Bhramotsavam: Neighborhood Temple Street Festival

Chennai (formerly known as Madras) is the capital of the South Indian state Tamil Nadu which extends all the way down to Cape Comorin on the southern most tip of the sub- continent. It is an amalgam of small towns and villages that are all built together. I am staying barely a five minute’s walk from the beach and the Bay of Bengal. The town’s name is Valmiki Nagar named after the sage who wrote ‘The Ramayana’.

The focal point of Valmiki Nagar is the Marundeeswarar (Shiva) Temple. It has always been at the center of this ancient village. The annual Bhramotsavam is celebrated in March - April. The idol is placed on a specially designed hand-drawn chariot called Thyagarkanai and taken out into the surrounding streets - including the ECR (East Coast Road), a major artery running north-south along the coast - on the 10th, and 11th days of the festival.

What is interesting here is that Bhramotsavam, despite the intensity and fervor with which it is celebrated (even to the point of shops and services in the immediate area shutting down for the duration), is strictly a local happening. Chennai has many temples including the famous Kapaleeswarar Temple in Mylapore, where the cruise ship companies like to take all their paying customers for some local color. Kapaleeswarar has its own festivals in which the idol is taken around the market square in a huge wooden chariot. Louis Malle devotes almost an entire episode to it in his controversial, “Phantom India” (’69) film series. Even in black and white the film conveys a kind of primeval raw devotion as the crowd surges dangerously close to the chariot’s heavy wheels that can only be stopped by wooden chocks thrown in their path.

The series of pictures taken on April 5th ’09 in Valmiki Nagar seeks to remedy the absence of color in Malle’s earlier effort. Though it must be kept in mind that, inasmuch as both temples (Marundeeswarar and Kapaleeswarar) are dedicated to Shiva, Marundeeswarar speaks to his ‘civilized’ nature; the husband of Parvathi; father of Ganesha and Subramaniam, whereas Kapaleeswarar speaks to the wild and unpredictable destroyer of convention; ‘crazed cosmic dancer on the bones of the dead in the graveyard’ aspect of the same god. It is easy to see where Indian’s sympathies come down; why Kapaleeswarar is considered so much more endearing and powerful.

Bhramotsavam this year fell right around Easter. I caught the tail end of a Christian procession as well, but did not have my camera handy. The two dozen or so devotees walked single-file behind a plain, white loudspeaker truck, waving palm leaves. They were all dressed in identical black pants and white shirts.

Jockey Hollow, Morristown National Historical Park, New Jersey

“They also serve who only stand and wait.” – John Milton

We’ve always had the inclination to celebrate great battlefields on which heroes were asked to sacrifice their very essence for the lofty ideals set forth by our leaders. The greater the carnage, the more we elaborate. The more the earth has been turned red, the less we are allowed to forget blood’s contribution to our present state of perceived well-being. We are alive and well, speaking the language of our fathers because (we are told) many have died for our - the greater - good.

On the other side as well, the losers celebrate their fallen vowing to return the favor at some future time. Sometimes we forget to hold a grudge; sometimes we just stand there and look at where it all happened and shake our heads.

It is said that in human history one third is given war. This is why nations tend to spend millions to maintain armies that stand idle two-thirds of the time. And even that often becomes a monumental struggle. Take the winter of 1779-1780 when General George Washington’s Continental army was camped just outside Morristown at Jockey Hollow. Twelve men were crammed into each one of 1000 crudely built 14’ x 16’ structures, passing the time waiting for spring. They were woefully short of rations and warm clothing. That season, Washington’s 13,000 regulars endured seven blizzards during the month of December alone - and not a single shot was fired to advance the cause.

Under lesser leadership, the Continental Army might have fallen apart that winter. As such, it might have been denied the opportunity to favorably affect the outcome of our stand against the British. But only a hundred soldiers died; only a thousand deserted. America would go on to win the war.

Jockey Hollow Historical National Park consists of 900 wooded acres. There is a visitor’s center with vivid displays that chronicle the history of the encampment. There is a farmhouse carefully preserved in its original state with an orchard and herb garden. On weekends, volunteers dressed in period clothes recount 18th Century details of life in the Hollow. There are numerous hiking paths through the woods. A few replicas of the soldier’s huts are also open to the curious.

