7 February.
Today we lunched with Aunty Machiah’s sister-in-law, whose elder daughter had her first baby three weeks ago in Dr Chengappa’s Virajpet maternity home. Like all Hindu brides, Coorg girls return to their parental home, however long the journey may be, for what is regarded as the ordeal of their first confinement – a custom based on the reasonable assumption that a baby will arrive before the bride has had time to settle into an unfamiliar household.
In Coorg, however, the new mother is excessively pampered. She remains with her own family for the sixty days of birth-pollution, following delivery, and during that time is confined to one room with her baby and is not allowed out of bed. Carefully chosen strength-restoring foods are provided and she is given a vigorous daily oil massage and hot bath by specially trained servants – which Uncle assures me has the same effect as normal exercise. But I still feel that such paranoid cosseting must be dreadfully deleterious. We last visited this young mother in hospital, within hours of her confinement, and I thought she looked a lot healthier then than she does today. Yet she seemed perfectly content just to lie there being entertained by her mother, younger sister, servants and a stream of callers. Most of the household’s entertaining is now done in the new mother’s room, to alleviate her boredom, which means that the baby, throughout each of its waking moments, is being cuddled and fussed over and talked to. In this family the infant’s aunt – whose marriage Uncle was arranging today, following her graduation from Madras University with First-Class Honours in economics and political science – is the Spoiler-in-Chief. She also set about spoiling Rachel and when we were leaving presented her with a magnificent hand-embroidered dress and a silver necklace.
10 February.
I woke this morning feeling more than slightly peculiar, having lunched yesterday with a gentleman whose hospitality far outstrips his judgement. Our party began at 11 a.m., with beer, and continued through whisky and Arak to a long afternoon spent on the veranda absorbing small coffees and large (genuine) cognacs. At 5 p.m., when my host and I could no longer convince even ourselves that it was ‘just after lunch’, and when an hour remained to sun-downer time, the Murphys got up to go. I therefore deserved no sympathy this morning, nor was any available. Rachel took one look at me when I became perpendicular and asked shrewdly, ‘Are you hung-over?’
‘Of course not,’ I said crossly, groping for the Alka-Seltzer.
‘Then why do you look so ghastly and dopey?’ challenged Rachel – a combination of adjectives which so took my fancy that I was at once restored to cheerfulness. Daughters have their uses.
My restoration needed to be pretty rapid this morning as we were invited to a Naming Ceremony at Byrambada, about six miles away, quite close to the scene of yesterday’s debauchery.
About one hundred guests had already assembled when we arrived at nine-thirty – seventy or so women within the house, and twenty-five or thirty men on the outer veranda. Naming Ceremonies are not normally attended by many males, apart from close relatives, and only women participate in the Ganga Puja (water worshipping). Formerly children were named and cradled twelve days after birth, at the end of the first stage of the birth-pollution period, during which family members are debarred from taking part in village festivals or pujas. Now, however, it is more usual to combine the Naming Ceremony with the Ganga Puja, which takes place sixty days after a birth to mark the mother’s resumption of normal life. Having bathed, she dresses as a bride, and the enormous vessel in which her bath water has been heated for the past two months is removed from the wash-room and filled with cold water by a woman who intones ‘May your stomach be cool like this copper pot’.
Our first duty, privilege and pleasure was to admire the cause of today’s excitement – a dainty baby girl who, since she had not yet been cradled, lay asleep on a double bed under a muslin net in a wicker basket. She cared nothing for the procession of proudly beaming female relatives, ranging in age from two to eighty-eight, who were passing through the room. Under the cradle I glimpsed the knife that had cut the umbilical cord, a formidable weapon on which all Coorg babies sleep until they have been named. Soon after our arrival the child had to be roused, but she retained her oriental calm even when Rachel helped to change her nappy with more zeal than skill. (The nappy was of course dry, since nicely brought-up Indian babies, however young, seem to perform only on their pots.)
