Tag: Tirukkurungudi

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Parallels–only 50 years apart

50 years apart–or thereabouts–Guy Welbon and I captured the exact same moment of the Kaisika Natakam at Tirukkurungudi. Here is Guy’s

This is the moment that the actor playing the Brahmaraksas is possessed as the mask (which has been covered and worshiped for 10 days) is lowered on to his face.

And here is mine:

Today, the role is played by the grandson of the person who played it in Guy’s time. No surprise that the person who plays it today is named Nambi. Everyone in Tirukkurungudi seems to be named Nambi.

 

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Thinking about archives

In 1964, Guy Welbon made his way deep into southern Pandya territory, where he stumbled (in his telling) upon a large, old, beautiful temple. Of course, he fell immediately in love, entranced by the ghats and the god (who is appropriately named The Beautiful Prince). Guy returned to Tirukkurungudi numerous times, with his young family in tow, and got deep into the ritual world of the temple. He wrote a small, important essay on the temple’s Kaisika Natakam–and it’s a boon to us today, for the drama died out in the late 80s, and was revived by Anita Ratnam in the 1990s. But it is much changed now, adapted to accommodate a restless audience and changing expectations and tastes.

Guy, who was a professor of religion at U-Penn for many years, has amassed an extraordinary archive of Tirukkurungudi. When I wrote to him about my interest in the place, he offered to help and to share his archive. I met him in Philly in early 2018, where he not only shared with me some incredible photographs, but also tales of life in a tiny, insular temple-village in the late 60s, 70s, and 80s. He spoke fondly of his priest friends and of how they would lower him into the temple from the roof so as to avoid the disapproving stares and glares of the village ladies. He had two local artist friends painstakingly hand-copy the inscriptions off the walls. Since he knew no Tamil, he used Sanskrit (!) as his primary means of communication.

In Tirukkurungudi, Guy (who is known only by his last name Welbon), conjoined with his one-time collaborator Martin (so they are Welbon-Martin or Martin-Welbon) has entered the folklore (or the sthala purana, perhaps) of the place. The older denizens recall him vividly and fondly. Most of them are gone, but he is memorialized in their photographs as well.

It’s rare for us to encounter the collector of an unexpected or unintended archive. Guy never meant for his photographs and letters and inscription copies to become an archive–they were his research materials. For some reason or another, he never did publish his rich, rich findings. That is going to be left to us–Crispin, Anna, Leslie and me–to follow through on. It’s rather extraordinary to have Guy at hand to clarify questions. He is himself now an archive, although I do not know if he would think of himself that way.

Below, a photograph from his archive of Alagiya Namabi entering the Kaisika Mantapam, Tirukkurungudi, 1967. Notice the violinist in front of the deity, playing to entertain him. This hereditary role is no longer occupied at the temple. There is a robust nagasvaram player, who commands many instruments, but not the violin.

And here is one, also from Guy Welbon’s archive, of the Kaisikam troupe. Featured are the two devadasis of that temple. They were still performing in 1967, despite the passage of the Devadasi Abolition Act in August 1947. I have yet to find their names–Guy does not recall–and once I do so, I will update that information here.

EDIT: I learned that one of the Devadasis was named Kalyani. I do not know which of the two pictured here. Alas, the other still remains nameless. I shall keep trying to find their names and identify them, lest they be forgotten like so many others like them.

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The Kaisikam at Tirukkurungudi

After watching the Kaisikam yesterday–not just the play–but the whole unfolding, I understand many things I did not understand before. And, I now do not understand many things I thought I understood. Festivals, especially at large temples like Tirukkurungudi, are complex, multi-layered events. They carry so much meaning in their particularity and in the specificity of the moment. Equally, they are like pieces in a puzzle, fitting into a larger whole that comes into view incrementally. The Kaisikam has left me thinking about about the events that are bracketed by the two Ekadasis–Kaisika and Vaikuntha; about descent and transformation; about place making and myth making, and all the times the curtain is pulled back and closed again (both literally and figuratively) to reveal something of a tradition’s insides.

I’ve been heartsick reading the news of my home-state on fire. The countless photographs of devastation and destitution capture just a sliver of the scale of loss and of the long, long recovery that lies ahead. To be honest, as much as I’ve loved being back in Tirunelveli and in Tirukkurungudi, a part of me has wanted to be back in California, to be with family, friends and my kitties in this time of shared catastrophe–the fire has touched us all in some way.

Yesterday’s Kaisikam–especially Nambi’s magnificent procession amidst the towering flames–with the thunder of drums and drones and the equally thunderous rain outside–not only brought me some measure of comfort, but it reminded me forcefully of the value of the moment, of the weighted particularity of place, and of the gift I’ve been given to be here, right now, to see, know and feel these amazing, astonishing things.

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Tirumankai Festival: Tirukkurungudi

The Tirumankai Alvar Utsavam began yesterday. This year, it will run 11 days and will culminate in a grand celebration on Karttikai Deepam. I’ve always had a soft spot for Tirumankai, and so this festival has special meaning for me. I sat with the women yesterday, at the threshold of Tirumankai’s sannidhi, because we aren’t allowed in during the recitation. The men recited the first 100 of the Periya Tirumoli. The thunderous opening refrain–Kandu Konden Narayana Ennum Namam--is like a thunderclap in your heart. The recitation at Tirukkurungudi is beautiful. The men have deep resonant, even musical voices, and unlike so many other places, the recitation doesn’t crash along at some mad clip. It’s measured, so you can actually hear the words, understand the meaning. As the recitation moved along, a small cluster of women assembled at the threshold, with bundles of fresh green tulasi stalks piled between them. Their hands moved in synchrony with the recitation, as they plucked the delicate green tulasi leaves, creating a little hill of fragrance. Most of the women were draped in tulasi green saris, and it seemed in my fantastic imagination, that the women were themselves tulasi plants. The air filled with the distinctive spicy herbacious scent of tulasi, and my senses felt overwhelmed. So many alvar poems speak about the haunting fragrance of tulasi–the touch of god–to know it in your body and through your body. I am struck over and over again, by how much these festivals seek to recreate the experience of an alvar poem. And this was really brought home to me, as the women quietly noted the content of the verses as they were recited. Oh, how long the verses are, how difficult it is to recite the long, long lines of text. Here, they told each other, is the decad on Badari, Salagramam, Naimsaranyam, Singavel Kunram, Tiruvenkatam…and the words created an imaginary map, paintings of the mind to transport them to those sacred sites. As the alvar said, come take me, claim me, give me grace, to the god at Tiruvenkatam, one of the women so overcome by emotion, dabbed at the edges of her eyes. Another pressed her palms together, eyes closed, transported into another world, into another place–his words were their words–claim me, take me, love me. I was so moved by these women, their love, their devotion, and unexpectedly, I found myself crying too. As much because of Tirumankai’s words, so sincere, urgent and brimming with a fierce love, as for the women’s immersion in his words. Anubhava spilling all over, crashing over us like a river in spate. I felt something quite profound in their company. As the recitation closed, and we all pulled ourselves together, one of the women turned to me and said, “he just wrings you dry, doesn’t he.” I could only nod mutely, while thinking that I still had an ocean of tears inside me.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

 

           

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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.

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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.