Madurai: Losing my Religion

There’s a story in the Bible in which Jesus loses his rag with the merchants in the temple. It proves that we all have our breaking point, and even the Son of God is capable of having a Falling Down moment:

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.

Matthew 21:12

It’s a good job he didn’t visit the Meenakshi Ammam Temple in Madurai then - he would have gone absolutely apeshit. Hundreds of stalls are flogging everything from flowers and food to children’s toys (including replica guns and a board game called Businessman), and that’s before you get to the elephant that blesses people for a rupee in his trunk.

The Temple is actually a huge complex, covering six hectares, with twelve magnificent towers, or gopurams, innumerable shrines, statues and thousands of columns. And it isn’t in the centre of Madurai, it is the centre of Madurai; the modern city spreading out from here in a web of concentric squares, getting crazier and noisier the further you go.

Madurai could be the perfect microcosm of Indian society – a thriving, bustling, dusty, commercial city, an IT driven economy, packed with humble, friendly, hospitable people, countless incredible eateries, and at its beating heart a Hindu temple whose history stretches back two thousand years.

India is a deeply religious society, and 80% of the population are Hindu. As an atheist, I like the fact that Hinduism has no single founder or scripture and no commonly agreed set of teachings. And the more I read about him, the more I like the Hindu God Shiva.

There are three main Hindu Gods: Brahma, the creator of the universe; Vishnu, the preserver of the universe and Shiva, who destroys the universe in order to recreate it. He uses the powers of destruction and recreation to undermine the illusions and imperfections of the world. Destroying, not arbitrarily, but deliberately and constructively.

Thus Shiva is replete with contradictions: good and evil, ascetic and hedonistic. It is only his marriage to Meenakshi, in the form of Parvati, that brings him balance and control. Even the destroyer of the universe needs a good woman to keep him in check, it seems. For this reason, he is often worshipped in the form of the Shivalingam, (lingam meaning phallus), and there is a significant shrine to his penis in the Meenakshi Ammam Temple. 

The marriage of Shiva and Parvati, as depicted in a ceiling painting

Apparently, Meenakshi had three breasts and, in accordance with prophecy, one of them melted away when she met Shiva. (His disappointment presumably tempered, if the statues are accurate, by the size and shape of the two that remained). Every evening a statue of Shiva is taken from his shrine to that of Meenakshi, where he spends the night with her, before being returned the next morning, and thus balance is restored to the force. Which is why the Meenakshi Ammam Temple in Madurai is so important to Hindus.

Bare legs are forbidden in the temple so I am wearing my lunghi, which it turns out isn’t a lunghi (because they’re not allowed in the temple either) but a dhoti. I’m too confused to argue. I’m stopped every five yards by people wanting to take my picture, including these guys, with whom I have to pose individually as well as in numerous group shots. When I tell them it’s 10 rupees a photo, they’re not immediately sure if I am joking.

Shortly after I stand still long enough (about one tenth of a second) to attract an offer of a guided tour, and since I am wandering about aimlessly anyway, I decide to break with protocol and accept. I still haven’t caught his name at the third time of asking so you can imagine what it’s like trying to follow his lengthy explanations of the multiple Hindu Gods and their relations to one another, nodding sagely as I descend faster and deeper into complete and utter bewilderment.

All this talk of people and Gods being elephants, monkeys, peacocks, having giant penises, three breasts, multiple incarnations: it all seems a bit far-fetched to me. Not wishing to undermine the devotion of the wonderful people here but, as in all religions, these are stories. They are a way of explaining the world, of passing down culture, tradition, morality and philosophy through the generations. They are a means of understanding the world we live in, the universe it is a part of, and the transience and impermanence of our lives.

There are nineteen major religions on Earth, subdivided into two hundred and seventy large religious groups and smaller ones numbering over four thousand. Hinduism is an umbrella that covers all kinds of beliefs and practices, and there is a strong tradition of irreligion in India, with many considering themselves to be Hindu atheists. 

And if you remember that by believing in one God, you refute all the others, then of course we’re all atheists anyway, aren’t we?

Run for the Hills

Munnar is a busy little town, but busy in a good way – buzzing and energetic rather than crazed and claustrophobic. The people smile a lot and say hello, and there are a few top class local eateries that take great pride in welcoming you inside. It's one of those places that is completely at ease with itself and its pace of life.

There are hundreds of hill stations in India: towns at altitude to which the British would retreat from the stifling heat of summer. In Munnar they planted cash crops: coffee, cardamom and other spices, before discovering that tea thrived best of all. So they ripped up swathes of indigenous vegetation to make way, transforming the landscape into neat little rows and strange formations that resemble the cerebral cortex, airbrushed green.

Thanks to the unique and mysterious beauty of these plantations Munnar thrives as a tourist destination, people drawn by the landscape and the chance to trek among it. Which is why I’m sprinting through the empty streets at 6:30 in the morning looking for a tuk-tuk. (Ask any tuk-tuk driver in India if they know where something is, and they say Yes. Not because they do, but because they make no distinction between knowing where something is and being able to find it - by driving around indiscriminately until they stumble upon it, or by asking everyone else in the hope that one of them might know where it is.)

