone but good (well, okay) with curries. Pictured below, a lady preparing idlies and idlies dressed with sauces. This appears to be one of the most commonly items in South India and is sold and eaten everywhere.
A picture of (amazingly puffy) puris.
The dish below, made with rice, is called pongal, and has a consistency similar to risotto or polenta. Also delicious.
In the “tiffin set” breakfast seen below is a dosa, a scoop of pongal and several mini idlies, swimming in sauce.
At our hotel in Cochin we were served iddiyappam, noodle pillows similar to rice noodles (bun) served in Vietnam, one of my favorite foods.
Another important item in the starch category is of course the paratha, which is a somewhat greasy and chewy, but delicious pan-fried bread that has layers like a mille-feuille pastry. You may also know this as a roti, as served in roti canai in a Malaysian restaurant. Pictured below, a man slapping a paratha together (to create the paper thin sheet, which is then crumpled together), as well as others cooking on a griddle.
After the parathas are cooked, they are crushed to reveal their many folds and layers. Below, a paratha served with a Keralan curry.
We saw the paratha-based dish below for the first time in the Tamil area of Sri Lanka in 2005, and were wondering whether we would find something similar in Tamil Nadu. The seasoning isn’t the same and it’s not as good, but here it is. Essentially, it is a paratha chopped up and fried along with egg and onion, served in a messy pile. It reminded me of Mexican chilaquiles (and no doubt there are other similar dishes around the world that people put together with day old bread–I really love finding similar foods/food ideas in different countries).
One night we had this item, which was called adai avial. I believe it is made with beans, as it reminded me of a Korean bindaetteok.
Oothappam, in five different varieties. This was pretty similar to a western pancake.
There are other amusing starches that I do not have pictures of (including a flat rice pancake called appam, which is delicious), as well as some we haven’t had a chance yet to try.
All of this is eaten with hands, not utensils. As a general rule I think it’s good to eat as the locals do, but as a chopstick using rice-eater, I can’t get myself to use my hands to eat goopy curry-soaked rice. So I ask for a spoon (which is mildly embarrassing, especially when other tourists point out that I should be using my hands).
Additional, even quicker snacks, can be purchased at many roadside stands, including at bus stations. I cannot name each, but below a picture of a selection. The best, in my opinion, is the one on the far left, which is something like a falafel and often spicy. Also, a man selling vadai, somosas and other fried snacks at the bus station. Samosas, by the way, can be found in many many parts of the world, including Central Asia.
Also of course Indian sweets. Many are similar to those available in North India, but we have also encountered some we have not had elsewhere. The small metal cup next to the yoghurt on the thali shown above tasted similar to a rice putting (kheer), but had tapioca as well as thin noodles. The one pictured below was a thin pancake filled with a sweet bean paste (similar to Korean hotteok).
And tea to wash it all down!
Cape Comorin, or Kanyakamuri, stands at the very bottom of the Indian subcontinent mainland. Like other geographical extremities around the world, it inspires curiosity and the imagination, and thousands of tourists, largely domestic but also international, arrive daily. In addition to the (Hindu) temple at the tip of the mainland, however, there is an even more prominent monument offshore, to Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), and it is on him I wanted to reflect in today’s entry.
Vivekananda was born to a family in Calcutta and, after some studies in law, joined a famous spiritual leader, Swami Ramakrishna, at his monastery in Calcutta. At the end of two years as an itinerant monk (or sannyasin), Vivekananda, with fame and funds he gathered from his preachings around India, made a trip to Chicago to take part in the Parliament of Religions held in September 1893 after the World’s Columbian Exposition. [It is not entirely clear where he got the idea to attend.] Vivekananda, although uninvited and unplanned (there were other more “official” representatives of Hinduism present), was a great success and achieved critical and popular success (including among some of America’s moneyed elite, it seems). With his success in the New World (as well as later in Europe), he returned to India a great hero and founded the Ramakrishna Mission in Calcutta, which is devoted to carrying out his and his predecessor’s spiritual vision.