The brief naming and cradling ceremony – attended only by women – took place in the main room of the house. Her paternal grandmother held the infant over a vessel of burning incense while Aunty Machiah, acting on behalf of her dead maternal grandmother, tied black threads around her wrists and ankles. (Had she been a boy, a thread would also have been tied round the waist.) Then, before cradling her, Aunty and two other women three times placed a grinding stone in the cradle and lifted it out again while chanting, ‘Live long like a stone!’ – for the first time addressing the child by name. This little girl was simply named Cauvery, after Coorg’s most sacred river. But many Coorg names are more colourful: Belliappa (Silver Father), Ponappa (Gold Father), Maiddanna (Brother of the Village Green), Puvakka (Flower Sister), Muttakka (Pearl Sister), Chinnava (Gold Mother) – and so on in this rather ornate vein.
Next the paternal grandmother called, ‘Cauvery, get up and eat rice mixed with milk!’ And, to Cauvery’s very evident distaste, a minute particle of curds, rice and honey was forcibly fed to her off the edge of a gold coin. She at once spat this mixture out with the well-known decisiveness of Coorg females, yet she did not disgrace her warrior ancestors by crying or even whimpering.
When the men had joined us everybody formally saluted Cauvery and dropped an envelope containing a few rupees into the cradle. Then, to drink her health, the women were given glasses of extremely potent home-made wine and every woman emptied her glass in one, as is the custom here. I noticed, too, that not all were averse to a refill, though in most regions a high-caste Hindu woman would as soon go out naked as drink alcohol.
At noon, for the Ganga Puja, Chinnava – the baby’s mother – appeared in a shimmering, pale pink, gold-spangled sari, wearing glittering gold and silver ornaments. She beckoned me to follow her to the well, where Aunty again had a central role to play, she and the paternal grandmother handing Chinnava the ritual coconut, three betel leaves, three pieces of areca nut and some rice. First Chinnava offered prayers while breaking the coconut over the well and throwing it into the water, followed by the leaves and nuts. Then she drew a vessel of water and drank three gulps out of the palm of her hand before filling two small, antique silver pitchers. These she placed one above the other on her head, and meanwhile Aunty had filled two other pitchers which were carried by a couple of Chinnava’s nieces, aged six and ten. Very slowly, in an atmosphere of joyful solemnity, the little procession moved back to the house through a garden brilliant with saris and flowers – yellow, scarlet, deep blue, white, pale pink. When the water had been left in the kitchen Chinnava went to the central hall, where the sacred wall-lamp had been lit, and quietly offered prayers while sprinkling rice on the flame. Finally, she turned to take the blessings of the older women, bowing low before them and touching their feet three times while they gently laid their hands on her glossy raven hair. And an old lady beside me exclaimed – ‘What a wonderful girl! Did you know she is one of India’s best nuclear scientists?’ Of such shocks is life in modern Coorg compounded.
The banquet was served in the garden, under a temporary roof of freshly cut branches, on long trestle tables draped with snowy lengths of cotton. Chinnava’s immediate family waited on us, bearing great cauldrons of delicious food: steamed rice, fried rice, curried mutton, chicken and pork, fluffy idlis, soft rice flour pancakes, fresh coconut chutney, sambhar deliciously tangy with tamarind, fresh curds, spiced cabbage with grated coconut, curried potatoes and beans with hard-boiled eggs. For pudding there were large tumblers of a delectable liquid made from ground rice, jaggery and milk, flavoured with fragrant cardamom and laced with crunchy cashew-nuts; and for dessert there were bananas, oranges, grapes and fresh pineapple chunks. At last we all rose, washed our hands and moved slowly indoors to chew pan and betel-nuts while a swarm of servants descended on the tables to lay them with fresh plantain leaves for the men.
Betel-leaves and areca-nuts are believed by the Coorgs to be very auspicious and the mixture certainly aids digestion. At all important religious ceremonies and social functions chewing is considered essential and it is so closely associated with happiness and contentment that abstinence from betel is required during mourning periods. The ceremonial giving of a betel-leaf is accepted as an adequate receipt for money or goods, and an exchange of betel leaves, in the course of an agreement involving mutual trust, is regarded as more binding than any signed and witnessed legal document. Obviously this is a relic of the days when most Coorgs, whose own language has no script, were illiterate.