Luckily this is India, and everyone else is as late as I am, so it was nearly 7am when our little group set off from Old Munnar to hike up through the tea plantations. Dawn had broken but the mist was still spread over us like a veil. When the sun broke through the cloud the whole scene resembled some fairytale or other. Along with the sun, the mist came and went in waves for the duration of the climb. Sometimes thin and wispy, at others thick and impenetrable, the perfectly manicured tea plants disappearing and reappearing in front of us as we went. It was a landscape in constant flux.

Much higher, the tea gave way to scrubby grass and before long we reached areas stripped bare by wild fire. Munnar has had only two days of rain in the last three months (the two days I’ve been here) and it's been a constant threat. The transformation in the landscape is so stark: lush and fertile down the mountain, barren and hostile up in the clouds. That difference notwithstanding, I would struggle to say for sure that one is more fascinating or beautiful than the other.

Having reached the top we were rewarded with a breakfast of tea, toast and fruit. I was about to ask where he was going to plug the toaster in when I remembered that the Indian definition of toast is a slice of bread that has been passed in front of a light bulb at some point in the last ten hours. I spent less time eating it than I did posing for this photograph:

Looking back on this image later on, I wondered what it actually says about me. Alone, standing on the edge of nothing and somehow reveling in that isolation, proud of it. Wanting to see the world for myself, and share it, not with someone in the flesh, but through distant words and pictures. And all of them reaching for something intangible, transient, spiritual even, but never quite being able to grasp it.

After breakfast, we moped around on the granite summit. I found a comfortable looking spot and stretched out to rest. I thought of Hampi where I had laid on the warm stone in savasana, waiting for sunset. I quickly dozed off, enjoying semi lucid dreams as my mind flirted with consciousness. At some point I opened my eyes and crisp but wispy clouds were floating past at varying heights and speeds. Right there in front of me I swear I saw all seven continents of the Earth in near perfect formation, but the wind and their different trajectories had scattered them before I’d managed to take a photo.

Or maybe I just dreamt it after all.

Johnson vs Johnson

I’d been looking forward to my trip to Munnar, an old colonial tea station nestling in the upper reaches of the Western Ghats. It promised a change in climate as well as surroundings, after the brutal heat of Kochi and the sandy beach of Varkala.

The drive was breathtaking, and that had nothing to do with the view. My driver, Johnson, impressed me in Kochi with his expediency on the road and quiet, considered company. But his complete disregard for traffic conventions (even Indian ones) and perilous blend of ambition and optimism when overtaking didn’t transition well to the narrow roads and tight switchbacks that carried us higher and deeper into Kerala.

He drove as if compelled by an invisible presence to overtake everything in front of him regardless of speed or road position. The possibility of oncoming traffic, blindingly obvious or merely highly probable, was never entertained. When we did meet an oncoming vehicle, he let out a little whistle from between his lips and reluctantly, at the final possible moment, acceded. I really don’t think he felt responsible for his actions; rather he reacted as though he were the passenger, with some dark force inside him doing the driving.

It was soon clear that the volume and pitch of the whistling directly correlated with the danger. The loudest and highest came on an uphill stretch as we attempted to overtake a tuk-tuk that was itself already overtaking a petrol tanker, on the outside of a completely blind corner. There, we met a rusty old bus hurtling down the hill, its own driver on an apparent suicide mission, or perhaps just galvanised by the fact that he had “HOLYMARY” emblazoned across his windscreeen. I glanced at the rosary beads on Johnson’s dashboard, thought of dear old Ayrton Senna, and surreptitiously made the sign of the cross, just in case.

Meanwhile, and on a similar trajectory to the audacity and stupidity of Johnson’s driving, the scenery had become increasingly spectacular and neat rows of tea plantations were now etched into the green hillsides. Both driving and scenery were about to suffer a setback though, because as we slalomed our way towards Munnar, something happened that hadn’t happened since I left England: it started raining.

Just a few spots at first, but soon it was absolutely pissing down - big fucking raindrops, cascaded down the road in torrents and the whole place was transformed in a matter of minutes. Eventually, Johnson remembered he had windscreen wipers and I was briefly reassured, but never really stirred from the conviction that he was on some Ahab-esque quest and that being completely blinded by the rain had made no difference to his driving whatsoever.

Finally, and miraculously, we arrived at my guesthouse: miles from anywhere, on a side of the mountain notable chiefly for the paucity of its view when compared to every other part of the mountain. Having ascended an outdoor spiral staircase to my room, bags still in reception, I did the only thing I could: stripped off my saturated clothes and climbed naked into bed. The rain hammered incessant, deafening blows down on the tin roof, but despite the reverberating din, a solitary, metronomic drip landing on the floor beside me sent me quickly off to sleep. When I awoke, an hour or so later, quite a large puddle had formed next to the bed, and it was dark outside.