As a family, we’ve been going to the Park since the moving to the area. It’s practically in our backyard, after all. It’s a great place to commune with nature and one is sure to run across a deer or two if one happens to stray far enough from the road. We’ve been there in winter as well, crunching bravely across the snow while cocooned properly in jackets, scarves and mittens, all the while knowing that we would be back in our cozy home well before nightfall.

The last time we were there was Father’s Day. My now grown daughter had brought her digital camera along. Most of the pictures in this series are hers. I just had a hard time concentrating - the past and present crashing together – while feeling strangely compelled to keep my eyes on the kids.

The Doors of the World

Nowadays, the distinction between windows and doors has largely eroded; one-eyed peepholes have evolved into sliding plates of shatterproof glass. Our houses always tend to have many more windows than doors. TVs, computers, books, newspapers and magazines might be considered as windows of a sort.

Still, a door implies some kind of passage; a journey, perhaps - a becoming. Something changes when you walk through a door. Nothing changes when you’re merely looking through a window. God lives in a great room with many windows and no doors.

Back (in the early 70’s) when we still could afford magazines, I happened across a full page travel ad that featured pictures of thirty-six doors. At the bottom, “The Doors of Dublin” in Celtic font had been inserted. Within days, I noticed the same collage, enlarged to poster size, at various shops in and around New York City. (If I remember correctly, it was right around St. Patrick’s Day.) And that wasn’t the end of it.

Eventually, similar formats popped up all over, each customized to reflect a particular community or region. Even our town came out with its own version.

The concept died rather quickly. “The Doors of Summit” did not sell very well, here or anywhere. I heard some local residents grousing about their doors having been excluded.

The long and the short of it - as to the lasting impact it had on me personally – is that whenever I find myself taking pictures in any locale, either consciously or unconsciously, I am invariably drawn to focus on doors and doorways.

Please indulge me in this. My approach is somewhat different from Bob Fearon’s. Bob was the originator of the ‘Doors’ concept. Not all my pictures were taken on the same street; or in the same place even. (As I understand it, all of these now-famous Dublin poster portals can be found on the Georgian town houses just south of the Liffey.) I thought I’d mix it up a bit – compare and contrast – the portals on four different continents. Doors actually are something that we all have in common in this crazy world that seems forever trying to divide us.

Google “The Doors of Dublin” and you will see the original poster along with the story behind it.

East Coast Road (ECR), Tamil Nadu, India

The East Coast Road starts at the Old Mahabalipuram Road crossing at Tidel Park, Chennai’s IT colossus. It runs about 4 km east to Thiruvanmiyur where it turns sharply south to skirt the coast all the way down to Cuddalore. I’ve only been as far as the former French colony of Puducherry, approximately 150 km away. The ECR is billed as an ‘Express Highway’. Indeed, the only thing it has in common with ‘Express’ or ‘Highway’ is that it becomes a toll road at Uthandi. Up until this point it’s like any other Indian intra-city road, two-lanes, winding through dense traffic in tough ethnic neighborhoods of indistinguishable hues. Along the way one is treated to a dense pastiche involving temples, churches and mosques; dogs, cows and camels; retail shops, big and small; and every form of transport ever devised by mankind from ox-cart to Mercedes-Benz. This stretch contains food courts, multiplex theaters, resorts, and amusement parks.

From Uthandi on, the traffic thins considerably. The road remains two-lane and has numerous speed bumps and metal (swerve) gates especially as one passes through any one of the many fishing villages that dot the coast. There are now panoramic openings between these settlements. The Bay of Bengal is to the left. The vegetation alternates between scrub palms and cacti suited to arid climes; and coconut palms and banana leaf more abundantly found along India’s opposite Malabar Coast. The stretch between Uthandi and historic Mahabalipuram contains world class resorts such as the Taj’s Fisherman’s Cove and GRT Resort. Curiosities like Dakshina Chitra and Romulus Whittaker’s Madras Crocodile Bank are worthwhile stops along the way.

From Mahabalipuram on south, the ride becomes interesting from the perspective of landscape alone. You begin to see rice paddies along side the road. The vegetation becomes decidedly tropical. Sometimes the Rain Trees form a dense canopy across the road for several miles on end. Add an oxcart to the scene, and you have a quintessential picture of the South Indian state of Karnataka.

Suddenly, the lush greens give way to pale, blinding lunar scapes. To the west there are unbroken salt flats as far as the eye can see. Tiny dark figures in white loincloths harvest the salt and gather it in conical mounds. The vegetation is non-existent to sparse. Cacti line the endless flat; a few paltry strands of grass; a lone scrub palm. Somewhere I noticed a shed snakeskin bleaching in the sun.