At four-thirty the party began to break up and, after a prolonged hunt, I found Rachel in the nearby forest with about twenty other junior guests who had been prompted by my daughter to indulge in nefarious activities which did their party clothes no good. On the way home I asked Rachel what game they had been playing: ‘Oh,’ she said unconcernedly, ‘we threw a coconut into the well and fished it up again’; which reply I found not a little unnerving, as many wells are over eighty feet deep.
Incidentally, Aunty wordlessly registered disapproval today when she saw Rachel dressed for the occasion in that Madrassi outfit made for her by the Ittamozhi tailor’s apprentice. This baffled me, until I realised that the outfit is typical of what little Harijan and low-caste girls wear, not only in Tamil Nadu but here in Coorg. Little high-caste girls, before they graduate to saris at puberty, wear European-style clothes, usually beautifully tailored by mother, aunt or grandmother but modelled exactly on Marks and Spencer’s children’s garments. So poor Rachel’s glad rags – of which she is so proud, and in which she looks so attractive – were today a faux pas of the first order.
18 February.
In every Coorg home, from the grandest to the humblest, one notices a photograph or oleograph of Tala Cauvery – the source of Coorg’s sacred river – and Coorgs treat these pictures with as much reverence as though they were statues of a god. So I was very pleased today when invited to visit Tala Cauvery with Tim and Sita.
Inevitably I felt restless during the twenty-mile drive, which took us almost to the top of a steep, forested mountain, but when we got out of the car our journey seemed well worth while. From this lonely height we were overlooking the whole of South Coorg, stretching away in three directions.
Unhappily, Tala Cauvery itself is well on the way to being modernised. Crude concrete walls surround the ancient, sacred stone tank beside the even more sacred spring, surmounted by a small shrine, which is the source of Mother Cauvery. Another very old and beautiful shrine, not far away, has been enclosed in a corrugated-iron-roofed cube that looks like a temporary public lavatory hastily erected on an earthquake site. (This is the first piece of corrugated iron I have seen in Coorg.) Beside the temple another ‘lavatory’ is in the process of construction, as are various larger buildings of indeterminate purpose and shocking ugliness; and nothing can be done to halt this despoiling process. As Tim said, ‘In the old days you had thousands of penniless pilgrims walking from all over South and Central India to Tala Cauvery. Now you also have black marketeers and venal government officials sweeping up the new road in their illegally imported Mercedes to try to save their rotten souls by paying lakhs of rupees to the Brahmans. Which is how the temple authorities can afford to ruin the place with all this nonsense.’
Soon after our arrival an elderly priest, stripped to the waist, came panting up the hill, having been summoned by Tim’s ringing of the handsome bronze temple bell. Unlike most temple priests, he was not obese – possibly because of these frequent sprints up a steep slope. However, had he known who was there this morning he might not have bothered to hurry himself because Tim, following in the footsteps of his ancestors, holds strong views on the part money should play in religious ceremonies. He is a man who in his time has given lavishly to schools and hospitals, but today he only spent 5 rupees on his puja.
The fact that Tim goes to Tala Cauvery as a simple pilgrim made our visit memorable for me. While Sita wandered around nearby, taking photographs, Rachel and I stood beside the little shrine over the spring, watching the pilgrim and the priest. And, as we watched, all the confusion that Hinduism creates in Western minds suddenly cleared away, like our morning mists at Devangeri when the sun has climbed above the palms. A good man was worshipping, with faith. I looked down into the clear, fresh water of the spring-well, where rose petals and coconut shells and red powder and mango leaves floated on the surface, and it all seemed wonderfully simple. Then, as though he could sense my mood, Tim quickly looked up and signed that if I wished I might join him. So Rachel and I received some of the purifying well-water from the priest, drank it, held our hands over the sacred camphor flame of the dish-lamp, and thrice followed Tim as he walked clockwise round the little shrine. And I knew he knew I was not doing this puja to be polite, or for a stunt, any more than I was affecting to be a Hindu.
