Month: December 2017

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 11: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 11
Dec 30, 2017
Ira Pattu 2
Tiruvaymoli 2nd 100

I was told that the crowd would dissipate after Vaikuntha Ekadasi. This happened not to be the case. While it wasn’t anywhere as crowded as on the 29th, there were still a lot of people in a very small place.

It’s a very different experience listening to the Divya Prabandham recitation in the Ira Pattu Mandapam. For one, it’s a longer space, and it’s enclosed. As Nambi processes, the gosti recites the Iyarpa as they walk with him. This is impossible to hear as the drums are beating and the nagasvaram blares. You hear snatches here and there–an evocation, an invocation, a lament, a sigh. The Tiruvaymoli itself is recited seated after the Tiruvaradhanai, a reversal from the procedure in the first half of the festival. The sound of the crowd drowns out the recitation, so one needs to be close to hear it. The gosti recites the text with exquisite, liquid fluency. The inherent metrical, rhythmic quality comes through beautifully, and I was particularly struck at how clearly you hear the antati–each word pushing into the next, one wave cresting into another. The recitation brings alive the infinity loop that is the Tiruvaymoli–its endlessness, its beginningless-ness. I thought about this yesterday as I sat listening to it, and how the whole Ira Pattu festival recreates this fundamental, elemental structure of the text itself. It’s a loop, and as we pass through the doorway day after day, it’s like we are living in the Tiruvaymoli itself.

There are no spectacular alankaras for the next ten days. “Just” the usual imperial presentation (Rajangam). The emphasis has clearly shifted to listening and hearing in a very different manner. Over the next ten days, Vishnu and his four goddesses wear little caps to keep them warm in the chill of Margali. A different one every night. Vishnu gets a warm shawl as well. I asked if they use the same caps and shawls every year. In response, I was informed that a lady in Delhi had made them all this year–gorgeously embroidered fabrics, sparkly textiles and the sweetest little velvet hats.

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 12/Ira Pattu Day 2

I was told that the crowd would dissipate after Vaikuntha Ekadasi. This happened not to be the case. While it wasn’t anywhere as crowded as on the 29th, there were still a lot of people in a very small place.

It’s a very different experience listening to the Divya Prabandham recitation in the Ira Pattu Mandapam. For one, it’s a longer space, and it’s enclosed. As Nambi processes, the gosti recites the Iyarpa as they walk with him. This is impossible to hear as the drums are beating and the nagasvaram blares. You hear snatches here and there–an evocation, an invocation, a lament, a sigh. The Tiruvaymoli itself is recited seated after the Tiruvaradhanai, a reversal from the procedure in the first half of the festival. The sound of the crowd drowns out the recitation, so one needs to be close to hear it. The gosti recites the text with exquisite, liquid fluency. The inherent metrical, rhythmic quality comes through beautifully, and I was particularly struck at how clearly you hear the antati–each word pushing into the next, one wave cresting into another. The recitation brings alive the infinity loop that is the Tiruvaymoli–its endlessness, its beginningless-ness. I thought about this yesterday as I sat listening to it, and how the whole Ira Pattu festival recreates this fundamental, elemental structure of the text itself. It’s a loop, and as we pass through the doorway day after day, it’s like we are living in the Tiruvaymoli itself.

There are no spectacular alankaras for the next ten days. “Just” the usual imperial presentation (Rajangam). The emphasis has clearly shifted to listening and hearing in a very different manner. Over the next ten days, Vishnu and his four goddesses wear little caps to keep them warm in the chill of Margali. A different one every night. Vishnu gets a warm shawl as well. I asked if they use the same caps and shawls every year. In response, I was informed that a lady in Delhi had made them all this year–gorgeously embroidered fabrics, sparkly textiles and the sweetest little velvet hats.

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Vaikuntha Ekadasi: Tirukkurungudi. Dec 29 2017

Vaikuntha Ekadasi (Dec 29)
Adhyayanotsavam Day 11
Ira Pattu Day 1
Text: Tiruvaymoli First 100 (recited while seated)
Text (Iyarpa): Poykai: Mutal Tiruvantati (recited in procession)

It is impossible to describe Vaikuntha Ekadasi. Suffice it to say, it is a complete sensory overload. I’ve experienced this particular day at a few temples, and I keep coming back to space and how space shapes your experience. There is also time of course–the day is packed. You begin at 3 AM and go, go, go, without a pause. The day thus has this curious feeling of moving very, very slowly because you’re building to the climactic opening of the Vaikuntha Vasal–god descending, the alvar there to meet him, and the rest of us poor, confused folks just carried along in the sea of surging humanity, with all of its sorrows and joys. At the same time, you’re moving so fast through the day, with one event following the next, that you feel like you’re living on fast forward.

