9

Pilgrims at Cape Comorin: Family Life in Tamil Nadu

15 December. Trivandrum.

Statistics mean something to me only when I can see them, as you might say, and I could certainly see them today during our 136-mile bus journey from Cochin to Trivandrum. In area Kerala is one of the smallest Indian states (38,855 square kilometres), but its population of 22 million puts it amongst the most densely populated regions in the world. Moreover, one-third of its area is forest and mountain so some districts have 1,124 people to the square kilometre. Along the coastal strip each village merges into the next and little seems to have changed since Ibn Batuta wrote – some five centuries ago – ‘The whole of the way by land lies under the shade of trees, and in the space of two months’ journey there is not one span free from cultivation; everybody has his garden and his house is planted in the middle of it.’ But in one respect things have been changing for the worse: as the people increase, erosion is diminishing the land area.

Yet Kerala is not depressing; the Malayalis look far better developed than the average crowd to be seen on a European beach and since men and children wear the minimum of clothing (or none) one can fully appreciate their magnificent physiques. (Incidentally, it is only quite recently that Ezhava women have been allowed to cover themselves above the waist in the presence of the Brahman and Nair castes.)

Trivandrum is a hilly, higgledy-piggledy city full of trees and quite attractive, though no urban conglomeration of some 400,000 people can truthfully be said to excite me. Outside the bus stand an ebony-skinned youth – barefooted and extraordinarily handsome – offered to guide us to a good but cheap hotel and led us up a broad street, all the while begging me to hire a coolie to carry my rucksack. He said he hated to see me shouldering it yet could not possibly carry anything himself – not even my water-bottle or canvas bag of books.

Soon we had been installed in a twin-bedded room, with its own primitive shower and latrine, for Rs.5 plus another Rs.5 deposit, which I suppose is intended to ensure the guests don’t make off with the bedding. When I handed 50 paise to our guide he waved it aside and smiled and bowed, and said it was his joy to help us, and vanished. No doubt the hotel rewards him, but how often in India does a barefooted boy decline a tip? I could not help reading a certain significance into his use of the word ‘joy’ where most Indians use ‘duty’. It seemed a nice illustration of the average Malayalis’ lighthearted approach to life.

We spent the afternoon drifting around talking to people rather than systematically sightseeing. In some respects the southern princely states of Mysore, Cochin and Travancore were far more advanced at Independence than British India – Travancore, especially, had a reputation for being prudently progressive without being pseudo-European. For generations its rulers had treated State revenues as public funds rather than as their own private property and less than 5 per cent was kept for the use of the Maharaja and his mother, through whom (the state being a matriarchy) he had come to the throne. The ‘palace’ was a simple white house on a hill, and throughout the 1930s one-fifth of the revenue was devoted to education.

The last Dewan of Travancore, Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, courageously changed the law to allow Harijans into the temples and made possible Kerala’s present-day industrial expansion. But he was an autocrat who for years strangled every popular political movement at birth. During the pre-Independence controversy about the fate of the Princely States he announced peremptorily that when power was transferred Travancore would become a sovereign state: whereupon there was a spontaneous revolution and an attempted assassination of the Dewan, followed by his resignation and a hasty announcement from the Maharaja that his rajyam would of course become part of the Indian Union.

We spent a couple of hours strolling through the green and pleasant university grounds, talking with students and staff. Here in the midst of their problems it is easy to sympathise with Kerala’s Communists, who of course are not in the least like non-Indian Communists. Their strongly held political beliefs seem to co-exist quite comfortably with a fervent devotion to Harihara, pilgrimages to Guruvayur and Sabarimala, an unquestioning acceptance of made marriages and the pronouncements of astrologers, reunions for joint-family pujas – and so on and so forth. In fact I can’t think why they don’t call themselves something else.