We took another road back to Green Hills – a narrow track, inches deep in red dust, which switchbacked through miles of forest before coming to a vast coffee estate surrounding Tim’s Ain Mane. This magnificent house was built towards the end of the eighteenth century and is the most impressive of the many Ain Manes I have seen; its wood carvings are of a fantastic delicacy and intricacy. Three young men greeted us: all were comparatively poor relations who have been enabled to get started on good careers (law, army, university lecturer) because Tim uses some of the income from this estate to support a whole tribe of relatives. The rest goes on maintaining the structure of the Ain Mane, which is at present being discreetly modernised.
Although our arrival was completely unexpected, Coorg law forbade us to leave without partaking of food and drink; so while the womenfolk put their emergency plans into operation we walked down a long oni, under the shade of gigantic ebony and sandalwood trees, to gaze respectfully at the elaborate tombs of some of Tim’s more illustrious eighteenth-century ancestors. Sita explained that not all Coorgs are cremated: burial is also quite common and children and young unmarried people are always buried, usually on the family estate.
Here the veranda wall was – as usual – covered in family photographs, some obviously contemporaneous with the invention of photography, and as we enjoyed our thick squares of sweet omelette I found my eye being repeatedly drawn to an enlarged and surprisingly clear portrait of Tim’s grandmother. This splendid but evidently formidable old lady was successfully organising girls’ schools here when Suffragettes were a novelty in Britain. She is largely responsible for the fact that about 73 per cent of Coorg women are literate and have been for a few generations, though the all-India women’s average is 18 per cent – rising to 54 per cent in Kerala and falling to 8 per cent in the densely populated states of U.P. and Bihar.
Tomorrow we must be at the Machiahs by 8 a.m., when I will be robed in a Coorg sari before we all set off together for the Kodava Samaj – a large, rather dreary edifice on the outskirts of Virajpet. It was specially built some years ago for the holding of marriage ceremonies-cum-wedding parties and has already acquired that shoddy look which marks most newish Indian public buildings. To have such a building available for the complicated and lavish entertaining of one thousand or more guests is obviously labour-saving, but the older generation complain that the abandoning of private homes for the occasion has meant regrettable changes to the traditional rituals.
In the arranging of marriages a very important role is played by the family Aruvas. When both sets of parents have come to an informal agreement the girl’s Aruva asks for the boy’s horoscope – or, if there is none, both Aruvas, accompanied by members of both families, go to the temple to ask for God’s blessing on the union. An idol is decorated with white and red flowers, and if a white flower falls during the ceremony this is considered most auspicious, especially if it falls from the idol’s right side. But if a red flower falls some families, even today, will abandon a match simply on the strength of this inauspicious indication. Other families consult an astrologer instead of doing the temple puja and are greatly influenced by his findings; and an astrologer is in every case consulted, during the betrothal party at the girl’s home, to determine the most auspicious date and time for the Muhurtham (marriage). During betrothal parties the Aruvas play leading parts, the girl’s Aruva guaranteeing to keep her safe until the wedding day and receiving from the boy’s Aruva a jewel to mark the betrothal. On the day before the wedding the Aruvas complete all the arrangements for the Muhurtham, supervise dress rehearsals of the ceremony (which rehearsals are part of the ritual), and organise feasts for the neighbouring villagers.
On several points, Coorg marriage laws and traditions diverge from those of most Hindus. Divorce has always been easy to obtain if loss of caste, incompatibility of temperament or a wife’s unfaithfulness could be proved before the village panchayat; but of course a wife can take no action because of her husband’s unfaithfulness, nor can she leave him without his consent. A divorced wife may not keep any of her children over the age of three, and babies or toddlers who accompany her when she leaves home must normally be returned to their father on their third birthday. Should the mother in an exceptional case be able to obtain permanent custody, the children’s links with their father are formally severed and they forfeit their right to any share of his family property. Divorce, however, has always been rare amongst Coorgs, as has polygamy, though a man without a son by his first wife is free to take a second. Alternatively, he can adopt his eldest daughter’s husband (as was also the custom in Tibet), if the young man is willing to forfeit his share of his own family property.