What is that vision? My knowledge on this is of course very limited, but from the materials I have read it seemed that the principal idea is that all religions are one, and lead to the same God. More practically, his greatest focuses were 1) transforming the mission of Hindu monastics from a purely personal/spiritual one to a public one, not only to teach on spiritual matters but to have a positive effect on people’s material well-being through education, etc., 2) fighting inequality generally, including inequality resulting from the Hindu caste system and 3) drawing the world’s attention to poverty and other problems in India.
I chose to write on Vivekananda not only because he has been influential in twentieth century Indian history (many of India’s greatest leaders were/are admirers of him), but because of the unusual Chicago/Columbian Exposition connection. I’ve always been interested in that fair, which took place in a town I grew up in. Vivekananda, by attending (and achieving renown at) a forum half a world away, was able to enhance his reputation back home–a not uncommon phenomenon, and one which shows the connectedness of the world. I am not a spiritual person, but I thought I would reflect on some quotations that I found personally of interest.
“Each nation, like each individual, has one theme in this life, which is its center, the principal note with which every other note mingles to form the harmony. If any nation attempts to throw off its national vitality, the direction which has become its own through the transmission of centuries, that nation dies. In India religious life forms the center, the keynote of the whole music of national life. Social reform has to be preached in India by showing how much more spiritual a life the new system will bring, and politics has to be preached by showing how much it will improve the one thing that the nation wants–its spirituality.”
I chose this because it speaks to Vivekananda’s pragmatism. In this passage, Vivekananda speaks of religion as a means to the end of social reform, though I do not doubt that Vivekananda saw religion as more than just a means to a social end. I often wonder who will be the first great American politician of the 21st century to argue effectively that social justice is an end that is demanded by Christian religious beliefs, and thereby convince more religious Americans leftward, away from their selfish, hypocritical neighbors.
This quotation bothers me, though, because it uses the cultural conservatism / moral decline sort of language used by the U.S. right wing. On religion or cultural issues (e.g., gay marriage), the argument would go that x has been with us hundreds of years, and therefore our society may fall apart without x. Or conservatives would similarly argue that the free market is essential to America and its prosperity (perhaps a better argument than for religion, since religion does not dominate life in the U.S. as it arguably does in India). [Of course, the left could make similar arguments about individual liberty and immigration.] Are not more revolutionary acts possible? Can a person or a country not reform itself? If this is indeed a truism for individuals, which Vivekananda takes as given, what is my theme in life? Am I old enough now that there should be a pattern that I should seek to follow through?
“The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves. That faith calls out the divinity within. You fail only when you do not strive sufficiently to manifest infinite power. As soon as a man loses faith in himself, death comes. Believe first in yourself, and then in God.”
Of course, I like the fundamentally humanist tone of this passage. But I also liked this quotation because it reminded me of Descartes and other theories of consciousness I half recall. The question this passage answers, to me, is how to conceptualize being and consciousness in a way that is productive for man. Vivekananda speaks of consciousness as “the divinity within.” We all begin our lives as a set of possibilities, and then actualize a certain subset of those possibilities. By calling the total set of possibilities, our potential, “divine,” Vivekananda argues that what we are able to achieve (our maximum potential) is limitless (drawing from “infinite power”), and urges us to push aside our preconceived limits (borne of uncertainty or fear). That which you do not attempt you will never achieve, and you are able to achieve more than you think you can.
“If you seek your own salvation, you will go to hell. It is the salvation of others that you must seek; and even if you have to go to hell in working for others, that is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking our own salvation.”
I’m not sure about the logic of this passage as a whole, but I feel that it draws attention to the deficiency of a principal message of many religions. Simply put: Why is spirituality sometimes so selfish? Isn’t helping others an ultimate good, and shouldn’t it come ahead of so many of the (other) rules that religions impose? We all need to be reminded that helping others is one of few absolute goods in life, true without regard to anything else, and most other things secondary.
“My ideal indeed can be put into a few words, and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.”
Not only carpe diem, but genuinely think about each action you’re taking, to check that it conforms to what you want to achieve in life and your moral guidelines. Be purposeful.