India’s two Communist parties (both of which claim to be the One True Party) are known as the Right Communists (Soviet) and the Left Communists (Chinese). The General Secretary of the Left, for all India, is an outstanding political genius called Elamkulam Manakal Sankaran Namboodiripad. (Who must surely say to his friends, ‘Call me El’.) This gentleman comes of the highest sub-caste in Kerala, a most rarefied élite of academic aristocrats, and while Chief Minister of the first Communist government he was worshipped by millions as a ‘holy man’. This was even before his 1969 Land Reform Act, which prescribed the lowest land ceiling in India, allowing no more than five standard acres for one person, ten for a family of between two and five members, and one acre each extra for every additional member, after five. The young economics lecturer who provided me with these figures insisted on writing them down himself in my notebook. ‘You must not forget,’ he said. ‘Our Communist government really did give “the land to the tiller” – not just talk about doing it. Now we have no landless peasants – nobody can be evicted – the cultivator has full ownership. But next it is most important to make him have less children.’

This morning in Cochin we woke to a grey sky and all day the air felt deliciously cool. Then at sunset we heard our first rain since leaving home, exactly a month ago, and it is still slashing down with monsoon-like fury.

16 December. Cape Comorin.

This evening I have come to the conclusion that India – the whole Indian Dharma – is peculiarly tourist-proof. By which I mean it is too individual, too absorbent, too fortified by its own curious integrity, to be vulnerable to those slings and arrows of outrageous vulgarity which have killed the loveliness of so many places since tourism became big business. I had expected to find Cape Comorin despoiled, yet it remains first and foremost a place of pilgrimage: a holy place, as it has been for centuries beyond counting. Like so many of Hinduism’s less accessible pilgrimage sites, it is marked by an extraordinary atmosphere of quiet excitement, of devout gaiety; and added to this is its own unique flavour. From the bus one suddenly sees the sea – or rather, three seas – and a temple on a rock about half a mile off-shore. And that’s it. One has reached the end of India.

Although we arrived on a Sunday afternoon, in the midst of a local Roman Catholic festival, the crowds were not excessive and there was not one other non-Indian to be seen. Having booked into a Rs.5 windowless cell – swarming with ants – we dumped our kit and hastened to the sea. Cape Comorin is emphatically final – a tapering point of rock which is unmistakably farther south than the rest of the coast. Here steps lead down to the confluence of the Gulf of Mannar, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea; and in this water, regarded as most sacred by Hindus, the pilgrims ‘take bath’ and do puja. Fierce cross-currents and occasional sharks make the sea hazardous, so massive boulders have been cleverly rearranged to prevent pilgrims (or Irish swimming fanatics) from being swept away or eaten alive. A memorable bathe is the result, as during the northeast monsoon swimmers are tossed to and fro like corks within this safe area of swirling foam and crashing waves. And while being tossed one inevitably thinks of that other frontier, of rock and eternal snow – the long base of the Indian triangle, 2,000 miles away – and of the 1,138,814 square miles and almost 600 million people in between. And then one marvels at the durability, elusiveness and strange beauty of that mixture of rank superstition and refined metaphysics which unites the shepherds of the snow-bound Himalayan valleys to the fishermen of the sun-flayed Coromandel Coast.

Rachel had a blissful time making castles in a sandy cove just west of the bathing-pool, but to avoid a popular public latrine we had to keep well below the high-water mark. The sand around Cape Comorin is famous throughout India and pilgrims buy tiny bags of it to take home. It is not simply golden, but – in patches – pure white, rose pink, pale yellow, charcoal grey and dark red. Scientists describe these sands as monazite and ilmenite: Hindus say they represent the various dishes once served here at a wedding of the Gods.