Child-marriages were never customary here and widows and divorced women have always been permitted to remarry – the former one year after their husband’s death, the latter six months after their divorce. In pre-British days, polyandry was sometimes practised: but the strangest of the six forms of marriage available to a Coorg woman is the Pachchadak Nadapad. This is a temporary marriage, now uncommon though still occasionally resorted to when for some reason no suitable husband can be found to wed an heiress. The young man’s only duty is to beget a child so he retains his right to his own family property, receives no share of his wife’s – apart from food and clothing while he remains with her – and is free to marry another girl whenever he chooses. The children of such marriages can claim maternal property only. Another odd form of ‘marriage’ is the Paithandek Alepa Mangala, a special ceremony to honour a woman who has borne ten healthy children. (Formerly Coorgs considered five sons and five daughters the ideal family: now one of each is the aim.)
Many university-educated Coorg women continue to work after marriage, if they have already been leading independent professional lives, and many others return to work as teachers, doctors – or whatever – when their children go away to school. Moreover, the women of less well-off families are often on their local panchayat committee, where they take a vigorous part in debates on every aspect of rural development.
19 February.
We arrived at the Kodava Samaj in a hired jeep at nine-thirty, Rachel wearing a smartly tailored skirt and blouse, specially made for her by Aunty, and myself gorgeously attired in borrowed plumes and laden with borrowed jewellery. The bridegroom was not due until ten-fifteen, so we had time to study the scene before the crowd gathered.
The open space in front of the Kodava Samaj had been covered by an awning of bamboo mats and dried plantain fronds, under which 500 metal folding chairs awaited the male guests; within the building, another 500 awaited the female guests. At the far end of the long main hall, on the right as one entered by the central door, was a small carpeted platform under a canopy of white and red cloth, supported by four tall plantain stumps decorated with coconuts, mango garlands, jasmine and various other richly scented cream-coloured blossoms. In the centre of the platform stood two low, three-legged teak stools with a large, shallow, circular wicker basket beside each, and to the left of these stools, as one faced the hall, was a rosewood and brass pedestal lamp, three feet high, which would soon be lit with a flame from the sacred wall-lamp in the bridegroom’s Ain Mane. Near the platform was a door leading to a small room, simply furnished with two single beds and two chairs, where the bridegroom and his closest friends could lunch in private and rest during the afternoon; and at the far end of the hall was a similar room for the bride and her attendants. Opposite the main entrance another door led to the dining hall, which seats 400, and behind that we found the enormous kitchen shed where, at ten o’clock, mountains of chopped vegetables and raw meat loomed in every direction, and rows of colossal cauldrons, attended by battalions of servants, were simmering on gigantic mud stoves.
‘It’s like the witches brewing in my book!’ exclaimed Rachel, goggle-eyed. ‘Are the bride and bridegroom very rich?’
I had wondered the same thing, but in fact neither family is particularly well off, the bride’s father being a retired army major and the bridegroom’s a retired secondary school teacher. For this reason, no alcohol was served: a most sensible decision since drinks for 1,000 guests could have run these families into lifelong debt. And those who wished to have a self-supplied drink before lunch were free to do so without giving offence.
Coming back from the kitchen we stood in the doorway and looked around the huge hall, brilliantly lit by clear golden sunshine. I have already described the simple splendour of the Kupya – the Coorg man’s costume – but we had not previously seen a gathering of women in all their traditional glory and this was such an overwhelming vision that even Rachel remained speechless for half a minute. Here were hundreds of glossy raven heads and golden-skinned arms and faces, and shimmering gowns and fluttering veils, and glittering, gleaming, glowing gold and silver ornaments – studded with rubies, emeralds or diamonds – and, standing in that doorway, I was mesmerised by the ever-changing pattern of saris and jewels, blending and contrasting, as little groups strolled up and down the hall, or stood animatedly chatting. There were so many rich materials, their colours and shades beyond counting – pale blue, rosy pink, old gold, turquoise, silver-grey, lime green, primrose yellow, sapphire, crimson, smoky blue, russet, dove-grey, flame red, deep purple – and here and there the pure white of a widow’s sari, adding an effective touch of elegant austerity.
I failed to recognise several elderly neighbours who were wearing the Coorg veil, now no longer in everyday use. This is a large kerchief, of which one end encircles the forehead with those two corners tied at the nape of the neck, so that the rest gracefully drapes the shoulders. The fine features with which Providence – or Mother Cauvery – has endowed most Coorgs are thus emphasised, and one wonders why such a simple aid to beauty has fallen out of fashion.