And then, just as suddenly, the lush tropical greens are back. I notice a Hanuman temple; whole villages built entirely of thatch. Gradually, the traffic increases as the towns begin to merge into one another once again. Puducherry is but a few miles away. We blow past the University (a good one, I am told); ditto, Auroville (I have little interest in cults). Our first stop is the Sri Manakula Vinayagar (Ganesha) Temple - complete with live elephants - in the French Quarter. By now, we’re pretty hungry after our three-hour ride. Some French food sounds good just about now. We ask a rickshaw driver for directions to Satsanga (restaurant), famous for its soupe de poisson and its terrine de lapin or poulet piment vert et frites. We’ve also heard some good reports about the crème caramel as well as the coffee. Here in India, that’s saying something.

Goetheanum, Dornach, CH

I entered 1st grade in Arlesheim, Switzerland, a small rural town in canton Basel Land. My mother had placed me with a family there while she was working full-time in Basel (Stadt) and was unable to care for me. My stay there was cut short by an outbreak of polio - from which I fortunately suffered only minimal effects – after which my mother decided to remove me from the household. During the brief time I did spend in Arlesheim though, inquiries were made by The Anthroposophical Society, headquartered at the Goetheanum in neighboring Dornach, about the possibility of allowing me to join the organization to be sheltered there and educated in its ways.

The Anthroposophical Society goes back to 1902 when the German branch of the international Theosophical Society was founded and led by Rudolf Steiner. His group always remained quite independent of the main branch that was geographically and spiritually headquartered in Adyar (Chennai), India. The bond between Steiner and the main society was irrevocably broken in 1913, when leadership of the Indian branch declared that they had found the reincarnated Christ in a young boy named Jiddu Krishnamurti.

If you have been keeping track of my postings from South India to didyouweekend.com, you will remember an earlier article I wrote about the Theosophical Society grounds and gardens in Chennai. - It’s a small world indeed! I myself hadn’t made the connection until now.

On a recent visit to Europe, which included some of my childhood digs, I (re)visited the massive and imposing Goetheanum again. It appears as quite an anachronism set in the gentle, bucolic landscape of Basel Land. The brainchild of multi-talented Steiner himself, it represents a pioneering use of cast concrete in large-scale architecture and has now been granted protected status as a Swiss national monument. Steiner's initial thrust was to liberate the building’s structure from traditional architectural norms and constraints, especially by shunning the use of the right-angle as a basis for any building plan. Thereby, he hoped to achieve organic forms that were spiritually expressive. The result is certainly unique and has been highly praised by any number of renowned names in modern architecture, including art critic, Michael Brennan, who referred to it as a "true masterpiece of 20th-century expressionist architecture". My own impression was that it clashed unnecessarily with the surrounding scenery. I saw Steiner’s ego dramatically at odds with itself – a dangerous situation that, given the right circumstance, could result in something akin to what happened in Jonestown, New Guinea.

While there, I experienced a strange post-apocalyptic sense. Wandering randomly throughout the building of multi-colored interior walls, I encountered no one. I found myself compulsively seeking out windows and balconies to verify that the sun was still shining; the trees still blooming, and that people were still going about their business in the usual way.

Outside, on the grounds, I met random groups of young backpackers, speaking any number of different languages. They must have made the journey for quite some other reason than my own. One group asked me to snap their picture with the building in the background.

NIAGARA FALLS, Ontario, Canada

The first time I saw Niagara Falls was when my father took the whole family to a bio-chemists’ symposium held in Buffalo, NY. I might have been in my mid to late teens; my brother was still a baby. I remember my mother had her hands full with us. My brother fussed and refused to eat, and I rebelled in my own passive-aggressive way. My mother told us later that she would never take us kids anywhere again.

Anyway, we did manage to get it together enough to spend one afternoon on the American side of Niagara Falls. We did all the obligatory things: taking a ride on the “Maid of the Mist”, wearing black and yellow rain slickers; climbing the observation tower; and stuffing ourselves with street food.

After my father’s untimely death, my mother and I drove up there several more times. Each time, the journey would take us through Bradford, PA where Dad grew up and now lies buried. We’d buy flowers and put them on his grave before heading back to the Desoto Motel for dinner and sleep. The next morning, we’d head up to Niagara.