Throughout the afternoon I repeatedly plunged back into the bathing-pool since in my estimation the entertainment value of sand is not great, however variegated its hues; and I appreciated the pilgrims not objecting to a mleccha using their sacred pool blatantly for fun. In fact no Indian was using it today, because of the storm; instead they were ritually ducking themselves off Rachel’s bit of sandy beach. Everyone was welcoming, though to decent Hindus a woman in a bathing-suit is a most shocking sight. Hindu women always enter the water fully dressed and when they emerge, with their thin saris clinging to their bodies, they reveal a great deal more than I do in my black, ultra-decorous, Edwardian-style costume. Most of today’s pilgrims seem to belong to the well-off élite and this evening I have spoken to people from Bombay, Ludhiana, Delhi, Lucknow, Calcutta and Madras. All but the Madrassis have to use English as their only possible means of communication with the Tamil or Malayalam-speaking locals; there is considerably more resemblance between Hindi and Irish than between Hindi and Tamil.

Traditionally sunrise and sunset are the most solemn moments at Cape Comorin, as the sun may be seen rising out of one ocean and sinking into another. Therefore at six o’clock we joined the small crowd who had gathered on a huge, smooth black rock against which great green rollers were hurling themselves, sending up curtains of spray thirty feet high. Because of cloud nobody actually saw the sun setting, but the whole western sky became a glory of fast-changing colours – lovelier than it could possibly have been if cloudless. This, however, was no consolation to those for whom it is important to witness the sun touching and being quenched by the ocean.

Having supped in a tiny vegetarian restaurant we stepped out into the darkness and saw, on the east shore of the Cape, a vision seemingly from fairyland. For a moment I was dazzled into incomprehension by the bewildering beauty of the spectacle; then I realised that thousands of brilliant, multi-coloured electric bulbs were outlining the pseudo-Gothic Catholic cathedral against the blackness of the sea. The Indians are very good at this sort of thing and Rachel became quite breathless with excitement. We decided to find our way back to the hotel by the cathedral and went stumbling over piles of excrement, on a pitch-dark maidan, before finding a narrow street thronged with excited, jostling, shouting Christians – and their low-caste Hindu neighbours – on the way to the evening’s festivities.

Inside the church hundreds of pilgrims, their faces aglow with love, were queuing to touch the feet of a gaudy statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, whose feast-day this is. They kissed their finger-tips when they had laid them on the worn plaster feet, and then they touched the feet again and, placing both hands on the tops of their heads, bowed low and retreated backwards from the Virgin’s ‘presence’. Some had tears trickling down their cheeks as they frantically invoked the statue’s help, others laughed joyously as they stroked the toes or caressed the robes of their beloved. These people are amongst the poorest of India’s poor, descended from the sudras and untouchables baptised by Portuguese missionaries over 400 years ago, and it is plain that they have close personal relationships with their favourite statues – relationships of which some theologians might not approve. But what matter? If the Divine is everywhere it is in chunks of plaster and good luck to those who can find it there.

The general scene within that vast, unfurnished church reminded me of a typical Indian railway-station platform between trains. Many pilgrims were lying asleep on the cool stone floor, their cotton wraps covering their heads; many others were squatting about in family groups, eating meagre suppers out of banana leaves, and some were just sitting cross-legged, staring into space. Our arrival electrified the majority and as usual Rachel was seized and cuddled and tickled and pinched and the pretence of kidnapping her enacted. This is the commonest Indian game with a small child and though Rachel knows it to be a joke she still finds it slightly alarming; obviously the mere thought of being separated from mamma in a foreign land is classic material for 5-year-old nightmares. This evening she kept a stiff upper lip but I could see her peering anxiously at me from amidst a tangle of dark arms and legs and faces, lit by white teeth and flashing, laughing eyes. Indians can be quite rough in their play and sometimes she emerges from this sort of fracas with slight scratches or bruises. During the past few days I have noticed her becoming increasingly irritated by the Indians’ obsessive compulsion to handle her – which is an understandable reaction on her part, but I have explained she must try not to hurt their feelings. I suppose her colour fascinates them. By now she is as brown all over as a Punjabi, but that still leaves her a good deal lighter than most South Indians.