Needless to say though, it was still fucking raining, and I was still in the middle of nowhere.

Kochi: Art Imitating Life

Walk along the streets of Fort Kochi and you’ll notice strange dark streaks that look as though they have been rolled into the tarmac. Protruding from them are small, metallic like beads. They are tamarind pods, fallen from the trees then trodden and melted into the asphalt to become part of the road.

And so it is with Kochi’s colonial past, trampled into the narrow streets where cathedrals, churches, mosques and synagogues all clamber for space among the ramshackle homes, pristine mansions and the faded, crumbling grandeur of everything in between. The first Portuguese explorers arrived in Kochi in 1500: a sun ravaged, motley crew of seamen, soldiers, and navigators who had traversed vast uncharted areas of the planet in search of riches. They found an already thriving spice port and a pioneering city with a rich tradition of astronomy and mathematics. The context of commerce, coercion, conquest and colonialism, masked a spirit of adventure and discovery.

Along the promenade at Fort Kochi, giant tankers and cargo ships pass in and out as noisy locals man the ancient Chinese fishing nets that yield a small catch of even smaller fish, immediately displayed for sale. Behind them, market stalls cluster in the shade of giant banyan trees, canopies overlapping, selling all manner of tat, while tuk-tuk drivers, restaurateurs, shop owners and spice merchants pester the tourists. Commerce is so deeply woven into the fabric of this place that literally everyone is on the make.

Kochi is hosting its second biennale and over a hundred artists from around the world have contributed to the only event of its kind in India. The theme this year is Whorled Explorations. In the words of the curator, Jitish Kallat:

In a very simple way I think the biennale does what we do every day when we try to see or understand something. We either go close to it or move away from it in space, to see it clearly; we also reflect back or forth in time to understand the present. Whorled Explorations draws upon this act of deliberation, across axes of time and space to interlace the bygone with the imminent, the terrestrial with the celestial.

From the first exhibit, the message is clear. Charles and Ray Eames’s 1977 film Powers of Ten: in which a one metre wide shot of a man lying in a park zooms out by the power of ten every ten seconds until it reaches the limit of the universe, from where it zooms back in by the power of minus ten, ending only when it reaches the sub atomic level of the man’s hand.

The art on display is more hit than miss, and some of the hits are emphatic. In Ryota Kuwakubo’s Lost # 12, a toy train with a single light on the front snakes around a pitch black room past household objects (toilet brushes, clothes pegs, colander, birdcage) gathered from the markets around town. Their silhouettes are projected onto the walls in a procession of shifting size and perspective that keeps you questioning what you are actually seeing - the ultimate projection being the interpretation your mind settles upon. Down on the scruffy beachfront, the litter has been gathered into a sculpture far less taxing on the subconscious.

Theo Eshetu’s Anima Mundi - what initially appears to be a TV screen at the end of a square, mirrored tunnel - opens into a giant kaleidoscope of abstract footage that forms itself into a globe. It is hypnotic and compelling, drawing your countless reflections inside the innocuous looking aperture on the wall.

Down towards Mattancherry, the dusty road winds past spice and rice merchants, lorries loaded with heavy sacks parked outside where the exotic smell of ginger and cardamom mercifully disguises the stench of still water and fish guts drying in the sun. In a warehouse of endless Indian antiques, including a one hundred foot long wooden canoe, an exhibition entitled Cosmology and Cartography places early Indian attempts to understand the intangible universe alongside European efforts to map the tangible.

On the way home we ducked into Cabral Yard, an abandoned plot in Fort Kochi that has been transformed by the artist Valsan Koorma Kolleri into a dynamic sculptural space – a “tactile experiential landscape of our collective memory.” An area once occupied by human activity, then reclaimed by nature as it fell into disuse, has been rearranged, harnessing the shapes, energy and momentum of the natural resources strewn about it. The result is a playground of nature, with strange pagan shapes and structures hanging from trees or blocking pathways. It is mesmerising and fascinating to wander through.

It wasn’t much later that I realised it was actually impossible to tell where the art ended and India began. Any number of the things scattered about town could have passed for installations - abandoned rickshaws or cars preserved in birdshit, piles of bricks, misplaced rubbish bins -  none of them less aesthetically interesting or thought provoking than the sculptures and creations pondered over by artists. And what does conscious street art add to the narrative of life here, when all about you are the hilarious signs and daubings of a society in constant flux?

In Kolleri’s installation, he had reengineered the landscape to create an explorative, fictional space. Through the archway and back into the real world, the ramshackle, inadvertent way in which life unfolds here is actually the greatest work of art of all. There is an intrinsic comedy in all of this, borne out by the irrepressible, effervescent nature of the people as they sidestep their way through the debris; of their past, present and future. 

The biennale is a brilliant, provocative, fascinating experience that encourages so much contemplation and innovation. But you don't have to wait every two years for that in India - you just have to open your eyes.