Leaving Home/Coming Home

January 13, 2018

See you soon, India. I leave with memories of great adventures, having learned so much, and with experiences that have left a deep deep imprint. In a way, India is always with me.

Now, home to my beloved California with its soft green hills and soaring redwoods, to the salt scented ocean and the flat flat plains of Davis. To my two sweet kitties and to my husband, so long suffering and patient. And avocados!!!!

PS: I will not miss the mozzies.

January 13, 2018

I arrived after dark. Nothing was visible except a thick, dense fog. In a way, this was good–I always find it difficult to reconcile the bright green of the California winter hills with the freezing temperatures. It just short circuits my brain. The day has dawned misty grey, the sun far away, but its light filtering in weak and white through the mist. The cats are curled up asleep, although every now and again, Tiny announces her presence with a chirp. Even so, everything is quiet and still–no cars screeching and horns blaring, no language spoken in a great rush. I’ve made some noise–banged a few pots, sung a few songs, and talked to the cats–just to remind myself of sound.

Goodbye, Moksa: Tirukkurungudi

Vitu Vidai (Jan 8 2018): The Goodbye

I don’t know how people weren’t weeping by the end of the proceedings yesterday, as Tirukkurungudi’s magnificent Adhyayanotsavam drew to a close. This is one of few temples that adds an extra day to the 20 day-festival, a final day of goodbyes, releases from promises, and returns. Tirumankai asks to be released from his “vitu” and returned to this world, to return from the Nitya Vibhuti–the eternal land–to this world, our Lila Vibhuti, our land of play. In keeping with this notion, what a play we and he staged!

There is so much to say about this one day, so long, so complex and multi-layered. It may seem that Alvar Moksam *is* the point of the Adhyayanotsavam, but really, at Tirukkurungudi, it’s about goodbye, transition, separation and that tantalizing promise of return.

At the end of an eight hour day, where the action is non-stop, Nambi creeps towards the Vaikuntha Vasal. While every evening at the end of the day’s festivities, he rushes back on, carried on the shoulders of his palanquin bearers, last night, he moved at a snail’s pace, moving from the Ira Pattu mandapam, through the Vaikuntha Vasal and back to his sannidhi, his original place, Vaikuntha itself. As he left, they extinguished the electric lights behind him one by one, until he was lit only by the glowing luminsence of the towering oil flames. As he reached the Vasal, he turned and faced the crowd that awaited him on the other side. He stayed a long time there, as though as reluctant to leave as they to let him go. If on Vaikuntha Ekadasi, the refrain was Govinda Govinda Govinda, a rallying cry as god descended to the world of play, today, there was silence from the devotees, and only the plaintive cry of the nagasvaram, which seemed to echo the heart’s plea: don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.

He crosses the threshold–he’s in Vaikuntha now, I suppose. I really don’t know, because space has become so confused, and time as well. As he waits, Visvaksena arrives, and with him the keys to the Vaikuntha Vasal. Under the watchful gaze of Nambi’s deputy and Nambi himself, the Gate of the North is closed shut. For good measure it is locked and sealed with wax. The gateway that made the descent possible, for Nambi to be intimate and here, seems irrevocably closed. You could feel the weight of grief in the gathered devotees, as if that weight alone could make him stay, if only grief was like gravity, and one simply had to accede to its power.

I take my own Vidai today, admittedly, in a bit of a stunned, overwhelmed state. But not all goodbyes are forever. The Vasal will open once again. Nambi will come again, and so will I.

I took more than 1500 photographs yesterday. I haven’t even sorted through them. This is a sample.

Adhyayanotsavam Day 20: Alvar Moksam

Alvar Moksam (Jan 7, 2018), Ira Pattu, Day 10, Adhyayanotsavam, Day 20.

Here in Tirukkurungudi, Tirumankai receives moksa twice. First, to conclude the pakal pattu utsavam and the recitation of his Periya Tirumoli, then again, at the end of the Ira Pattu Utsavam as the recitation of Nammalvar’s Tiruvaymoli draws to a close. In both cases, he is himself, but is understood as being both Nammalvar and Tirumankai, just as Nammalvar is both Nambi and himself. This duplication, replication, transformation is a theme that I need to return to and explore in greater depth.