17 December. Tirunelveli.

Because of Rachel having been up so late last night we just missed the 6.06 sunrise and got to the bathing-pool as the pilgrims were performing their important morning pujas. Against the sombre background – a grape-dark sky, black rocks and a jade ocean – brilliant saris were fluttering like so many silken banners in the gale: or ‘cyclone’, as they melodramatically call it here. The oceans were churning around the Cape as though being stirred by a thousand giants and a group of pilgrims, having decided discretion is the better part of devotion, were simply pouring water over their heads from brass jars; so again I was alone in the pool. To east and south the sky had become a solid-seeming mass of dark purple and above me I could see towering, bottle-green breakers rushing towards the smooth, glistening rocks to send giant columns of pure white spray leaping into the sky. It is years since I have enjoyed a swim so much; but these clouds were not there for nothing and at nine-fifty the storm broke.

Within seconds everything and everyone in sight had been saturated so I simply put my shirt and shorts over my bathing togs and left Rachel as the good Lord made her. Yesterday’s experience taught me that here it is futile to attempt to dress modestly. There are lots of corners, and relatively few people, yet a crowd of men, women and children pursues one to the farthest corner of all and stands staring, with pathological insensitivity, while one attempts, if one is fool enough, to cover one’s nakedness. Last evening, being without a towel, I made no such attempt and the sight of my bare bottom provoked cyclones of laughter. It is nice to be able to cause so much innocent amusement by the use of the most basic raw material.

We got a tourists’ luxury coach to Tirunelveli (spelt Tinnevelly in British days), where I hoped to find an accumulation of mail from home. This coach cost almost twice as much as our usual peasants’ bus but was by no means twice as comfortable. Before we started, a richly dressed lady in the front row (the purdah quarter) raised hell when the conductor tried, most politely, to persuade her to tolerate an equally richly dressed gentleman in the adjacent seat. The conductor then tried to persuade Rachel to sit beside the lady, so that the gentleman could sit beside me. But on the basis of the lady’s strident rejection of the gentleman Rachel had already deduced she was not nice to know and refused even to contemplate sitting beside her. So I moved, and Rachel beamed delightedly to find herself with a male companion instead of boring old Ma. The gentleman proved to be a Professor of Sanskrit from Benares University who entertained her with innumerable Rama stories told in immaculate English. But I could discover nothing about the lady, who was plainly appalled to find herself beside a filthy foreigner and resolutely pretended I didn’t exist.

In South India one notices many young couples of all castes separating on buses or in restaurants and affecting not to be acquainted until the journey or meal is over. No wonder Indians are so deeply shocked by hippies kissing and petting in public.

Yesterday, coming from Trivandrum, we passed the end of the Western Ghats – extraordinary hills of dark rock, scattered with patches of earth and scrub. They rise sheer from a level plain, creating a most dramatic effect, and the narrow valleys that run between them made my feet itch. We passed them again today, as our road returned to a little junction town some ten miles north of the Cape, and then forked right to run along their eastern flanks. They are superb, rough, chunky mountains, with an atmosphere about them that is still tantalising my wanderlust. If Rachel were a little older we would be sleeping up one of those valleys tonight.

Perhaps, however, it is just as well that we are not doing any such thing, for soon after we left Cape Comorin the heavens opened again, in true monsoon style. Visibility was immediately reduced to thirty or forty yards and the flat land on either side of the road became flooded, as we gazed at it, to a depth of two feet – the water perceptibly creeping up the trunks of the immensely tall palmyra palms. Our bus, despite its exalted status, leaked like a sieve. As water went sloshing around the floor everyone took their bits and pieces on to their laps and several passengers who were sitting under roof-leaks raised umbrellas, to Rachel’s huge amusement. The richly dressed lady and myself were sharing a leak but she made sure her most superior umbrella would not become polluted by giving shelter to the mleccha. As the drops splashed down my neck the bus trundled hesitantly on through an unnatural twilight, with sheets of water spraying out from the wheels. Then suddenly, half an hour before we got here, the rain stopped, the sun shone and excremental odours arose so strongly from the countryside that one almost expected to see them.

