Tag: Adhyayanotsavam

Posted on

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

Posted on

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.

 

           

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Adhyayanotsavam Day 15/Ira Pattu Day 5

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

[slideshow_deploy id=’443′]

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

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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?