Niagara Falls is one of the eight wonders of the world (and if it isn’t, it should be). I took my own kids up there once and did essentially the same things with them as my Dad had done with us. Only this time we also visited the Hard Rock Café where we bought burgers and tee-shirts.

Most people can list three of the most awesome waterfalls on earth. The list never varies: Niagara in North America; Iguaçu in South America, Victoria in Africa. The precise order of the three is purely subjective. Aside from Niagara, I’ve personally only visited Iguaçu. To compare Niagara with Iguaçu seems like comparing apples with oranges. Some like this one better; some like the other; most like both pretty much the same.

On my most recent visit up there, I took my brand new, Indian-born wife. She’d never seen it. Of course, she’d heard of Niagara Falls and may even have seen the movie with Marilyn Monroe. I, on the other hand, had been up there many times before and did not relish the long drive. It all became worth it, though, when I saw the wonder in her eyes and it affected me as well. Suddenly, I too felt like I was there for the first time. She explained that I was seeing the Falls through her eyes.

Actually, we hadn’t planned on going over to the Canadian side except maybe on foot. From my previous trips, I had always felt that the American side was more natural; more intimate. There were actually places to sit - away from the hawkers and crowds - and imagine what it must have been like when there were only Indians roaming the countryside. One could easily puzzle about what they might have made of this extraordinary spectacle of nature; how they too must have felt it was somehow sacred.

But I had mistakenly taken a lane which would lead across the bridge and from which there was no exit. So, we ended up in Canada. Since we were already there, we decided to stay. There was no need to worry about changing money since everything could be paid for by credit card anyway.

We took a room (with a tortured view of the main attraction) at Michael’s Inn. The town on the Canadian side resembled an amusement park, complete with casinos. It was quite something to walk around at night with all the other thrill seekers, luxuriating in a virtual tide of neon. I did think it was all a bit over the top and totally superfluous, but nevertheless engaging. We found an Indian restaurant (Nataraj) where we had a great dinner.

The next day we took a ride along the Niagara River to the town of Niagara-by-the-Lake. It’s nice if you like lots of flowers, people, shops and the like. One block away, however, toward the lake side, all the frenzy ceases and some degree of peace and normalcy returns.

GRT Temple Bay Resort; Mahabalipuram, India

Back in the early seventies when I traveled these parts I remember coming back from Sri Lanka where I had gone to extend my Indian visa. While there, I befriended a young woman - the wife of an American airline pilot - who was traveling alone with her six year old son. At some point, we left this island (pre-Tamil Tiger) paradise and took the ferry back to India. The landing in the middle of night at what amounted to little more than a bleak, out-of-the-way fishing village brought the woman to tears. “There is nothing to buy here,” she wailed, adding, “I must get back to Delhi straight away.”

She was right. India offered very little in those days to keep the consumer-oriented Westerner happy. Going from Lanka to India was like going from India to Burma. At least India had Coca Cola (while Burma did not).

Things have since changed quite dramatically, of course. It now has become possible to spend a boatload of money even in India. Some years back, I remember reading somewhere that Bombay had made the list as one of the most expensive cities in the world. I never believed it, thinking whoever was charged with compiling the data for India was being had.

The GRT Temple Bay Resort in the historic town of Mahabalipuram is one of the places where you can spend dollars in style. The accommodations, food and facilities are first class. There are tiny bungalows with porches from where you can watch the waves rolling in while gently rocking in a hammock. Western style drinks cost around $7.

We went there for Mother’s Day this year, just for the food at the Warf, a thatched roof restaurant right on the water. Looking out at the beach from under a beach umbrella, you are witness to a gentle but steady procession of beach combers, Western and Indian alike. Looking south, you can see the famed Shore Temple in the distance and the jetty that fortifies it against the sea.

From my previous visits to GRT, I remember the beach as having been considerably wider than it is now. It may well be that what has been built to protect the Shore Temple is now washing away sandy beaches elsewhere.

Still, the point is that India is now prepared to take your dollars and give you top notch accommodations and facilities in return. My friend from my Sri Lankan travels would have been pleased. There are other resorts now springing up all along the coast south of Chennai. As with all things, some are better than others; some cater to Indians, some to Westerners. Often the food and cost is the only difference.

GRT is one of the best I’ve seen. The location itself is unassailable. Ocean swimming is often dangerous due to riptides. The outdoor pool, however, looks wonderfully inviting. The way it’s situated it appears almost seamlessly connected with the Bay of Bengal.