Tirunelveli felt very humid and its streets were mini-lakes. When I asked the way to the post office of an amiable-looking man – tall, slim and dark – he offered to guide us and introduced himself as Mr Luke, a Christian. According to him this is the most Christianised district in India, with a C.M.S. that was established in 1820 and an Anglican Diocese founded in 1896. But I wonder if he is right; the 1971 Census says there are almost 4 million Christians in Kerala and only about half that number in Tamil Nadu. However, it may be that most Tamil Christians are concentrated in this area.

Mr Luke made consoling noises when the postmaster explained that no air-mail has been coming in from Europe recently, because of a strike, and advised me to call back next week. It seems worth while remaining within reach of Tirunelveli until Christmas Eve, if necessary, since Rachel is expecting all her birthday and Christmas cards. But we cannot remain beyond the 24th as she has long since been promised a Christmas visit to Periyar Game Park in lieu of the hectic seasonal excitements she is missing. Actually this delay could have happened in a much worse place; Tirunelveli was put on our itinerary because Ernest Joseph, an old Indian friend of mine, now lives some thirty-five miles away in a village called Ittamozhi.

Amongst the pile of Indian mail awaiting me was a letter from Ernest in which he gave the address of a friend, Mr Mathew, with whom we were to stay the night before catching the morning bus to Ittamozhi. I read this letter in the ironmongery-cum-printing works of Mr Luke, where we had been invited for coffee, and it only slightly surprised me to find that Mr Luke knows both Ernest and Mr Mathew quite well. This sort of thing is always happening in India, despite those teeming millions.

We are now installed in Mr Mathew’s home, a decrepit little bungalow on the outskirts of the city. I have never before stayed with an Indian Christian family and it is a most interesting experience; no one would suspect this household of not being Hindu but for the fact that on the walls biblical texts replace oleographs of the gods. Most of the attitudes, routines, prejudices and customs are indistinguishable from those of middle-class, conservative Hindus. Even beef-eating is frowned on, ostensibly because one cannot buy wholesome beef locally. (Possibly this is true, but I get the impression some good excuse would be found for not eating even the best Irish beef.)

At sunset the rain started again and ever since has been coming down in torrents. The roof leaks so badly it is impossible in this tiny parlour to find dry spots for our flea-bags and Rachel’s is already sodden, though she continues to sleep peacefully. As the latrine and bathroom are in the garden I got soaked through when nature called me out just now. Most Indian white-collar-workers live in what seem to us slum conditions and amongst this large section of the population there must be a painful degree of frustration: perhaps more than amongst the millions who have less to eat but no ambitions and no special abilities.

There are two children in this family, a 19-year-old son and a 17-year-old daughter. The boy is in his second year at Madras University and was picked last week for Tamil Nadu’s State hockey team. He is bitter because the frequent university strikes seriously hinder his work. At present the Madras students are striking to have Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister dismissed and, while it may well be that the gentleman in question deserves dismissal, it does seem absurd to have students involved in politics to this extent.

In the past month I have talked to several so-called graduates who could not possibly pass the eleven-plus in Britain. (Probably I couldn’t, either, but we won’t go into that.) Many Indian graduates simply bribe their way through and others get by because professors do not wish their own ineptitude to be underlined by a high percentage of failures. The son of this house admits that when he graduates he will almost certainly have to take up some menial job totally unconnected with his studies. I can only suppose the Indian’s paranoid determination to acquire worthless degrees is some sort of spin-off from thousands of years of Brahmanical idealisation of learning: a most commendable notion, but unfortunately India has a flair for so radically distorting commendable notions that they breed serious social problems.

I hardly saw the daughter of the house, who is studying hard for her university entrance examination. Her brother told me she will never be allowed to mix with the male students and soon after graduating will be married to the young man of her parents’ choice. When I asked what would happen if he himself wished to marry a girl not of his parent’s choice he found it difficult even to imagine this situation. After a moment’s silence he shrugged and said it would be impossible to do such a thing ‘because my mother would cry and put pressure on me until I gave in, and for me the most important thing is not to upset her’. A typical Hindu answer from a Christian boy; what Indian women lose on the wifely swings they gain on the motherly roundabouts. Even when they appear to be demure, timid, characterless or positively down-trodden, their influence within the home is tremendously strong.

