Revelation

Vadivu sniffed the air, something was not right. And whatever was not right, was attracting her irresistibly. Something rose deep within her, almost like the rush she felt at nights with her husband. But this was different. She sniffed deeply again, inhaling fully and the scent left her before she could completely explore it. Dropping the basket she was carting she stepped back a few paces and looked around. Just another normal day. And no one had time to notice a low-caste woman who carried excreta away. In a back alley of all places. Untying her saree’s loose end to fan herself in the hopes of trapping the scent within its folds she inhaled again in quick short bursts this time. And it hit her. The most blissful divine scent. Definitely masculine, full bodied, rich dark and enticing beyond rapture.

Dhanammal wished the tonga would move faster. It was hot and she dare not uncover her face lest any man set sight upon her. Her mother-in-law sat next to her and her husband Thannilaipadi Narayanaswami, in front of them. She was new to Madras and the sights and sounds awed her and scared her at the same time. Narayanaswami worked for the East India Company. It was a prestigious position and he often reminded Dhanammal of his importance by unleashing English words at home. Sometimes in passion, sometimes in fury, sometimes in boredom. Many of his words were poorly pronounced, some bizarre to the point of offense but the illiterate Dhanammal had no way of knowing his folly.

The tonga stalled. Apparently there was some commotion in the road ahead. Narayanaswami got down to investigate. As they sweated it out in the blazing midday sun, Dhanammal smelt it. Her first reaction was to turn up her nose at what she perceived as an alien stench. Then a curious secondary sniff and the slow realization that she was smelling something new, something different. She turned to see if her mother noticed anything, but Periya Meenakshiamma was asleep, her drool coating the edge of her widow’s saree, her tonsured scalp sweating freely. Slowly she raised her head out of her veil. She turned around to the source and saw an Englishman’s mansion. And amidst the noise and stench of the city, amidst the perspiration of a hundred men, the distinct flavor wafted to her. “Like Radha to Krishna” she thought. Several well dressed men and women were seated around tables. Just as the tonga lurched, she saw a dirty ragged half caste woman sniff the air vigorously. Dhanammal felt sick to her stomach and retreated in the veil again, content to sniff the diluted scent that spinned her head.

The incident was a few months ago. Deepawali had come and gone and the winter chill was upon them. “Ice falls in England. Ice katti. brrr” Narayanaswami shivered one particularly cold day, refusing his cup of buttermilk that Dhanammal had churned for him. The couple had settled down in Madras in a tiny house near kotai. Dhanammal had busied herself in domestication while Periya Meenakshiammal acted supervisor tut-tutting her disapproval more often than not. Come margazhi and Dhanammal requested her husband to take her to see the magnificent Kapaleeswarar temple at Mylapore. Now and then Dhanammal would recall the day she smelt ‘that’ but she never whiffed it on any of the innumerable trips she made to Mylapore. At the temple market she kept herself unnaturally aware of her surroundings and yet she never whiffed that scent. It must have been magic, or the heat she thought to herself. Yes the heat.

Narayanaswami was deferential to his bosses at work and played the role of a subservient dull clerk to boot. He befriended no one from his office preferring to rush home and immerse himself in brahminical rituals of yore. Occasionally Dhanammal would sing to him what she had learnt in her childhood. A mixed bag of bhajans, prayers and the occasional keerthanai. She would often try to impress him with a Dikshitar krithi (to whom Narayanaswami was partial as he claimed descent from the composer) but failed miserably. Life went moved on in the slow sedate way that urbanity sometimes brings.

To be continued…

Revolution

Chaos theory will have us believe that small disturbances in a system will ripple through, magnifying themselves leading to one huge cataclysm. The bigger the system and the longer it takes for the smaller errors to accumulate. And after the big bang, the newer systems are generated with small errors of their own, which in time lead to further chaos. India was an idea crafted by politicians, visionaries. An impractical reality that somehow defied all laws of coherence and managed to stick as a coherent entity. Too many differences in the entities that constituted it. Most countries had a strong basis in language, religion, history or culture. Some were racially defined, some were remnants of large civilizations. India was all this and more. And none of this. Peoples of different colors and histories, strange languages and stranger antecedents. At time the only string holding the country together was its land mass and the sheer number of people.

Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century Indians sought to gain common ground. Politics provided a great platform, the violence and dazzle luring all equally from Itanagar to Calicut. The onslaught of the middle class with similar values. The common feeling of battling poor infrastructure, violence and general chaos to reach the elusive higher plane. At the turn of the century it lay poised like a badly balanced airplane to take off into the future. And like a horrible aircraft , ill fated to reach the skies, it blew. And splintered into pieces. Like the body parts of the mythical Shakti, into several pieces, as it was since antiquity. India as a nation ceased to exist in 2035. Experts will point out several factors and reveal the imminence of that action. Some say it was to happen, some felt it to be an unnatural paradigm. Foreign hands, Gods, Religions, Colour and every possible prejudice were blamed in this fission. But reality lay splattered, a loose coalition of city-states and smaller principalities across the sub-continent.

And now each of these entities would be free of violence they thought. Bound by religion, culture or language exclusively. Some countries exclusively urban, some completely rural. Some spread out over large swathes of land, some confined to off shore islands and scanty mountaintops.