Ever since our first trip to India, we have suggested to our friends who were getting married that they should have their honeymoon in Kerala. None have taken our advice, but with the Kerala portion of our trip over I want to make another pitch for Kerala as your next vacation destination. First some logistics, then a suggested itinerary.
Itinerary. Kochi is the perfect place to start your Kerala trip. A harbor known since ancient times and occupied by the Dutch and the Portuguese (before the Brits), and with the historical city peacefully isolated on a peninsula (accessible by ferry or bridge), Kochi has a colonial ambience and a sense of connection with the past / distance from the modern present that I have experienced in few other places. It is a living city that has museum-like qualities, and can be walked for days. Please refer to my earlier posts for Kochi highlights.
From Kochi, where you should spend at least three full days, move on to a couple days in the Kerala backwaters. The backwaters are a network of connected lakes and waterways, which empty out to the sea. Sometimes narrow channels and at other times tremendously large lakes, the backwaters act as an alternate water-based transportation network as well as essential irrigation for rural Kerala. They are breathtakingly beautiful, with dense linings of coconut palms and peaceful village life on full display. Perhaps the best (and certainly the most luxurious) way to experience the backwaters is by hiring a houseboat, in the form of a traditional rice barge, for a day or two, complete with staff and meals cooked on board. The accommodations are fairly simple but the experience hard to beat (expensive for India, but the cost is still less than $100 per night).
Alternately, you can take public ferries, for negligible sums of money, and still enjoy the same view (but you should go for the houseboat–how often do you get to sleep on your own boat on gentle waters, with a staff of three?). The biggest center for backwater tours is Alleppey, which is a couple hours away from Kochi by bus.
From Alleppey, head south to the ocean or east to the hills, or both. To the south is Varkala. Varkala is highly enjoyable even for non-beachgoers–please refer to my earlier post. To the east are the steeply rising Western Ghats, which provide a cool break from the hot coast and are filled with spice farms, orchards and coffee and tea plantations. At Munnar (we have not been), you can admire the tea plantations while at Thekkady (we went in 2003), you can visit Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary which if not exactly filled with elephants and tigers (though they’re there) is still beautiful. In either Munnar or Thekkady you will be able to visit spice gardens, orchards, tea plantations and the like. You can spend a couple or few days at either Varkala or the hills, the former reachable by train and the latter by bus. Of course, as always in India, hiring a car is a comfortable and affordable option.
From the hills or the beach, you can return to Kochi for a day or two of shopping, and then return home. Within a two week period, you will be able to feel some serious history, enjoy cultural activities, sample rural life and see breathtaking tropical and montane scenery. You will have an opportunity to see the exotic side of India without being overwhelmed with touts and tricksters (as in other parts of the country). Everything is beautiful and relaxing, the cost affordable and of course the food tasty. [blog entry on South India food to come!]
Visiting the same place twice over a span of time gives you an additional dimension, and a chance to see the effect of time (and tourism) on a place. Back when we visited Varkala in 2003, it had of course already been a tourist attraction for decades, and so was well developed with the typical assortment of tourist amenities, such as hotels, restaurants, tour desks, souvenir shops, etc. [Varkala is also a place of pilgrimage, though the pilgrims and tourists in Varkala do not mix much, as the main tourist development along the North Cliff is almost exclusively a foreigner traveler ghetto.] We found on this trip, however, some four and a half years later, that the tourist neighborhood of Varkala had continued further north, for perhaps a couple kilometers. Hotels grow more seldom as you head up, but western beachgoers could be seen making their way along the now paved walkway up and down the headlands to beaches beyond. The tourists had also changed. We’d of course heard of the phenomenon of backpackers and more adventurous travelers “discovering” a place, and then that place being opened up to gradually bigger and more upmarket tourists, but not really experienced it firsthand (frankly, most of the places we go to are already well developed and well touristed, as we thought Varkala was in 2003). Varkala 2008 however was clearly much older, overweight and generally less hip (not that we really consider ourselves hip) than Varkala 2003.