Yet the convention of deference to the male has to be carefully preserved and this evening no one ate until Father came home from work at eight-thirty – two hours late because of flooding on the streets. Then, to my embarrassment, I alone was fed in the tiny bed-sitter in which we had been talking, while the family – plus three visiting relatives who had called to meet me – hovered around urging the guest to eat more and more of this and that. Very good it was, too: a typical South Indian meal of rice, dahl, hot vegetable curry, curried fried sardines, omelette, plantain and excellent Coorg coffee.

I suspect the Mathew family treated us as V.I.P.s because we had been introduced by Ernest Joseph. Ernest is a distinctively Indian phenomenon, although brought up in Burma and educated at an English public school. Born of a South Indian Christian father and a Rajput mother famed for her beauty (an elopement, surely, since such a marriage would never be arranged, or even condoned), he has evolved a personal religious synthesis which seems to suit him admirably. His father – a teak millionaire – went bankrupt when Ernest was a young man; there were complicated political overtones and the case caused something of a furore. By then Ernest had already established himself as a painter of widely recognised talent whose pictures give many people an uncanny feeling. To me they seem like messages from another world, rather than human creations, and I am not sure that I could live with them.

Ernest is a bachelor in his early sixties. When I first met him he had long since decided it would be immoral to use his artistic gifts to make money and was living in a one-room shack in a Delhi slum without visible means of support. I myself feel he is wrong not to accept gracefully and use honestly the gift with which providence has endowed him, but that does not lessen my admiration for the steadfastness with which he upholds his curious principles. He is a truly patriotic Indian – of whom there are not a vast number – and his refusal to paint for profit may well be an illogical emotional reaction to the gigantic cesspool of Indian corruption. Also, of course, he is an eccentric of the first order. Every day he shaves his head, he habitually wears a monocle (and in hot weather very little else), he believes firmly in telepathy, astrology, palmistry and graphology and under no circumstances will he speak to anybody about anything on Saturdays – ‘my day of silence’. As I have said, he is distinctively Indian.

18 December. Tisaiyanvilai.

At ten o’clock this morning the rain at last stopped and the sun came out as we got on the Ittamozhi bus; there was a strong breeze, instead of yesterday’s sticky heat, and water lay refreshingly in sheets all over the level countryside.

The battered bus took us back some fifteen miles along the main road to Cape Comorin, before turning left for the east coast. It was full of peasants with flattish noses, thickish lips, remarkably low foreheads and near-ebony skins. Compared with Kerala, this coastal corner of Tamil Nadu seems to have dourer people, duller scenery and bonier cattle. Hundreds and thousands of palmyra palms grow tall and straight from pastures where the grass is a quarter of an inch high, and patches of thorny scrub support countless goats. The large cattle herds are devoutly decorated with bells and ribbons, and have coloured ropes wound around their carefully painted horns, but they look in miserable condition, as do many of the humans. This has always been one of the poorest areas of South India, scourged by almost intolerable heat for ten months of the year and inhabited mainly by primitive pearl-fishers, toddy-tappers, jaggery-makers and deep-sea fishermen, to whose ancestors St Francis Xavier devoted the best years of his life. Judging by the few villages and people to be seen, it is not over-populated; and yet I suppose it is, in relation to what its thin, grey, desiccated soil can produce. We saw only occasional small patches of paddy and it was hard to believe that Tamil Nadu now produces more rice from one hectare than any other rice-growing state and expects soon to have a surplus for export.

It often happens in India that the poorer a region the more jewellery is displayed and on our bus were several women plainly suffering from chronic malnutrition but literally weighed down by their gold ornaments. Rachel was fascinated to see the elaborate tattooing on their necks and arms and the saucer-like ear-rings that hung from their misshapen ears. But then, true to form, she began to fret lest that weight depending from the ears might be causing – or have caused – some pain.

