We first met Mala at the time of the autumn monsoon. We were heading slowly down the Cavery valley to Chidambaram, simply in order to see the temple. It is one of the greatest shrines in India, and is famous right across Asia wherever Hinduism has taken root. That first night, though, when we got off the slow train from Tanjore, everything appeared hazy and indistinct. A fog seemed to have enveloped the town, the aftermath of a typhoon in the Bay of Bengal. It was festival eve and fireworks thumped and cracked in the gloom as we walked past the bus stand; acrid smoke hung in the air like a tropical bonfire night. In the darkness of an unfamiliar place we had no bearings and were scarcely aware of what we saw, which made what followed seem all the more strange and exciting.
Eventually the pyramids of the temple towers reared up black against the cloud-filled night sky. We passed under a massive stone gate, carved with the poses of the sacred dance which announced the domain of Nataraja. Inside we found ourselves in a vast enclosure with columned halls and sacred bathing tanks stretching away into the shadows. We crossed the courtyard to where huge silver-studded doors opened into the interior down a granite stairway. At the bottom a forest of columns went off into the darkness; above were livid white neon strips. Camphor burning at the foot of the columns created the illusion that the stone was somehow magically on fire.
It was the eve of Diwali, and crowds of devotees were milling back and forth. From the inner sanctum came the sound of a bell, and then a swirl of drums and the sharp trill of trumpets. What we saw seemed almost to belong to the realms of science fiction. The inner shrines were ringed by a maze of pillared corridors, which that night were thronged with beautiful young men dressed in white, foreheads shaved, their long black shiny hair worn in a tight bun to the left side: these we learned were the Dikshithars, the hereditary priesthood of Chidambaram.
It felt as if we had been transported into another world and time, rather like entering a temple of ancient Greece, the Parthenon, say, or Eleusis, still intact, its altars still burning. The strangeness of it all: the smell of sacrifice, the fiery music, the languid young men with their women’s hairdos and darkened eyes, their white loincloths discreetly hemmed in purple and gold. We were struck by the immaculate austerity of their appearance and comportment. Some called us over to talk. In answer to our questions, they readily explained: ‘God is half-man, half-woman, and in token of this we wear our hair this way.’
In the very centre of the shrine was a strange building, unlike almost any other shrine in India. Standing inside a cloistered courtyard was a little hall on a raised stone plinth surrounded by a portico of polished black stone columns. Its roof was covered with thousands of gilded tiles, bowed in shape like the traditional thatched roof of peasant houses and shrines we had seen from the train all along the Cavery valley. The front of this structure was closed by folding doors of grimy beaten silver behind which the priests prepared their rituals. Further back was an inner chamber, but all we could glimpse of this was the glint of bronze and gold in the fire of puja lamps. Below the hall at the front of the crowd stood a chubby, bare-chested man in a long loincloth and with a briefcase under his arm. He was singing, not in Sanskrit as you would expect in any Brahminical temple in India, but in Tamil: quietly, almost as if to himself, more Quaker introspection than Roman chant. Around him everyone stood or sat rapt, listening to his soft quavering baritone – a honeyed voice, as the Tamils say (the very name of their language is said to mean ‘sweet, proper, speech’).
When the puja started, the congregation faced this tiny chamber. Two huge bells were rung; one was cracked and began to emit a continuous high-pitched howl as the noise grew. Behind us two drummers and a trumpeter worked up to a frenzy. Craning above the crowd from the back we could just make out the puja lamps but little else. I had been in Tamil temples before, but it was hard to see what was going on, so I edged through the crowd to the front of the platform near the singer. It was then that Mala detached herself from her women friends and came down to touch my arm. ‘This is the Chit Sabha, the golden hall of Nataraja, the place of his sacred dance. Lord Nataraja is here; he is very beautiful,’ she said.
She was small, quiet, dark. (How large, white and noisy I felt.) I had to bend to speak or to listen to her. In the end we sat together under one of the columns. She had black hair severely parted and brushed back in a long plait twined with white jasmine. She had the kindest smile, lovely eyes and an open oval face which would cheerily crease into a laugh. She wore a light blue bodice which left her stomach bare and a thin, patterned sari striped in lilac which draped over her left shoulder and was gathered at the waist.