Circa 2009

Facebook and Orkut were merely tools. Sure they provided valuable connections now and then but that was about it. Six degrees of separation worked for once, in his favour. Combing the mists of the ancient past, searching through medieval rabble and trying to locate the future in the present chaos of modern India, his was a difficult task indeed. Especially the part of India he was supposed to work on.

Searching wasn’t easy. For one his search began around 1279 AD. And history wasn’t an easy pursuit. Like a temptress his destination moved across regions and countries. It changed languages and religions. And the messy proposition of caste. Which had oscillated no lesser than five times in 1500 years.

The task was fairly straightforward, to separate India into little nations. They were a large organization and had working teams, named in a cruel mockery of the Indian army. The Rajputanas would take care of Rajasthan, the Sikh regiment would create Khalistan. The Marathas would bring back their medieval glories and the Telengana dream of statehood went a step further to nationhood. Their team was nicknamed ‘Sangam’ signifying the lost Tamil age.

To bring back the glories of the Tamil nation, they needed a king. And not just anyone would do. So a meticulous search began. Looking through temple records, land deeds, properties and inheritances. Modern government databases, census data. Methodically sifted. Each demographic scanned and formulated. Large swathes of data residing as a muddle of names and places. It seemed hopeless at first but slowly a pattern began to emerge. And history, initially obfuscating, then slowly revealing patterns only to disappoint. Then letting out a little clue and piece by piece the jigsaw fell into place.

They had started with the Pandyans first, the last surviving Tamil kingdom. The lineage seemed straightforward enough till the fifteenth century where it ran into several errant progeny marrying in and out of religions. Invaders complicated the picture and the present day descendants would most likely be Indonesian. Or not. The Chera descendants were lost, over records and state boundaries. Eventually with time and meticulous research they had got to the inevitable.

Find the descendant of the Cholas. She survives.

Gods come and go

A study of Hinduism today is daunting. It is complex, requires great study and must be carefully worded (to avoid ruffling feathers, many of which are just waiting to be ruffled). This is my attempt at understanding a small part of this vast domain.

Any crash course on Hindu Gods will star Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. All of our many Gods are but relatively few. Bengal worships the Devi, Andhra Vishnu. Tamils pray Murugan and Marathas Ganpati. Kerala and Gujarat both venerate the Devi and Krishna alternately. The north calls for Ram and Hanuman. The first ladies of the holy trinity command their own following. A lot of minor Gods and Goddesses find their place in the Indian fabric. Groups of people hold allegiance to one particular God. And yet classical antiquity calls for 330 million Gods. And we rise to the occasion, praying to different entities for each of our needs. Hindu heaven has a neat organizational structure, where each deity is assigned to fulfill specific wants. In the seemingly sterile corporate fabric are hidden relationships. All Gods are related. Spouses, siblings, progeny and ancestors, all relentlessly conspiring in endless cycles of karma and dharma, running India itself, one might suppose. Hinduism has been around for a long time and has undergone several transitions. Scholars grapple with Vedic Hinduism, Bhakti traditions, Medieval Hinduism and even Post-modern Hinduism. Being a Hindu is confusing. Casteism brought its own ways and dikats to worship Gods, language and geography interfered and so today a nation of a billion worships billion Gods in billion ways.

What does an ex-Soviet state, straddling the Caucasus have to do with Hinduism? The birthplace of Hinduism if one might take the liberty to pin down something to that effect, is somewhere on the shores of the Caspian near Baku, Azerbaijan. Spontaneous flames on water and land due to subterranean oil gave birth to fire worship. A few thousand kilometers to the southeast the same race of people lived along a river, the Saraswati or the Haraxwati as the ancient Persians called it.

Ancient Vedic Hinduism had much in common with Zoroastrianism, and the two are purported to have a common ancestry. Several Gods freely flowed across faiths till time and distance pinned them down to a particular religion. And thus began Hinduism. Shrouded in exotic names, birthed in the cold north and rooted in the sub continent. The Asuras were conceived then as powerful entities prone to swift retributions. Agni commanded respect and fire worship is a central part of praying today and the Rig Veda is chanted with a devotion that preserves earlier nuances but whose meanings are lost. So did elemental water and the Sky. Mitra was Sun God and a mediator. Varuna controlled rta* and was de facto head of the fledgling pantheon. Dyaus Pitr (Sanskrit Dhyavaprithvi, Greek Zeus, Slavic Div and Norse Thor) was sky father. Wedded to Prithvi earth Goddess, parents to Indra and Agni. Varuna, Indra, Soma, Agni, Surya/Mitra. These were the Gods we began with. The Rig Veda mentions each one in detail, with dedicated hymns and books. Soma was a complex entity; wine, moon and herb. Sharanya was Surya’s wife, the Goddess of clouds and mother to Shani, Manu and Yama. Deities that were the rage then are passé today. Simple elements gave rise to complex hierarchies and a pantheon was in the making. Later times saw the rise of Rudra and Sati. The Devas were projected as protagonists, the Asuras vilified and the Gods as we know them today came into the forefront. Hinduism was on its way.

Time and the mingling of different peoples and cultures shaped several aspects of the religion, resulting in the way we pray today. All religions have a history. Hinduism does too. The future is what will be interesting.

*rta:

Means the ‘order or course of things’. rta was why trees grew, seasons changed, water flowed and the sun rose. Anyone who controlled rta effectively held the universe in their hands.