At ten-fifteen a distant throbbing of drums announced the imminent arrival of Ponnappa, the bridegroom. (Here Ponnappas are as thick on the ground as Murphys in Ireland.) I hurried out to watch the procession and found that Rachel, quite beside herself with excitement, had joined a group of Ponnappa’s small nieces and was enthusiastically dancing in the middle of the road, to the huge amusement of the watching crowd. And indeed the bridegroom presented a spectacle romantic enough to make any Irish girl lose her head. He wore a dazzling white Kupya, a broad crimson silk sash, a flat-topped white and gold turban, a short ivory-handled dagger in a silver and gold ornamental scabbard, a heavy golden-sheathed sword, a solid gold bangle and a necklace of alternate gold and coral beads. In his right hand he carried a long staff of intricately carved rosewood, decorated with silver rings and bells and known as the Gejje Thandu. Formerly, if the bridegroom fell ill at the eleventh hour, this staff was accepted as his substitute and the ceremony was performed without him. To complete the picture, as Ponnappa walked slowly up the road his best man held a crimson-and-gold-tasselled white umbrella over his head.
A chair draped with crimson cloth had been placed in the centre of the road – weddings take precedence over traffic – and along the verge a dozen four-foot-high plantain stumps, each decorated with a flower, had been embedded in the ground. When the bridegroom had seated himself, and been surrounded by merrily playing musicians, his Aruva offered clear water from a pitcher, and a betel-nut, to a small group of relatives and close friends who in times past would have brought with them meat, rice, plantains, and their own drummers and trumpeters. Then the Aruva handed the bridegroom’s sword to one of this group, who was supposed to cut each plantain stump with a single stroke while praying to the village God. (He succeeded in cleanly cutting only four; obviously Coorgs are not what they were.) This custom is said to be of Kshatria origin and to symbolise the winning of a bride through superior physical strength, skill and courage.
When we returned to the hall for the Dampathi Muhurtham the pedestal lamp and several dish-lamps had been lit on the platform and a large basket of rice stood ready near the stools for the giving of blessings. First the groom was led to the right-hand stool and then Nalini, the bride, who had arrived by a side entrance while we were watching the plantain cutting, took her place beside him. Dressed all in red, she looked, poor girl, very pale and tense. It was now time for each guest to ascend the platform individually, sprinkle rice on the couple, bless them, and drop a few rupees into one of the baskets. This part of the ceremony is initiated by the bride’s mother. Standing before the groom, she tosses a handful of auspicious rice over his head and shoulders while invoking the blessings of God, gives him milk to drink from a spouted silver vessel and presents him with the Pombana – a gold coin which, being a mother’s gift, is considered most precious and treasured throughout the couple’s life. The women guests ascend the platform first and then, when the men form their long queue – the only orderly queue I have ever seen in India – the women move into the dining hall for lunch.
I was advised to eat with the first sitting lest I might miss the Sambanda Kodupa ritual, which follows immediately after the Dampathi Muhurtham. From my seat near the door I watched many members of the bride’s family moving up and down the long lines of white-draped trestle tables, serving food with an unhurried air that belied their speed and efficiency. When each guest had a heaped leaf-platter before her someone called out, ‘Ungana?’ (Shall we eat?) and the feast began; it is considered very bad form to eat before everybody has been served. As always at a Coorg banquet, the main dish was curried pork, accompanied today by a lavish variety of irresistibly delicious foods.
It is also considered bad form to get up before everybody has finished but an exception was made for me when Uncle Machiah beckoned from the door, calling that the Dampathi Muhurtham was almost over. As I hurried back to the hall the headman of the bridegroom’s party – always the last to ascend the platform – was giving his blessings and gifts. The groom then stood up to be led three times around the sacred lamp by his best man, who next presented him to the still-sitting bride. Having sprinkled Nalini with rice, Ponnappa gave her a gold coin which she received in both hands and then, holding it in her left hand, she put her right hand in the outstretched right hand of the groom and stood up. Next her bridesmaid tied the coin presented by the groom into the corner of her sari, and the young couple stepped off the platform for the Sambanda Kodupa ritual.