The final day is brought to a close with a recitation of the last 100 of the Tiruvaymoli, verses that the commentarial traditions have long held express Nammalvar’s final union with Vishnu. This event is enacted at the end of every Adhyayanotsavam at every Srivaishnava temple, but with always a slightly different flavor. Regardless of what form this enactment takes, the result is always a moment of enormous potency and power, and a deeply, deeply affecting experience for everyone assembled.

At Tirukkurungudi, the recitation of the last hundred moved with brisk, precise efficiency. Until we reached the sixth hundred. After this, at the conclusion of every decad, there was an elaborate tiruvaradhanai and the offering of some delectable naivedya. With each Aradhana, the tension went up just a little bit more. The recitation slowed infinitesimally with each of these aarathis, so that in the end, sound acquired a viscous quality. Each aarathi was waved a little bit more slowly, lingering on the feet, on the face, on the chest with its shining jewel. It was a true light and sound show for the ages.

In the end, they brought Tirumankai out from among where he was with the rest of the alvar. He was lovingly brought to Nambi’s feet and completely immersed in a pile of fresh, green tulasi that rose up like a little hill. The fragrance that filled the air in that moment was exotic and unfamiliar–tulasi, incense, sandal, camphor, the flowers, the food–each distinct in their own way, but mingled together, they produced a scent so unique as to be unreproducible.

As the moksa unfolds, the gosti recites the final ten verses of the Tiruvaymoli and then return us, as the poem intends, once again to the very beginning–uyarvara uyar nalam, to the highest good.

Who possesses the highest, unsurpassable goodness? That one.
Who cuts through confusion and graces the mind with goodness? That one.
Who is the overlord of the immortals who never forget? That one.
at his luminous feet that cut through affliction, bow down and rise, my mind.

Nammalvar. Tiruvaymoli. I.1.1

PS. My photographs from yesterday were a bit of a miss. I got some good shots, but I am so relieved that Selva was with me, as I know he got what I missed. It was very difficult to photograph yesterday as there was so much movement, so much happening in different places, and my position did not give me as clear a line as I would have liked. I couldn’t find a steady hand, a steady heart or a steady eye. I found myself really anxious, wanting to make sure I got the photographs I needed. This was the first time I felt this way through the 20 days of the festival, and the anxiety translated itself, predictably, in what came through. In contrast, despite all this anxiety, what I have in my mind’s eye is luminous and clear. I suppose that should suffice. But sometimes it doesn’t. But having another photographer by your side, is a sure comfort.

Adhyayanotsavam Day 19: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 19
Ira Pattu Day 9
Tiruvaymoliu 9th Hundred

The Adhyayanotsavam inches to its close. We are on the 9th night of the Ira Pattu Utsavam (Dec 6), and on the 19th day of the festival. Everyone is a bit worse for wear–exhausted, ill, moving slightly more slowly than when we began. The days are endless–beginning at 3 AM and going virtually non-stop until 1030 at night. The work in a temple is never done, especially, when it’s a temple as large as this one. Even during the down-times, when the devotees disperse home for a snack, various temple attendants, ritual specialists and functionaries are busy doing things–getting the god ready, the ritual implements polished and cleaned, the wicks oiled, the lamps lit. Over these almost twenty days, I’ve learned these rhythms–the choreography of moving through the temple. It’s incredible how quickly the body learns, not only how to move, to bend, to stay still, but the when of it as well. The women move between the walls and the pillars of the mandapa as though a unit–I always think of them undulating through space, like waves in the sea–crashing the shores of visibility and invisibility over and over again. I’ve joined their group, although I am always just a little bit behind schedule, trying to get a photograph in, or jotting down some notes. My entire vantage of the Ira Pattu festival has been from the left side of the mandapam, which is where the women are situated. I wondered yesterday, what it would look like across the aisle, from the perspective of the men. What would I see and not see? I cannot even know the answer to these questions, because there are limits to what I can see, what I am allowed to see.

Keeping with this theme, I found it difficult to see the image yesterday. Everything seemed to obscure Nambi–people, flames, walls, corners. Eventually, I was able to get a beautiful, clean straight shot, but the evening was a struggle. All of this unseeing, which seems to apropos of a dominant theme in alvar poetry–seeing god and loving god through sight.