Herein Tirukkurungudi, the vasal (doorway) on the northern side is set between a rabbit-warren of granite pillars. So a crowd of some 1000+ people squeeze in, trying to get glimpse. There’s a tall, narrow door through which everyone must pass, following Vishnu. Tirumankai awaits on the other side, held aloft, above all of us, so Nambi and he can see each other directly, with nothing and no one to obscure the view. There is a sense of urgency and intimacy that such space creates–so different from my experience at a temple like Sri Vaikuntham, with its rather wide prakara. But wherever you are, the doorway is narrow–and passing through it on this day is a bit like being born–forcing your way through a tight space to new vastness. You are indeed transformed–you must become something else on the other side. God too is transforming–he passes the gateway to confront himself in another form–Tirumankai who is really Nammalvar who is really Nambi. How many layers of identity, of self, of knowing there are! I marvel at this, even as I am running around trying to find a proper vantage. I briefly see myself through the eyes of those gathered, and come up away with the impression of a lunatic in a sari, running blindly. Never more am I an alvar poem.

The bells are clanging, so many different drums are beating, a conch is blowing, people are chanting Govinda Govinda Govinda Govinda, and each time the name just crests on the other–an antati of chanting, looping, looping, looping. Infinity in the name. There are massive, massive oil flames leaping up to touch the stone ceiling, light glancing off the jewels adorning the deity. Someone is earnestly waving a fan to cool the god. I don’t think it’s much help, but I suppose, it’s the thought and the action that count. Amidst all of this, I am trying to take photographs. I am weaving my way through a crowd so dense that it seems they’ve all merged into a single body. At times, I cannot breathe. I am drenched in sweat, a welcome treat to the mosquitoes that will feast on me later that night. My ears are ringing. I hear Vedic chanting low and deep, valiantly trying to keep up with the frenzy of Govinda Govinda Govinda Govinda. I think of Andal’s parrot crying this out. She thinks a taunt–a name she longs to hear, but brings so much pain. Yes, this is what it feels like to live in an alvar poem.

I am glad that Selvaprakash, our team member photographer, working on an allied project, is with me. I know if I don’t get a shot, he most certainly will. I am comforted by this, and by knowing that I’ll go through this ritual 9 more times, and eventually I’ll get what I need. It’s a great lesson in knowing that one has many chances to get it right. You are born again and again and again. Eventually, you’ll go through the door and come out properly formed on the other end.

The sounds, the smells, the sights just fill my body, and then I just sweat it all out–is this what poets mean when they say the self dissolves? I am melting in the heat, in the fire, in the crowd. After the stillness that descended the previous night after Tirumankai’s moksam, this seems to have dialed up the emotional register to about 50 million. This is lunatic overload as David Shulman would say.

Nambi processes the narrow corridors. I am lost in the crowds, and he is a far away blip, illuminated only by the towering flames. An alvar poem.

It is ever thus.

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 10: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 10 (Dec 28)
Text: Periya Tirumoli 10th and 11th Hundreds; Carrumurai
Tirukkolam: Rajangam
Conclusion of Pakal Pattu Utsavam

This was the day that Pakal Pattu builds to–Tirumankai Alvar’s moksa. You live with his amazing Periya Tirumoli for four days–2 hours a day (one day, 3 full hours) hearing the recitation, hearing the words, that extraordinary poetic voice that was so uniquely his. He has such a penchant for the long poetic line–breath does not come easily when reciting his texts–that *is* the point. One stumbles, and while this might seem an error, to my ear, it always sounded consonant with the journey he describes. Language sometimes fail; indeed, often fails us at the critical juncture. It fails us when we have really important things to say. Despite the Tirumoli’s poetic virtuosity, it often contemplates what it means to hear, to speak, to sing, to say, and what those limits might be. The resonant recitation, with their occasional falters burnished my understanding of this poem as never before. Revealed to me parts I had not considered before–drew my attention to compositional structure, poetic voice, sensibility in new ways.

I cannot really fully describe the experience of how the moksa unfolded at Tirukkurungudi. With the drums beating and bells clanging, the last verses of the Tirumoli and Tirunetuntantakam being recited, Tirumankai, clothed in white, is carried to Nambi. He is laid prostrate at his feet, and simply covered in a mound of Tulasi by two priests. The mound reaches Nambi’s chest, and the fragrance of Tulasi engulfs us. Narra-t-tulaay Narayanan was everywhere, intangible, and unknowable. It was as though an alvar poem had just come alive, and we had all been dragged into it. My hands were shaking so badly, I couldn’t hold the camera. And I had started crying without even realizing it. I kept thinking that I couldn’t see through the camera viewer because of the smoke. I am shocked that I actually have photographs of this event.