This ceremony might be described as the legally binding part of the marriage – according to traditional law – since it involves the formal transference of the bride to the groom’s family and the granting to her of all that family’s rights and responsibilities. During the Sambanda the young couple stand at a little distance from the Muhurtham platform, with the bride’s Aruva and two of her kinsmen beside the groom, and the groom’s Aruva and two of his kinsmen beside the bride, while relatives and friends of both families gather near by to listen. According to a translation I obtained later in the afternoon, the main part of the Aruvas’ dialogue goes as follows:
Bride’s Aruva: The people of both nads, men of the houses, relatives and family friends, are they standing in rows?
Groom’s Aruva: Yes, they are standing.
Bride’s Aruva: Will you give to our child Nalini of Ponnappa family, whom we are about to give in marriage to your child Ponnappa of Subbiah family, the Sambanda of the groom’s Okka?(Paddy-valleys.) Will you give her rights in the ten plots of pasture, in the cattle stand, in the ten pairs of bullocks, in the house, in the garden, in the ten milch cows, in the bamboo receptacle used for milking, in the cattle shed, in the manure heaps, in the axes, swords and knives, in the paddy in the granary, in the bellmetal dish leaning against the wall, in the wall-lamp, in the stock of salt in the kitchen store, in the buried treasure, in the stock of threads and needles and in all from one to hundreds of things?
Groom’s Aruva: We give.
Bride’s Aruva: On the marriage of our child into your family, our servants will carry on their heads goods and valuable things and cash in a box. If this is lost who is to be held responsible for the loss?
Groom’s Aruva: I am.
Bride’s Aruva: Then take these twelve pieces of gold (in fact eleven small pebbles are handed to the groom’s Aruva at this point).
Groom’s Aruva: I have received the pieces of gold. If your innocent child, who is given in marriage to our boy, complains at the groom’s house that the cooked rice is too hot, the curry too pungent, the father-in-law too abusive, the mother-in-law mean, the husband incompetent and that she is not willing to stay with him, or complains that his people are too poor and goes back to her natal family and sits there, who is the person to be held responsible to advise her properly and send her back to us providing servants for company and torches to light the way?
Bride’s Aruva: I am.
Groom’s Aruva: Then take this witness money (he hands over a token coin).
Bride’s Aruva: If our child were to suffer unforeseen misfortune (by this is meant the loss of her husband before she has conceived), who is responsible for sending her to her natal family with servants for company and torches for the road?
Groom’s Aruva: I am.
Bride’s Aruva: Then take this witness money (and he hands over a token coin).
So ends the Sambanda ritual, and when I inquired about the rather mystifying presentation of eleven pebbles I was told that twelve pebbles (representing pieces of gold) symbolise the sum total of an individual’s rights within a joint family; and so when the bride’s Aruva gives eleven to the groom’s Aruva this signifies that the girl has forfeited most of her rights in her natal family, in exchange for those granted by her conjugal family. But one pebble is retained because she has a right to return to her natal family if divorced or prematurely widowed.
By this time it was two-thirty and most people were departing, leaving only one hundred or so relatives to attend the Ganga Puja and subsequent ‘dance ordeal’ at four-thirty. Nalini and Ponnappa, both looking utterly exhausted, had retired to their rooms and I assumed their doors would remain firmly closed all afternoon. But when I got back to the hall after a shopping trip into Virajpet – where my appearance in a Coorg sari occasioned much delighted comment – I saw people constantly trooping in and out of both rooms and was warmly invited to do likewise. From the door of Ponnappa’s room I observed the poor fellow lying full length on a bed under a heap of tumbling small children – one of whom, need I say, had fair hair … In an effort slightly to alleviate his torment I urged Rachel to come with me to admire the bride’s ancient ornaments, but my daughter merely abated her gymnastics for long enough to say – ‘I prefer the bridegroom’. Tactful prevarications have never been her forte.