On a lighter note, I wondered if the goddesses and the women of Tirukkurungudi color coordinated their outfits yesterday. It was a sea of blue–the goddesses in teal, the women draped in blue of every possible shade, although Nambi was in white and showered in flowers of red, gold, orange, flame. I am so glad that I somehow unconsciously got the memo and showed up in blue salwar bottoms 🙂. The colors–blue and gold– yesterday made me smile. They are California colors, and it was lovely to have a reminder of my other home, here in far away Tirunelveli.

You’re my eyes. My heart thinks of all the ways
to see you, to seek you.
Gods and ascetics may struggle to see you,
I won’t stop till I reach you.

Nammalvar. Tiruvaymoli. IX.4.2

Adhyayanotsavam Day 19: Ira Pattu Day 9

The Adhyayanotsavam inches to its close. We are on the 9th night of the Ira Pattu Utsavam (Dec 6), and on the 19th day of the festival. Everyone is a bit worse for wear–exhausted, ill, moving slightly more slowly than when we began. The days are endless–beginning at 3 AM and going virtually non-stop until 1030 at night. The work in a temple is never done, especially, when it’s a temple as large as this one. Even during the down-times, when the devotees disperse home for a snack, various temple attendants, ritual specialists and functionaries are busy doing things–getting the god ready, the ritual implements polished and cleaned, the wicks oiled, the lamps lit. Over these almost twenty days, I’ve learned these rhythms–the choreography of moving through the temple. It’s incredible how quickly the body learns, not only how to move, to bend, to stay still, but the when of it as well. The women move between the walls and the pillars of the mandapa as though a unit–I always think of them undulating through space, like waves in the sea–crashing the shores of visibility and invisibility over and over again. I’ve joined their group, although I am always just a little bit behind schedule, trying to get a photograph in, or jotting down some notes. My entire vantage of the Ira Pattu festival has been from the left side of the mandapam, which is where the women are situated. I wondered yesterday, what it would look like across the aisle, from the perspective of the men. What would I see and not see? I cannot even know the answer to these questions, because there are limits to what I can see, what I am allowed to see.

Keeping with this theme, I found it difficult to see the image yesterday. Everything seemed to obscure Nambi–people, flames, walls, corners. Eventually, I was able to get a beautiful, clean straight shot, but the evening was a struggle. All of this unseeing, which seems to apropos of a dominant theme in alvar poetry–seeing god and loving god through sight.

On a lighter note, I wondered if the goddesses and the women of Tirukkurungudi color coordinated their outfits yesterday. It was a sea of blue–the goddesses in teal, the women draped in blue of every possible shade, although Nambi was in white and showered in flowers of red, gold, orange, flame. I am so glad that I somehow unconsciously got the memo and showed up in blue salwar bottoms 🙂. The colors–blue and gold– yesterday made me smile. They are California colors, and it was lovely to have a reminder of my other home, here in far away Tirunelveli.

 

           

Adhyayanotsavam Day 18: Ira Pattu Day 8

The Vaikuntha Vasal opened early today, because Nambi has a hunt to go on, an initiation to undertake and a poet needs to get on with the important business of composing poetry. More on this later.

The light was butter soft and golden this afternoon. The lamplight softened by the afternoon sunlight, and the gold of Nambi’s body and that of his consorts burnished, as though lit from inside.

Even through the fog of my illness, I could perceive some special beauty here.

Adhyayanotsavam Day 18/Vetu Pari Utsavam/Ira Pattu Day 8

January 5, 2018

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Yesterday, the 8th day (evening) of the Ira Pattu Utsavam, was the Vetu Pari (The Hunt), a re-enactment of Tirumankai’s initiation, and the moment that leads him to become a poet. I am repeatedly reminded by people here in Tirukkurungudi that this is a laukika festival, merely for pleasure and enjoyment. It is indeed worldly and of the world–I keep returning to this theme of how poetry makes worlds. Poetry is surely then, the most laukika of things.

The Vetu Pari here in Tirukkurungudi has a markedly different feel to the ones in Srivaikuntham, Tentirupperai and Alvar Tirunagari. This, I think, partly has to do with the fact that at each of those temples, Vetu Pari is but the first of three such “dramas” that lead up to the Adhyayanotsavam’s climax, which is Nammalvar’s moksam (Day 10). Here, at Tirukkurungudi, it is a stand-alone (at this time, although I am told that once upon a time, here too there was a three act drama leading up to alvar moksam (and vitu-vidai…more on this later). It also most certainly has to do with space as well (more on this below).