It will take me days, possibly months, perhaps really years, to understand what unfolded yesterday. It was a profound, deeply moving experience. To think that this will all happen again, that the Parampada Vasal opens the following day (Dec 29) and we tumble head-first into the Tiruvaymoli–it seems almost past bearing. How can we live with this much feeling, this much emotion, this much intensity? But we will. We most certainly will, although we will likely not be the same on the other side of the door.

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 9: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 9. (Dec 27)
Texts: Periya Tirumoli 8th and 9th Hundreds
Tirukkolam: Amrita Mohini and Vina Mohini

I could only think of anticipatory transition yesterday. The day before pakal pattu concludes; the last day of kaleidoscopic alankaras, of multiple forms. Tomorrow, we return to stability of a sort, of a different kind of movement, and the love of a very different kind of poet. In my years of following this festival, I am always struck by the interplay between image and sound, between hearing and sight. Tirumankai keeps using the phrase, kandu-konden, I’ve seen/sought and found. It’s the refrain at the end of the opening decad of the Periya Tirumoli. You have to seek to see, see to seek, yes?

The alankaras draw you naturally towards sight, but this is after all the festival of recitation, of sound. I will write separately about sound, about the language of instruments, of the places of silence, and of unseeing as well, in a separate post once I can make sense of my somewhat inchoate thoughts. Those do not always go together–sound often directs one how to see when one cannot actually see. Imagination activated to hyper reality.

When Nambi becomes Mohini (as do many Vishnus in different temples, almost invariably on this 8th day of pakal pattu), it points us not just to transformation, but to a primordial story of experience–the churning of the ocean of milk, about which Vasudha Narayanan has thought extensively. While most temples give us only one iteration of Mohini, with the golden pot filled with the sweetest most precious nectar–here, in Tirukkurungudi, we get a second Mohini, playing the vina. One could be forgiven for mistaking her for Sarasvati, but this is a god of trickery, and this is part of the play.

As Amrita Mohini, s(he) towers like a sun, glowing orange, afire with the nectar of immortality. It’s a beauty that burns. In the evening, she is white as the full moon, as though draped in the ocean of milk itself. It’s a beauty that soothes. S(he) is the sun and moon, disc and conch, dark and light, in short, all of time itself.

On this day of almost transition–anticipatory transition–it makes sense that we are offered the nectar of immortality, and are invited to contemplate the nature of time itself–for that will loom large once the gates of heaven open tomorrow, on Vaikuntha Ekadasi.

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 8: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 8 (Dec 26)
Texts: Periya Tirumoli 5,6 and 7th hundreds
Tirukkolam: Vamana and Trivikrama

The Adhyayanotsavam is about stamina. At some point, you feel like you simply can’t go on–it’s too much for the senses. The recitations, the drums, the alankaras, the growing crowds. Every evening, you approach the precipice and think that you’re about to tumble over into some unknowable unknown. And invariably you come back from that place, although, the point *is* to go over the edge.

Yesterday, the gosti recited 300 verses of the Periya Tirumoli, almost continuously–there were three short 1 minute breaks–while the offerings were made. So, essentially, the gosti sat for 3 hours at a stretch, and recited a long, complex text without pause, without drinking a drop of water. The mendacious, avaricious mosquitoes did not deter them, and the recitation proceeded at a brisk pace, but in a manner that you could still each and every word. This is one of the things I’ve really grown to appreciate about Tirukkurungudi. Even though the gosti is small, the recitation is done precisely and with a great sonorous beauty. There is patience taken and time to enunciate the words, instead of just running them all together in some mystifying garbled jumble. I sit in a corner in the mandapam, reading the text silently along with them–occasionally, I transgress and recite the text, quietly and under my breath. You feel the resonance very intimately in your body, and in my fanciful moments, I imagine that the stone pillars vibrate with the sound.

Ever since my conversation two days ago that brought up hierarchies of sight and seeing, I’ve been troubled and a little bit out of sorts. My appreciation of the alankaras is now colored by that conversation, and I keep hearing their voices in my head. I usually chat with some of the women while we’re waiting, but found I simply couldn’t bring myself to talk yesterday, wanting to do nothing more than withdraw into quiet, when there was sound everywhere.

Yesterday’s alankaras linked–first of Vamana (he was so sweet) with his tiny little feet! The second was Trivikrama. How they made him grow to such proportions, I cannot know, but it was astonishingly, terrifyingly beautiful. It was as though the emotional richness of an alvar poem had been poured into bronze and brought alive. I heard echoes of words and then there was only utter silence.