In Nalini’s room, the money collected during the Dampathi Muhurtham was being carefully counted by the bride’s brother, tied in bundles and packed in a tin trunk. It looked a lot but most of the notes represented only a rupee or two and the total would scarcely cover one-quarter the cost of the banquet. Nalini was talking to three Indian nuns from Ammathi Convent School – one of them was the only Coorg ever to have become a Christian – and I sat on the bed beside her to study the bridal ornaments. I particularly liked her silver Kausara – a ring on each finger connected by silver chains over the back of the hand to a heavy silver wrist bracelet. No less beautiful was her Kasara – a similar ornament of toe rings, connected to an ankle bracelet. Most Coorg married women habitually wear a silver ring – a Kamoira – on the second toe of their left foot, as well as a plain solid gold wedding ring on the third finger of the left hand. Loveliest of all, however, was her Kakkethathi, a necklace of golden beads from which hung a large, crescent-shaped golden pendant, studded with rubies and edged with many small pearls.
The next ceremony – the Ganga Puja – took place soon after four-thirty at the well behind the Kodava Samaj. For this Nalini was attended by two maidens (her first cousins) and a little group of older relatives. On the wall of the well were laid out a towel, a coconut, a hand of plantains, a bowl of rice, a lime, betel-leaves and nuts, vibhuthi (a coloured powder for anointing the forehead) and the bridegroom’s ornamental knife. Having washed her face, hands and feet, and prayed while anointing her forehead, the bride thrice sprinkled auspicious rice into the well as a salute to Ganga, the goddess of water. Then she placed three pieces of areca-nut on three betel-leaves and dropped them carefully into the water, so that they would not overturn. Next she half peeled the bananas and left them on the well wall while she cracked the coconut with her husband’s peechekathi and spilled all its water into the well. She chewed betel – an indulgence not permitted to unmarried women – while filling two brass pitchers with water and placing them one above the other on her head: and then her ordeal began.
The ordeal called Battethadpa (obstructing the path) is another of those Coorg marriage customs said to be of Kshatria origin. When the bride, followed by her attendants, leaves the well to carry the pitchers around the house and into the kitchen, she finds her way blocked by energetically dancing menfolk of the groom’s family. This gambol sometimes continues all night and a four- or five-hour session is common. Obviously it imposes a severe strain on the already exhausted bride, who is being closely studied by scores of her new relatives as she stands immobile, balancing two heavy pitchers of water on her head and only occasionally being allowed to move a few steps forward. Perhaps it is appropriate that a martial race should thus treat its young women, testing their fitness as mothers of the next generation of warriors, but I did feel very sorry for Nalini this afternoon.
The moment the bandsmen began to play dance music Rachel came bounding along from I don’t know where, and seizing Major Ponnappa’s hand (they seemed by now to be intimate friends) proceeded to execute a most complicated pas de deux with him. At its conclusion she continued to dance in front of the bride, without ceasing, for an hour and forty minutes; and, though only males are supposed to take part in the Battethadpa, she was constantly egged on by her fellow dancers.
The Coorgs are a strange and delightful mixture of traditionalist and what you might call ‘unconventionalist’. They seem always ready to make allowances for the customs, whims and eccentricities of others and, much as they value their own ancient ceremonies, they are not fanatically rigid about detail if for any reason it seems desirable to improvise or permit modifications.
When we left the Kodava Samaj at six-thirty, as the bride was entering the kitchen, I had misgivings about Rachel’s ability to walk three miles after so vigorous a dancing session; but she went leaping ahead of me, over-excitedly recalling the day’s highlights. These included being allowed to play with the bridegroom’s sword – which brought me out in a cold sweat, as Coorg swords are kept in good working order.
On our way home the sunset seemed like an echo of those saris in the Kodava Samaj. At first the western sky was spread with pinkish-gold clouds, against which the ever-present Ghats were sharply outlined, their shadows a delicate mauve, while beyond a burnished paddy-valley stood the dark silhouettes of palm and plantain fronds, and all the noble trees of the forest. But soon the clouds deepened to crimson, as the clear sky above changed from pale blue to blue-green – and then to that incomparable royal blue of dusk in the tropics. Now the clouds were a rare, pink-tinged brown, above purple mountains, and moments later the first stars – chips of gold – were glinting overhead, and jungle bats bigger than crows came swooping and squeaking from the trees, and in the distance a jackal began his forlorn, eerie solo.