Even the Falun Gong have arrived in Varkala!
Fortunately, the expansion of tourism has not affected certain things about Varkala. The sea and the cliffs were more beautiful than even our memories, and the newer development, though extensive, has been done in a relatively ramshackle style that does not detract as much from Varkala’s charm as, say, big, polished resorts would (one hears that Kovalam, a beach further south, has such resorts, although we have not been).
And, in the mornings, on some of the same beaches used by tourists later in the day, the fishermen still go out with their giant fishing nets to participate in a communal fishing process that entranced us in 2003. A large net is taken offshore on a small boat, while two teams of around 10 men each hold on to ropes at either end. After some time, the ropes are pulled in, drawing the net and the catch. The catch was, again, unimpressive (and somewhat depressing given the time and effort it takes to pull the net in).
After the “captain” first took his cut, the fish was sold rather than split for personal consumption, and the proceeds divided. As requested, we took turns pulling the rope, although not for the full five minutes asked for!
A random photo from Varkala
Our bus departed from Ernakulam, the “new” city a ferry ride across the harbor from historic Cochin (in terms of geography, Cochin is San Francisco proper to Ernakulam’s Oakland); our destination, the city of Kottayam. The road from Ernakulam to Kottayam crosses over backwaters and the very first foothills of the Western Ghats, the scenery varying from palm trees crowding wide waterways to rubber trees planted in rows, healing from their harvest. The small towns we passed through however are notable not only for their picturesque scenery, but also for their places of worship–even for Kerala, where Christianity is well-known, there are countless churches in these towns, some new some old, seemingly far outnumbering Hindu temples or mosques. Schools tend to be named St. George, St. Anthony or St. Thomas, and even the occasional nun is sighted.
When one thinks of Christianity in India, the first thought is usually to the Catholic community in Goa, a remnant of the Portuguese empire in the East, but the actual history of Christianity in India goes much further back, all the way to apostolic times according to legend. According to the apochryphal Acts of Judas Thomas (apochryphal meaning that it is not one of the books generally recognized to be part of the Christian Bible), St. (Doubting) Thomas, one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, traveled from the Holy Land to India, spreading the gospel and eventually achieving martyrdom. Legend has it that he established churches in the now Keralan coast and the legendary site of his martyrdom in Chennai is graced with a church.
The “Thomas Christians” of India maintained links with the Christians of the Near East. One of the most significant delegations, in the fourth century, consisted of seventy-two families, roughly four hundred strong, who traveled from what is now Syria to the Keralan coast, descendants of which group survive today (more on this later). Further spiritual support continued over the centuries from the Middle East through the Syrian Christian Church, giving these Christians of India the name “Syrian Christians.” The Christians were fruitful and multiplied, and formed a significant community (of around 30,000) by the time the Portuguese arrived in the 16th century.
The first major fissure in the Syrian Christian community of India happened as a result of Portuguese control, and the road from Ernakulam to Kottayam took us by the key site of Diamper. Initially the Portuguese looked favorably upon the fellow Christians (it is said that one goal of Portuguese explorations beyond the Cape of Good Hope was to search for a legendary eastern Christian kingdom), but then grew hostile as the Thomas Syrian Christians refused to pledge allegiance to the Pope in Rome and adhere to Roman Catholic doctrine. Finally, the Portuguese convened the Synod of Diamper in 1599 to cleanse the Thomas Syrian Christians of doctrinal impurities, which they saw as coming both from Nestorian heresies and from Hindu contamination. The Portuguese banned books, burned books and records and instituted other oppressive policies. When an emissary from Antioch was detained in now Chennai, some of the local Christians publicly revolted, taking the “Bent Cross Oath” at Mattancherry church (briefly described in my blog entry of March 3 and pictured below) in 1653. Others made peace with the Portuguese and the Roman Catholic church.
About two and a half hours after we left Ernakulam, our Kerala state bus arrived at Kottayam bus station, and we transferred into an autorickshaw to take us to some of Kerala’s oldest existing Syrian Christian churches.