She was quietly spoken, frail seemingly, but resolute. She spoke some English, and understood a lot more. This was unusual for her caste, but we soon discovered she was an unusual woman altogether. What stood out immediately was her shining enthusiasm for her own tradition, an absolute belief in its beauty, richness and enduring value. And her desire to share it with us.
When the puja was over I asked her about the man with the briefcase; he turned out to be her neighbour and she introduced us to him: ‘He is an oduvar, one of the traditional poets of Tamilian lands. The name means “he who sings”. These are secular people, non-Brahmins from the lower class of people. In them there is an unbroken line back to the saints. It is they alone who sing the saints’ songs in the temples, songs from over a thousand years ago. They sing in Tamilian, here, and in other places, such as Sirkali, and Mylapore in Madras, where they still flourish.’
He was sweet-mannered and self-effacing, still clutching his briefcase. (During the day he was a clerk in a local government office.) He explained that the hereditary reciters of the Tamil hymns have handed down the saints’ songs, usually within the family, in living chains of transmission from ancient times, an oral tradition which is specifically not Brahminical but Tamil. After a short while he excused himself – his dinner would be ready – and touching his palms lightly together, he bowed his head, turned and departed.
Eventually the crowd cleared, then Mala motioned us to follow her up the steps into the sanctum. Unlike many Hindu temples, this was open to all, of whatever caste or creed. Inside, a little knot of people quietly leaned on the rail, meditating or simply staring into space.
There in the heart of the mysterious little hall, framed by shimmering oil-lamps, was displayed the chief image of the temple. Not, as is the case in most other Siva temples, the linga, the phallic stone of the god, but a large ancient bronze of Siva in his ring of fire as Nataraja, ‘Lord of the Dance’. His smiling features were almost invisible beneath the garlands of fresh flowers he receives every day and the strings of precious jewels given by wealthy devotees. But we could see it was the classic image, the four arms holding the fire and the drum, pointing to the demon of ignorance crushed beneath his feet and making the gesture of ‘fear not’. These symbolize his attributes, Mala explained: creation in the rhythm of the drum and destruction in the fire; the inevitable nature of existence; the meaning of creation. His smile reassures the devotee; even when he excites fear, Siva is never far from playfulness. Here the central metaphor of spiritual experience is not crucifixion, but a dance. A quintessentially Tamilian idea; around it, over the last thousand years or so, their culture has spun a marvellously intricate web of poetry, art and philosophy which has given endless solace and delight.
We peered through a lattice of silverwork into the inner room where none but the officiating priests may go, the ‘little hall’ sung by the saints over many centuries; a place already celebrated when the poet saint Appar came here and sang its fame in about AD 650. By then its legend was fixed: the primeval forest of tillai trees, abode of tigers, where a weird rishi (ascetic) was granted the boon of seeing the Dance of Siva. This ancient and venerated core was not demolished; in the twelfth century the vast halls of the Cholan age were built around it. On this spot, according to Tamil tradition, Siva’s dance took place – and takes place forever, to those who can see it.
At the side of the statue of Nataraja was a curtain sewn with golden vilva leaves.
‘What is behind?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It is empty.’
‘Why?’
‘They say this is the secret of Chidambaram. It means that god is nowhere. Only in the human heart.’ She smiled.
We left the shrine together. At the gate, as we put on our shoes, Mala stopped. Next day, she said, was Diwali, a great festival, and there would be many important pujas to see, many beautiful and significant rituals. She would show us. ‘Come to my house for tiffin at 7a.m. No later,’ she said firmly.
First meetings often fix relationships, and this felt like a momentous meeting: a door opening. She was the kind of person you meet in Tamil stories, the holy stranger, the wandering mendicant, the kindly householder who appears out of nowhere to point you in on a new road. It was Mala who initiated us into the traditions of Chidambaram and encouraged our adventures on the Tamil way.