Nambi is mounted on one of the most beautiful and intricately designed vahanas I’ve seen. He’s a brass horse, with splendid glass eyes. Nambi is dressed opulently and looks like the Srirangam-Vijayanagara sculptures of the horse-riders come to life. From the tops of his pearl draped velvet turban to the tips of dashing parrot-green jodhpurs, it was an utterly delicious sight. Rama Bhattar Govindan is extraordinary, virtuosic, really, in his art of alankara. While some of this surely owes to his over 45 years of practicing this loving art, there is a particular enjoyment, anubhava, that comes through in the care with which he creates these alankaras. I stand in awe at his abilities, at each of the tirukkolams, more beautiful than the previous. Most often, in these cases where the god is mounted on vahana, he looks disproportionate and is dwarfed by the vahana. But not here–everything was so perfectly positioned that there really seemed to be a suppressed kinetic energy in the horse and its divine rider.

This Utsavam involves a conversation between Nambi and Tirumankai, about the latter’s nefarious ways. The high-point of course, is that Tirumankai steals the most precious of things, wrests the 8-syllables of the asta-aksara from Vishnu himself. Tirumankai looks so benign and docile here in Tirukkurungudi–one devotee mentioned to me yesterday that since this is the place that he spent his last years, the image of Tirumankai represents him in his old age. Images tell us stories, and they make us tells stories, imagining entire lives for them, entire emotional lives.

At the conclusion of the festival, when Tirumankai has been honored and a palm-leaf recording everything (all the promises made and kept: Anna Seastrand, writing, again!) has been presented to him, the gosti, lead by the Jiyar Svamikal breaks into the first ten verses of the Periya Tirumoli–vatinen vati varundinen manattal. I always wait for this moment in the Vetu Pari, because it is so powerful, and everything leads up to it. It also very clearly marks a moment when the gosti speaks as the alvar poet. How many times do we get to watch a poet being born? How many times do we get to celebrate that birth?

I have many unanswered questions about the Vetu Pari Utsavam at Tirukkurungudi. I thought many of them would be answered as I watched it unfold. Instead, my questions have only multiplied.

The festival unfolds quite differently than in other temples. It also feels very different, for the Tirukkurungudi temple is massive, descending those steps, through the wide, wide gates of the gopurams, you feel the largeness of Nambi, who towers over you. The original icon is actually quite small–but through alankara, mounted on this enormous horse–he looks positively imposing. In contrast, Tirumankai is virtually devoid of ornamentation, save his spear, a bright pink cloth wrapped around his body and a garland of fresh flowers. In front of Vishnu he is tiny. I suppose that is the point.

For me, poetry has always been at the heart of all endeavors. It’s what comforts me in the dimmest of days, in the darkest of hours. Poetry makes worlds. And so it was, most manifestly, yesterday.

Adhyayanotsavam Day 15/Ira Pattu Day 5

Adhyayanotsavam Day 15: Jan 2
Ira Pattu Day 5
Tiruvaymoli Fifth Hundred

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Yesterday was a special day for Tirukkurungudi in the Adhyayanotsavam cycle. It’s the 15th day of the festival and the fifth day of Ira Pattu. Right smack in the middle of this cycle of hundred (V.5), lie ten verses in praise of the wily, gorgeous, haunting, mysterious Nambi of Tirukkurungudi. Before any decad of significance, the recitation stops, and an elaborate aarathi (tiruvaradhanai) is performed. On cue, the drums and instruments go off. The women leave the walls and migrate to the pillars, to which they cling, peaking around the corners, their bodies curving and softening into the contours of the cold, sharp granite. Their eyes are fixed on the far away point that is Nambi, glistening and glimmering, an almost unreachable star. As each successive lamp is waved, they watch transfixed as though to drink him into their bodies through their eyes. That gaze is broken, when the curtain is drawn so that Nambi can be offered delicate, delicious naivediyam (talikai). Later at night’s end, we will all partake of this food, ghee dripping from our fingers, eating grace.