As we approached Ittamozhi lakes of brown floodwater could be seen reflecting the deep blue sky. To reach Ernest’s hovel, half a mile from the village, we had to wade and slither through deep pools and sticky mud – an ‘adventure’ enormously to the liking of my daughter. The hovel was built by Ernest’s father as a medical dispensary for the local Harijans but it is many years since any doctor has been willing to work for such people in such a place. Recently, during Ernest’s absence, the structure was much depleted by vandals and previously it had lain empty for many years, being adversely affected by wind and weather, so it may not unfairly be described as an uninhabitable ruin.

Ernest nevertheless finds it quite comfortable, though in view of Rachel’s age and – compared with her mother – fragility, he has decided we are to spend our nights with friends of his at this little town of Tisaiyanvilai, five miles west of Ittamozhi. (Incidentally, Ittamozhi is pronounced ‘Ittamolly’, for some reason best known to the Tamils.) Rachel did not at all approve of this arrangement, having fallen in love with Ernest at first sight. But when he invited her to spend the day painting with him tomorrow, while I explore St Francis Xavier’s village of Manapad, she was Ittamollified. (It was Ernest who said that – not me.) Small children seem to have a special affinity with a certain type of unselfconscious eccentric, and with people who are in any way psychic, or genuinely detached from the things of this world. Today, seeing Ernest and Rachel together, I knew that on some plane inaccessible to me they had at once established an exceptionally close relationship. Oddly, they seem to complement each other.

In twenty-five years I am only the second non-related guest to have stayed a night with this Hindu family. Ernest of course is the other, and it is a mark of the family’s regard for him that his two wandering mleccha friends have been admitted to such an exclusive home. The household consists of a retired doctor and his wife, their eldest son – now the local G.P. – his wife and four shy children, and his equally shy unmarried sister who is his partner in the practice. The large, handsome house was designed by the old man and built only a few years ago on the outskirts of the town. We are in the spacious, never-used-before guest-room, which has been hastily but most adequately furnished for our benefit with two camp-beds and a table and chair. The unglazed, heavily barred windows have splendid teak shutters and the door leads on to a wide roof from which one looks into the sunset over the neat yard with its cattle shed, or into the sunrise across a flat grey-green landscape broken only by straggling lines of palms. It would be impossible to exaggerate the warmth of our welcome here and the anxiety of the whole family to make us happy and comfortable, so I hope not to be misunderstood when I say that this evening I am very aware of having been thrown into the Hindu pool at the deep end.

19 December. Tisaiyanvilai.

Today a septic mosquito bite on my right ankle immobilised me, but I must be thankful it came to fruition within reach of a good doctor.

I spent most of this cloudy, breezy day sitting out on the terrace roof with my foot up, savouring the quiet of my daughterless state and reading A History of South India by Nilakanta Sastri (O.U.P.). This is probably the best book there is on the subject but it makes no concessions to human weakness and read at home would seem tough going. Read in South India, however, it becomes positively entertaining. I find it a good policy to tackle such tomes while travelling through the country concerned.

Rachel returned at four o’clock, a vision of glory in a Madrassi little girl’s costume of ankle-length full skirt and low-cut bodice with short puff sleeves; most attractive, if not very practical for our sort of travelling. She herself had chosen the flowered cotton materials in Ittamozhi bazaar, and then the village tailor’s 11-year-old apprentice had most expertly made it up. The total cost of the outfit was Rs.4.