In the northern part of Kottayam, a center of the Syrian Christian community in Kerala, different sects (resulting from further schisms) are represented by churches steps apart, and demonstrate some of the later history of the Syrian Christians of India. Heading from east to west on Kumarakom Road, we first passed St. Thomas Mar Thoma Church.
The Mar Thoma Church is the product of a schism in the Indian Syrian Christian Church that occurred under the relatively more gentle control under British rule. A 19th century prelate educated in the British missionary system determined that the local church should undergo reforms, a position not shared by all of his peers, and founded the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, which has since entered into communion with the Anglican churches in India, the Church of North India and the Church of South India.Heading west, we arrived at Cheriapally, “Small Church” or St. Mary’s Orthodox Church. Founded in 1579, Cheriapally remains close to its original structure, featuring a porch similar to a Hindu temple, beautiful altar and murals and an impressive old baptismal font.
The facade of the church is overwhelmingly Portuguese in flavor, reflecting the era of its construction despite the Syrian Christians’ doctrinal objections to Portuguese hegemony.
Cheriapally, as our church officer/guide explained to us, is an Orthodox Syrian Church, as opposed to a Jacobite Syrian Church. The 1912 schism defining these sects is perhaps the most significant and puzzling in the history of the Indian Syrian Christian Church. How did such an enduring, small and ancient community become divided yet again, this time less directly caused by outside colonial powers?
The history on this seems less certain, but it appears that the Syrian Christian Church hierarchy was damaged by a series of conflicts in the late 19th century, including a series of lawsuits brought over who had true authority over the church. The competing factions included those who believed that the Syrian Christian Church should adhere to existing indigenous dogma and practices, believed to be handed down from St. Thomas himself, against those who believed that the church should follow more closely the authority of the Patriarch of Antioch, the head of the Syrian Christians in the Near East. These differences were made more explicit in a synod called by the Patriarch of Antioch in 1876 to conform religious practice in India to that in the Near East. Finally, in 1912, the group favoring local authority invited the living “deposed” Patriarch of Antioch, Abdul Mesih, to India. It is not exactly clear why he was deposed, although some argue that the act was illegitimate because it was forced by the Ottoman Turkish authorities. Abdul Mesih in India established the so-called Orthodox Syrian Church, headed by a local Catholicate (based near Kottayam in a town called D
evalokam), as a semiautonomous branch of the Syriac Orthodox Church. This move was not recognized by the “official” Patriarch at the time or his successors, or by the so-called Jacobite Syrian Christians, who favored the authority of the official Patriarch.
Less than a hundred yards west of Cheriapally, on a small hill, stands Valiapally, “Large Church” or St. Mary’s Knanaya Church, one of the oldest existing Christian churches in Kerala.
Originally built just prior to Cheriapally, although much of the building does not speak from that date, the prizes of the church’s collections include two ancient crosses carved in granite, one older and the other a replica, which contain inscriptions in Pahlavi and Syriac.
The church and its treasures belong to the Knanaya, who are descendants of the delegation that came to India from the Near East in the fourth century. The Knanaya have remained loyal to the Syriac Orthodox Church based in Damascus, and plaques and portraits inside Valiapally feature prominently the connection between the church and the mother church in the Near East.
Leaving Valiapally, I saw an elderly Indian lady, resplendent in sari and gold jewelry, step up to the hill on which the church sits, and cross herself. I did not know to which sect she belonged, and I suppose she may even have been Roman Catholic or Anglican, but through her gesture I imagined a continuity of almost two thousand years, from new Christians converted to a new and foreign God or descendants of voyagers from a distant land, taken root and somehow survived and even flourished despite great odds, even if now the trunk has borne many branches. And I wondered how this history would have played out in a different country, and whether India wasn’t particularly fertile soil for not only new native religions but also ancient and exotic foreign religions, from eastern Christian sects to Zoroastrianism.
I have read that Indian Syrian Christian churches have now been established all over the world, following the migrations of Indian communities. Perhaps, in the years to come, there will be other divisions, or old differences will be reconciled. But the continuity of the tradition seems assured.