Yesterday, as the Tirukkurungudi pasurams were recited, the women were visibly moved. Nammalvar’s words seemed to be their own. If not that, his words simply made alive the icon–the lotus-bright eyes, the coral-red lips, storm dark body, such loveliness that is too much for the eye to see that it can only drip out of your body as tears: women dabbed at their eyes with the edges of the saris. I watched the women yesterday, transfixed by this deep, deep anubhava, as the men recited, clear-eyed and clear-voiced, verses of such longing and despair. No wonder, men had to become women, I thought, to speak such truth.

I thought a lot of illumination yesterday. This was partly because of the garland of golden campaka flowers that adorned Nambi. So many women were dressed in yellow of all shades–sitting in circles, they looked themselves like garlands of champaka flowers. It seemed to me the whole of yesterday was like watching the proceedings from inside a campaka flower–everything glowed orange and gold. Only this verse from the Tiruvaymoli came to mind, from the end of the fifth hundred:

Brilliant flame within deep darkness, truth within untruth,
these are the ways you come before me, dissolve me
I lose myself thinking of this
my dark jewel let my eyes gaze at your lovely form
for just a single day.

Nammalvar. Tiruvaymoli. V.10.7

On Music and Space

There is a whole, intricate language of music that permeates the life of the temple. I had never listened carefully to these instruments, never really understood how they parceled out time, sent out signals as clear as any words uttered. Certainly, on some subconscious level, I responded–knowing that the nagasvaram signaled something auspicious; something was happening, and that I better go towards that sound if I wanted to see what was actually happening. But, this is the crudest way to respond to this delicate choreography, and this language that everyone who lives and breathes in the temple knows, understands, and speaks fluently.

Today, thanks to Nambithirumalai, the temple’s multi-talented musician, I learned the names of many different instruments–the Tirucchinnam, the muracu/nakara, dampatam, dammanam, cikandi, cakra cikandi. A whole orchestra of sound to greet the deity, to process him, to welcome him. Each played only at particular moments, different beats and rhythms, different songs. It is this music that brings the festival alive for so many of us, causes that thrill and chill as the music just rises and fills the vast open corridors of the temple, even as it’s absorbed by all the bodies pressed together, making vast spaces become small. It seems that the experience of the first three alvar is ever alive, ever present, at every temple festival.

I have been attuned to this language of sound ever since the festival began. Last night, I parked myself on the other side of the Vaikuntha Vasal, with Tirumankai for company. And I resolved to listen very deeply to how the drama unfolded, to learn something about this esoteric language of sound. What would I learn without sight. [I did have my camera with me, but I took very few photographs].

There were gentle huffs of the two elephants, their shuffling back and forth, the swish of their tails. The scratch and turn of a large key in the wooden door. With every little fall of the tumblers, it felt that the door would open at any moment. But it did not. This was merely preparation. Through the door, I heard the drums, the conch sounded, the bell clanged. As I heard each of these sounds, I imagined the activity across the door–Nambi turning the corridor, the sounds are getting louder, so he must be right by the door. Suddenly the sounds ceased, and I could faintly hear Sanskrit chanting–ah, this was the Veda Vinnappam. Then silence, except you could you hear the restless crowd, impatient for the door to open. The key turned again in the lock. Nambithirumalai and his able team picked up their instruments. The door opened with a massive creak. The elephants began to trumpet loudly. The muracu and tavil were sounding fiercely, The nagasvaram was blasting. People were chanting. I heard the scurry of feet as young men rushed forward to hoist Tirumankai up on their shoulders. But still the god did not appear. The sounds intensified. You saw the poles of the palanquin first, and then he was there, and the instruments went into an absolute mad frenzy. There was a moment of arrested stillness as Tirumankai and Nambi faced each other–you could feel an invisible electric current between them–it was the music that made such feeling real. The music went on, softening, growing silky, even soothing, as Nambi processed “in reverse”, with Tirumankai in earnest pursuit. They never broke eye-contact, and the music did not pause for a moment.

Because the alankaras are always so spectacular, I am naturally drawn to the visual spectacle. Because this is the Festival of Recitation, I always pay attention to the rolling rhythms of the recitation. I always considered this music ancillary. Not until I listened blind, did I apprehend that it is the very foundation of the affective dimensions of temple ritual.

Deeper listening is required. It’s a good lesson to keep in mind in all things.