To test my foot, I accompanied Ernest and Rachel to Tisaiyanvilai’s bazaar, to buy new sandals, and nowhere else has our advent caused such a sensation. Within moments of our stopping at a shoe-stall I was astonished to see the whole main street become a seething mass of shouting men and boys, pushing and shoving to get closer to us. So fascinated was the populace that the Tirunelveli bus simply had to stop, its strident blaring having been ignored. This over-excited throng was of course entirely good-humoured, but the atmosphere it generated had a perceptibly primitive quality and I found myself wondering how it would behave should something occur to change its mood. I suppose our entertainment-value may be seen partly as a measure of the total monotony of village life and partly as an indication of how few foreigners visit South India. One thinks of India as being an important World Tours attraction but its tourist centres are mere dots on the vastness of the subcontinent and anyway are mainly in the north.

Having failed to find any sandals to fit we went to have tea with Christian friends of Ernest who own the local rice-mill. There are several children in this family so Rachel at once disappeared and as we adults nibbled delicious home-made tidbits, while talking about inflation in relation to wedding ceremonies, it again struck me that the mleccha feels not one degree closer to the Indian Christian than to the Hindu. Almost, indeed, one feels further away, since certain aspects of Hindu-impregnated Christianity seem even less comprehensible than Hinduism itself to outsiders with a Christian background.

Within the past twenty-four hours I have developed a real affection and respect for our host family, despite the formidable and, I fear, insurmountable barriers that divide us. I now feel at home in this household to an extent I would not have believed possible last evening and I long to be able to define the dividing barriers, though I cannot hope to overcome them. They have nothing to do with provincialism, as we understand the term, since the absence of such narrowness is one of the chief distinguishing marks of educated Hindus, however physically circumscribed their lives may be. Perhaps I am especially sensitive to barriers in this family because it is – if one can to any extent compare the two civilisations – almost exactly on my own social, intellectual and material level. Therefore where we do diverge, on what can only be called the spiritual level, our divergence is very evident. It leaves us mutually invisible on opposite sides of that wide chasm which for many foreigners, including myself, is amongst India’s main attractions. One suspects that if one could only see to the other side – it would be nonsense to think in terms of getting there – one might be a lot better off for the experience.

No one could describe the witty and forceful women of this family as docile or down-trodden, yet they adhere strictly to the immemorial Hindu formalities governing the social behaviour of their sex. While Rachel and I eat with the two men, in the dim, cool dining-room beside the kitchen, the two wives stand by the connecting door, poised to replenish our stainless steel platters whenever necessary, joining animatedly in our conversation and affectionately exchanging jokes with their husbands. By now I should be quite accustomed to this business of being treated as an ‘honorary male’ – it happens in many non-European countries – yet I still find it slightly disconcerting in households where one is surrounded by mod. cons. and educated conversation. In a muddled sort of way I feel guilty and ill-mannered about being waited on by the old lady – who is very much a grande dame – and the repression of my urge to leap ups to relieve her of some heavy dish becomes quite a strain. Neither she nor her daughter-in-law ever at any time sits in the presence of their menfolk – this evening they stood conversing happily for an hour and a half – and they eat (in the kitchen) only when the men have finished. The young doctor works very long hours among the poor, for minimal or no fees, and, being deeply religious, will not dine until he has locked up the dispensary, bathed to purify himself after the inevitable polluting contacts of his professional life and gone to the near-by temple to pray. Therefore his wife and mother must often wait until nine or ten o’clock for their evening meal; but presumably such restrictions do not matter to most Indian women, who surely could not appear so serene and relaxed if full of hidden resentment. Incidentally, none of the several servants employed about the place ever appears in the kitchen or dining-room, so I conclude they are of too low a caste to be allowed near the family’s food.

In the morning we are going to the little coastal town of Tiruchendur, some thirty-five miles away, to see a famous sea-shore temple dedicated to Subrahmanya, the god of war. We plan to stay overnight in the pilgrims’ hostel run by the temple trustees and to return here next day. A leaflet issued by the Board of Trustees reports that the temple also runs ‘a free Siddha dispensary for the benefit of the worshipping public’ and ‘an Orphanage with 67 Orphans’. It owns 444 acres of wet land, 855 acres of dry land and approximately Rs.25,000,000 worth of gold, silver and jewels.