The photos are not as good as I would like–my body was in tremendous pain yesterday: my shoulder and arm especially from holding up the camera almost continuously, from contorting myself to fit into corners and tiny spaces, not to mention the million crimson mosquito bites that now cover my entire body.

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 7: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 7 (Dec 25)
Text: Periya Tirumoli, 3 and 4th hundreds
Tirukkolam: Govardhana Giridhara and Venugopala

What does it mean to see? What are people seeing when they are in these vast spaces, where god is so distant, and he is but a silhouette of jewels and silks? What *can* one see when you have but a few seconds? I’ve been thinking about these issues for a while now, since my Srivilliputtur days, when I first became attuned to the poetics of alankara. Yesterday, I brooded on this topic, and I am continuing to brood on it. The priest who adorns the god sees minutely–adjusting this or that, straightening garments, jewels–ensuring that the god presents to the world as he must. He is a translator. Whenever I exclaim at the beauty of the alankara, I am almost invariably told that what emerges through the priest’s hands is what god desires in his heart. Every evening, I watch the Jiyar Svamikal walk slowly towards Nambi, pause for several moments as he appears to drink in the image with his eyes. I can’t really tell, because I can only see his back–but this is the story I tell myself as I observe this tableau unfold. Then he slowly picks up a fan of peacock feathers and with great patience and infinite grace, waves it, up and down, up and down, cooling the god, so weighed down by responsibility and jewels. I am always entranced by this moment of loving service, which no one seems to want to see. In fact, the women have retreated to press up against the iron bars, and are chatting among themselves about this and that (the topic of the hour yesterday was the mutinous mosquito menace). The men are also gossiping, while several check their phones. The women themselves only see briefly, following the Jiyar and then the men, rushing forward in a great surge of feeling and anxiety. It’s a glimpse, an impression, and immediate, visceral enjoyment, not just of the alankara, but the entire lila encapsulated within it. I show the women the photos I’ve taken–close-ups of the feet and hands, of the jewelry. It’s my way of sharing something, of forging a connection, of trying to speak a common language. Some of the women tell me that they never see things so closely, never have the chance, or don’t think to absorb all the many parts. Hierarchies determine who sees what–can you go behind the curtain, can you see god being imagined, can you linger, how close do you get, can you photograph? Here, there is fierce competition, for the best vantage, for asserting authority. Sensibility, though, determines how you see–sometimes, one sees the whole of the world from a far off distance.

In primordial time you’re white as milk
In end times, dark as rain clouds
Perhaps your beautiful body
Shines like gold, glitters like gems
How will I know if you won’t show yourself to me
lord of Indalūr?

Tirumankai. Periya Tirumoli. IV.9.8

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 7: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 7 (Dec 25)
Text: Periya Tirumoli, 3 and 4th hundreds
Tirukkolam: Govardhana Giridhara and Venugopala

What does it mean to see? What are people seeing when they are in these vast spaces, where god is so distant, and he is but a silhouette of jewels and silks? What *can* one see when you have but a few seconds? I’ve been thinking about these issues for a while now, since my Srivilliputtur days, when I first became attuned to the poetics of alankara. Yesterday, I brooded on this topic, and I am continuing to brood on it. The priest who adorns the god sees minutely–adjusting this or that, straightening garments, jewels–ensuring that the god presents to the world as he must. He is a translator. Whenever I exclaim at the beauty of the alankara, I am almost invariably told that what emerges through the priest’s hands is what god desires in his heart. Every evening, I watch the Jiyar Svamikal walk slowly towards Nambi, pause for several moments as he appears to drink in the image with his eyes. I can’t really tell, because I can only see his back–but this is the story I tell myself as I observe this tableau unfold. Then he slowly picks up a fan of peacock feathers and with great patience and infinite grace, waves it, up and down, up and down, cooling the god, so weighed down by responsibility and jewels. I am always entranced by this moment of loving service, which no one seems to want to see. In fact, the women have retreated to press up against the iron bars, and are chatting among themselves about this and that (the topic of the hour yesterday was the mutinous mosquito menace). The men are also gossiping, while several check their phones. The women themselves only see briefly, following the Jiyar and then the men, rushing forward in a great surge of feeling and anxiety. It’s a glimpse, an impression, and immediate, visceral enjoyment, not just of the alankara, but the entire lila encapsulated within it. I show the women the photos I’ve taken–close-ups of the feet and hands, of the jewelry. It’s my way of sharing something, of forging a connection, of trying to speak a common language. Some of the women tell me that they never see things so closely, never have the chance, or don’t think to absorb all the many parts. Hierarchies determine who sees what–can you go behind the curtain, can you see god being imagined, can you linger, how close do you get, can you photograph? Here, there is fierce competition, for the best vantage, for asserting authority. Sensibility, though, determines how you see–sometimes, one sees the whole of the world from a far off distance.

