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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

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 4: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 4 (Dec 22)
Text: Perumal Tirumoli
Alankara 1: Cakravarti Tirumakan (Rama)
Alanakra 2: Marica Vadam

I really love the Perumal Tirumoli–it’s such a different text, and Kulasekara Alvar’s anubhava is so unusual. Devaki’s lament juxtaposed with Kausalya singing a lullaby to Rama, juxtaposed to Dasaratha grieving Rama’s loss. The poetry is heartbreaking and painful, terrible grief as terrible beauty.

In keeping with the ongoing dialogue between word and image, both alankaras were of Rama.

The first was Nambi as Rama with his four goddesses. But I couldn’t help but imagine the scene as Rama surrounded by his three mothers and Sita.

The second alankara was of the killing of Marica–Rama was transformed from prince into ascetic, with a towering jata. He wielded a delicate, lethal bow and arrow. His arrow pointed outward–not at the sweet little golden deer at his feet–so it could find its mark and embed itself in the hearts of his devotees.

Come. Go. Come. Come, see me just once more
You snapped Siva’s bow, made that woman with slender shoulders yours
What wretched fate that you should enter the dense, thick forest
Where wild elephants roam
My son, son who melts my heart
Must you go?
You leave and my heart splits in two
Don’t go. Stay.

Kulasekhara Alvar. Perumal Tirumoli. 9.4

 

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 3: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 3. Dec 21.
Texts of the Day: Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli.

Today, Beautiful Nambi became both bride and groom–Andal and then himself, Rangamannar/Rajagopalan. As I sat listening to the recitation of the Tiruppavai and Nacciyar Tirumoli in the afternoon–it was a kind of resonant, languorous performance, with such care given to the long vowels–especially a and e–I found myself tumbling into the text in a kind of interstellar like moment. It was an odd, odd experience, characterized by a certain viscosity of feeling that suddenly gave way to clarity, as though infused by a shot of cool water. That viscosity was diluted, but not as a lessening of intensity, but as the freeing of emotion–a river undammed, I suppose. My least favorite section of the Nacciyar Tirumoli has always been Varanam Ayiram, (NT 6), the dream wedding, but yesterday as the gosti recited the line “tirukaiyal taal parri”–he cradled my foot in his beautiful hand–I just couldn’t hold back the tears.

The first alankara was Andal, and Nambi’s goddesses looked to me like Andal’s gopis.

The second alankara of the day was Rangamannar/Rajagopalan. As Tirunarayanaswami explained, Andal sang that they glimpsed him in Vrindavan (vrdinavanathe kandome), hence this alankara.

The festival layers complexity upon complexity–recitation, alankara, prasada–each sense engaged, heightened, polished. Complete, total immersion.

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 2: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 2 (Dec 20):
The recitation of the 3rd and 4th Pattu of Periyalvar Tirumoli, and Periyalvar Carrumurai.

Naturally, the alankaras (tirukkolam) for the evening were Krishna, Krishna, Krishna. Alankara 1 during gosti, tiruvaradhanai, tirta viniyokam was Kalinga Krishna. Alankara 2, for Sertti Purappadu a bloodless killing of Bakasura–anticipating Andal: Pulinvay kindanai.

Vishnu here in Tirukkurungudi is called Alakiya Nambi, the beautiful prince and Sundara Paripurnan–entirely, completely, wholly, fully beautiful. Who can dispute this?

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Adhyayanotsavam Day 1: Tirukkurungudi

Adhyayanotsavam Day 1
Dec 19, 2017

Mattalam kotta vari cankam ninra uta….Kotai describes her dream wedding in these words. But it’s what ran through my mind in a loop as the first day of the Adhyayanotsavam came to a close at Tirukkurungudi. This festival, which I’ve now seen at several temples, is intense (as all festivals are) and emotionally demanding. I often wonder on Day 1 if I can survive to the end, to Alvar Moksam. Between the deep resonant recitation of the day’s Prabandham, to the astonishing alankaras, to the music and percussion bouncing off the walls, anubhava flowing in all directions in an almost visible electric current, your body feels completely possessed and taken over. Even though this festival is called the Adhyayanotsavam–The Festival of Recitation–it’s the visual spectacle that dominates the arangam. To anyone who has encountered alvar poetry, this is not at all unexpected. But it does give you kind of intimate insight into how the poems work and why they work the way do. It’s how poetry makes not just worlds, but gods too…enough with words. What can be said about such beauty?

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The Beginning

Adhyayanotsavam Pakal Pattu begins–Nambi makes his way from the sannidhi to the pakal pattu mandapam. Recitation of Periyalvar Tirumoli begins at 3 PM this afternoon. The alvar and acarya in attendance….

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Awaiting the gods. The Kaisaka Mantapam/Pakal Pattu Mantapam, Tirukkurungudi, stands ready. The day before the Adhyayanotsavam. Dec 18, 2017. 5 PM

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On the terrors of non-translation

I find great comfort in translating. I do it almost every day, and when I don’t, I feel like I am missing a part of myself. Like I’ve misplaced myself. I had many exciting things happen over the past three weeks–I went to Madison, where I delivered a paper on a topic I knew nothing about, David Shulman and the Nepathya troupe were here in residence, and they rocked our worlds with incredible, life-altering performances, then my Nava Tirupati Dream Team arrived with all their marvelous ideas and their rather large brains. It was a Sukhavati. But I didn’t translate. Three weeks and not one word. The books lay open, silent and accusing, may be not accusing, maybe mournful, lonely. Like them, I felt lonely and a bit lost. So, I sat down to translate this morning, and it was a struggle. The familiar terror came over me–that I would lose all language, and nothing would ever make sense to me ever again. But of course, the terror receded, and in its place came a beautiful quiet, a delicious stillness, a silence inside me, where I could only hear words as they shaped themselves to poetry. A clicking into place of the parts of myself that are ever splintered. What bliss is this.

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On First Looking at Kudiyattam

I feel both complete and incomplete after watching two nights of Kudiyattam. Full and empty of everything. So I wrote an incomplete poem. Some of you will get the Keats reference:

On First Looking into Kudiyattam

There’s a poem somewhere
or there’s nothing else. In eyes
that touch like hands that glide
like eyes. A poem lives and dies
somewhere in the not distance || 1 ||

There’s a poem somewhere
or there’s nothing else. Gesture
liquid as the weave of time
carves air into syllables. A poem
is made alive in the not distance. || 2||

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Animals in Temples

For some time now, I have been fascinated by how animals occupy, move and are accommodated in temple spaces. Cats, elephants, cows, bats, goats and so forth. The animals that leap and twist out of the stone are not part of the equation. Yet. Here is a selection. What to make of this is still a thought in progress.

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