*
Early the following morning, as the rain fell, we went to her home for the first time. We took her the traditional Diwali gift of sweets, a sixteen-rupeé box from the vendor in VGP Street near the bus stand. When she untied the ribbon she was horrified. ‘It is too costly,’ she said. It was all we could do to stop her taking them back there and then. She was, we soon learned, not a person who spent unwisely or precipitately; she could afford no frills and she cut her cloth accordingly.
At that time her two sons were living in her father’s house, but her four daughters were at home for Diwali, and over breakfast we met them (all of us crammed into that little room). They were handsome, intelligent young women. The youngest, Jaya, was fourteen, bold and spirited, with wonderful eyes; she was learning English at school. Bharati, who was more reflective and serious, was at technical college on the coast at Nagapattinam. Sarasu was doing a degree by correspondence at Annamalai University, a selfassured beauty in a crimson sari. The oldest, Punnidah, who was twenty-three, was more withdrawn and, unlike her sisters, spoke little English. (We had only a few words of Tamil, so we never got to know her so well.) She hovered in the background as we chatted. Mala had raised independent, capable and loving daughters.
All the while her husband sat in the corner on the bed, shoulders hunched. He was a dignified and gentle man, quietly spoken. The loss of his sight must have been a bitter blow for all the family. He had been forced to retire on a small pension; we learned later that Mala had spent 20,000 rupees on an eye specialist in Madras before receiving a definitive no to her hopes of a reprieve. To pay for it she had sold some parcels of inherited land. But we could see that his disaster had left her in a real sense as head of family, taking over the male duties of householder (and this in a society where women – Tamil women – are in any case seen as the driving force, pillars of the house, preservers of tradition). Indeed, although she would never have wished it this way, I wondered whether her husband’s loss had in a sense liberated her. For she appeared to be freer than are many westernized women in Madras. If she wished to go travelling, for example, then she would ask family or neighbours to look after him, and she would just go. If she wished to travel alone with a Western man, then she would and, as it happened, no one batted an eyelid.
It was not long before we embarked on our first journeys with her through Tamil Nadu. Usually travelling on local buses, we touched on a pattern of life which is invisible in the tourist guidebooks. As we got to know the family better, I became ‘uncle’ to the girls (a catch-all honorific for any adult male who is neither immediate blood kin nor a marriage prospect). We followed Jaya’s progress in Bharata Natyam, dancing in their bare room, ducking under the washing line as she fiercely stamped out the measures with bangled feet. We sat in Brahmins’ houses in Tiruvengadu as they dispensed nostrums for her younger son’s ‘problems’. We were with her at the time of the death of her ‘cousin brother’ (Tamils marry within the family), aged thirty-five. ‘He was the best car mechanic in Chidambaram,’ said a neighbour as we sat comforting the dead man’s mother. ‘A very generous man who never overcharged.’
Looking back, I realize that we understood very little of what we saw. For quite a while, for example, we never even knew her husband’s name, and we eventually noticed that Mala never used it, under any circumstances. Finally Bharati explained: ‘In traditional Tamil society you will never hear a wife call her husband by name. Only a westernized woman in Madras will say “my husband” but even she will not call him by his name. Mala refers to her husband simply as “he”, in the respectful form. This is the ancient Tamil custom; it is to protect him, for to name him would be inauspicious.’
At the time I did not understand this wariness (which amounts to a taboo) among Tamils against expression of the emotions. It is not that they don’t believe in love. On the contrary, almost every aspect of their culture testifies to the overwhelming value they assign to it. But that is precisely the point. It is for just that reason that you will never hear a wife call her man by name, or see a husband and wife indulge in overt affection in public, still less praise each other. That would be to court bad luck. Children, too, need to be protected from the inauspicious, and not only from the evil eye but from the eye of love. New babies, for example, must not be looked at with ‘too much love’, or overpraised. Bharati said, ‘A mother’s love is so strong that it must be kept in check; too much can harm a child and too much love tempts fate.’ Love is most powerful and can be most cruel – ‘even for a demon parting is pain,’ it is said. So control of the emotions is a deep cultural trait in a land where auspiciousness is a most fervently sought after, yet a most fragile gift. Never tempt fate. It was another world, which I only very slowly came to understand, even at the simplest level.