In primordial time you’re white as milk
In end times, dark as rain clouds
Perhaps your beautiful body
Shines like gold, glitters like gems
How will I know if you won’t show yourself to me
lord of Indalūr?

Tirumankai. Periya Tirumoli. IV.9.8

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 6: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 6 (Dec 24)
Text: Periya Tirumoli (1 and 2)
Alankara: Gajendra Moksam and Kamsa Vadam

As many of you who follow me on FB know, I have a great love for Tirumankai Alvar. I think of him as *my* alvar, and *my* kind of guy. That the 6th day of the Adhyayanotsavam begins the recitation of his magnificent, towering, moving, utterly human Periya Tirumoli made me fairly buzz with excitement. Here in Tirukkurungudi, on this 6th day. he’s brought out to stand before Vishnu, a supplicant. The Araiyar Talam is struck as the Jiyar recites the opening verse of the Periya Tirumoli, Vatinen Vati Varundinen. The whole scene, Vishnu mounted on Garuda, his arm holding the Sudarasana Cakra high above, Garuda gaze locked upwards, the goddesses flanking him, Tirumankai before him–seemed to, in that moment, encapsulate for me, what is so powerful about the Adhyayanotsavam. In effect, the scene recreated the moment of Tirumankai’s initiation, when he became a poet. It was like being present at the very instant of composition, when words suddenly, and apparently miraculously, arrange themselves into some kind of sublimity, some kind of magic, where it condenses, distills, expands, imbues the whole vastness of experience into the single pointedness of sound.

In the evening, it was Kamsa Vadam. The hand that held the cakra just hours ago, wields a merciless flashing sword. An alvar, conscripted to serve as Kamsa for the moment, is in Krishna’s grasp, death at hand. The alvar looks pleased about this fate. Krishna looks ruthless. The giving of grace is never a bloodless affair, but one is grateful for it just the same.

I struggled to take photographs yesterday. The alankara was so so beautiful, it was as though my eyes behind the lens were blind. I could only see the image imprinted in my mind–a hyper imaginative reality–and what existed in this material world was distant, intangible and un-recordable. I tried though, valiantly. These photographs simply don’t do justice to the finesse and imagination that bring gods alive and make them live and walk and feel among us. Poetry will have to suffice, then. Who can say it better than my dear, dear, dearest heart, Tirumankai?

I withered. My mind withered, I despaired
Born into this world of pain and suffering
Wedded to the seductions of young women
I pursued them. And then, even as I ran
That singular one turned my mind
to the singular goal
I sought, in seeking found
Nārāyaṇa’s name

Tirumankai. Periya Tirumoli I.1.1

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 5: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 5 (Dec 23)

Texts: Tiruccanda Viruttam, Tiruppallielucci, Tirumalai, Amalanadipiran, Kanninun Ciru Tampu–conclusion of Mudal Ayiram

Alankara/Tirukkolam: Nammalvar (both).

This festival is marked by shifts of different sorts, points of transition, change, heightened intensity. Yesterday, was such a day, and occured at the festival’s quarter point (day 5). Today, Nambi as Nammalvar in a temple where Nammalvar *is* Nambi. The tirukkolam itself was astonishing–it was uncanny how similar Nambi looked to the Nammalvar at Alvar Tirunagari. Perhaps it’s because both icons are small and their faces have softened with years of love. This alankara recalled to mind Andal’s mercurial changes during the Markali Niratta Utsavam, when she becomes Periya Perumal. It’s utterly impossible to tell the two of them apart. I suppose this is the point–to speak of that special, unbreakable, all consuming intimacy–the language of ornamentation is the language of revelation. Poetry makes the world, but decoration makes the god.

I want to include a Divya Prabandham verse with every image. Given the Nammalvar alankara, it would be appropriate to do a verse from Maturakavi’s Kanninun ciru tampu. But somehow, I am drawn to this haunting verse on Arankam, which seems to get to the heart of things.

A body like a great green mountain
coral red lips, eyes radiant as lotus
Acyuta, king of celestials, beloved of cowherds
Give me Indra’s heaven to rule
and I’ll reject it.
To taste you is the real pleasure
lord of Araṅkam.

Toṇtaraṭippoṭi Āḻvār: Tirumālai 2