FROM JAN 3rd
Finally after Rajive’s morning bath, we make our escape from Varkala. Hard to leave him and his mahout, and the boys at Dolphin Bay, but the party is over… it’s time to move on to Alleppy, the ‘Venice’ of India, with it’s lazy backwaters and network of canals.
At Vrindhavanam Heritage home we find a beautiful inner courtyard streaming with purple bourganvillia and potted palms, a bursting oasis of green contained by the white washed walls and terracotta roof tiles of this traditional family home. We are reminded the Portuguese colonized Kerala long before the British ever laid foot in India with their afternoon tea and cricket.
A short walk to the nearby canal, under shady trees, past aromatic gujarati sweet stores and a Jain temple brings us to the city beach. No bikinis here, but it’s quite beautiful … big waves, a few fisherman’s boats and boys, trousers rolled-up, ankle deep in the water. No cafes, no stalls, but as we walk, a simple raised platform, with some chairs and tables overlooking the waves. A little lad in full length pants and buttoned up shirt runs out to us. … “whatsyournamepenplease” … he looks awkward with his laced up shoes in the sand.
“Hellooo” a voice greets us from the platform, ‘ Come, please come!’ so we scramble across the rocks to the tall young Indian man , beckoning graciously with his long lean hands. His name is Anil, he runs the small guest house of four tidy bamboo huts, his only guest, a spaced out, bleary-eyed Brit swings in the hammock below. As we sip Anil’s ‘Special’ …. A mouth watering, milky concoction of tender coconut, a curious little 4 year old appears, scrambling onto the platform, wide-eyed, confident, bangles jangling as she fearlessly reaches for my drink…’ no Alleena!’ Anil says as he scoops her up on his lap. She wriggles and squirms, her shiney short pageboy hair getting in her face. Your daughter we ask? No, my neighbour’s’ Anil tells us….. he’s not yet married. His father, a fisherman was injured when Anil was young and since he has 2 sisters he must work 2 jobs, rising at 4 am to go fishing and returning to run the guest house, so his sisters might one day get married. He will have to wait.
Yes marriage is difficult here in India, where a girls family must provide a serious dowry and a young man needs to be well established with a responcible job in order to find a wife. Often people can’t afford to get married, or go into great debt to do so. Many a girl child is seen as a liablility here, especially in rural India where traditionally married women do not work, despite the fact women are seen picking tea, picking cotton and building roads all over India. Prostitution is a big problem, young girls trafficked or sold to the city brothels. And what are young men to do? sex before marriage is frowned upon, living with a woman is frowned upon, women are always covered up. …. that is, except for foreign women. No wonder there are gawkers and stalkers on the beaches, hordes of young Indian men eager to get a glimpse of tourist flesh. For us it is uncomfortable, irritating and sometimes offensive being the object of their incessant gaze, but who can blame them, to them it must be quite an opportunity ! It’s hard to imagine what they think of us, most self-respecting Indians would never remove their clothes to go in the sea, most don’t even know how to swim, they paddle at the edge of the ocean, saris hiked, lungi’s rolled racing away from the waves. Westerners must seem flagrantly immodest, perhaps they imagine we are all loose women inciting them to immoral behavior? As a result one spends most time at an Indian beach self-conciously dashing in and out of the water, watching for the next batch of ‘admirers’ to arrive on the horizon so you can wrap your sarong swiftly around you rather than suddenly opening your eyes to find some fellow standing a few feet away intently gazing in silence!
As the sun sets we listen to the mulla giving praise to Allah from the local mosque and Anil disappears to bathe and put on a clean shirt and mundu (white sarong) for evening pujas. He is very proud of the new Sree Munnodi temple nearby and invites us to join him. It’s a short walk, through chicken pecked back yards and down a ‘tunnel’ of fluttering silver paper streamers to the temple grounds. Sree Munnodhi is a large new temple with a chinese style roof and hundreds of votive oil lamps surrounding the outer walls.The faithful arrive and walk round the temple 3 times as the frenetic, jangling high-pitched music announces evening prayers. Anil must return to his clients after making his pujas alone, but he dips his finger in the cooling tumeric and sandalwood paste and smears it on our foreheads. He explains we can join the evening ceremony as long as we don’t go inside the temple. We wait, the sun goes down and mosquitoes start drawing blood at the ankles. A brahmin appears to lights the lamps with a long brass stick and people quietly begin to enter the temple, men bare-chested wearing white mundu’s and women in elegant and colourful saris leading children, all fastidiously groomed. We stand outside, hands folded in Namaste, peering into the shrine of Durga, tiger riding Goddess of Power. First there is music and a durge like chanting, then the conch sounds to announce the ceremony’s firey climax. The flaming torch is lit and the inner sanctum opened to reveal the golden image of the Goddess. To a cacophany of conch, jangling music and ringing bells, heads are lowered as the Goddess is circled three times with the firey torch, then the doors swing closed and she retreats into her dark and hidden alcove. We move next to peer into the shrine of Kali, the dark goddess, seen weilding a sword and wearing a necklace of severed heads. Some say she is the dark manifestation of Parvati, Shiva’s consort, or of all three major goddesses together, Lakshmi, Saraswarti and Parvati. The process is repeated, the bells ring and I try to sneak a look at Kali without being turned to stone! But amid the fire and the noise I sense only a wave of heat.
Finally, separate from the main temple is the shrine to Shiva, God of death and destruction… part of the great trimurti of the Hindu religion, Bramha the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer, without whom creation could not occur. Inside the inner sanctum is the Shiva Lingum, a phallic representation of Shiva’s creative aspect.
When the ceremony has ended we all go to collect a (right!) handful of the delicious sweet prasad, or blessed food. Today’s prasad is a gooey nutty, honey, cocunut mixture. Everyone is curious but respectful of the 2 foreigners in their midst. Two little boys in short pants, who kept looking back at us during the ceremony, shyly wave goodbye as we leave trying to remember where we left our shoes, searching in the sand at the entrance of the compound.
