Monday, January 17: Visit to the Earth Temple

"I see you working and I see what American's are really like," one of the guesthouse boys told me. He was the handsome one, with carefully managed wavy hair and extremely white teeth. His smile was lovely. "You should take dinner with me tonight and relax a little bit to look at the stars, you know, so you are not working all the time like I see you."

I think he is about 25, but the only other solo woman here is an a German girl with a bad cold from the Delhi fog. Her coughs come from deep within her chest, but it doesn't stop her from chain smoking pack after pack of Camel cigarettes.

He pretended to be crushed that I declined with the excuse that tonight I will sleep, and go early to Pondicherry and the Auroville Ashram. I would have been out of here yesterday but even the previous day's riding to Kanchipurum was difficult because of the Pongol celebrations. Today promises to be even worse, but by tomorrow everyone will be home with hangovers and I'll be safely on my way.

Pongol is the abundance festival for harvest time in South India. It lasts for several days. At 4 am on the morning of the 14th everyone piled their unwanted possessions and all the households pots and pans and set fire to them. By the time I woke to go for coffee at the popular hippie hangout Moonrakers there were dozens of smoldering piles of charred ash and metal. The pot man clanged up and down the street all day, waiting for the women to call him in. His load shrank by the hour and by tomorrow he will be unemployed once more.

On the 15th, the day of my first formal temple visit to the Earth temple in Kanchipurum, everyone was buying things in the shops that line the narrow streets of the villages I passed. Popular items were six-foot tall palm fronds for lashing together to make archways over walks and at doorsteps, or to tie on the fronts of buses and trucks. Other items sold are drums for the kids to play with, wooden tops that they throw out onto the street to whirl and crash, bells, sweets, and flashing lights like the ones on my Christmas tree.

It took two hours to get to Kanchipuram, only about 80 km away. But it wasn't just Pongol. The roads through the rice fields were not terribly smooth, and there were many S-curves to test the Bullet's turning abilities. Though I'm not a speed freak, I will take the opportunity for an occasional flourish and, on my way back, anticipated them and leaned, much to the appreciation of some boys who were standing on the curb.

Everyone hears the Bullet coming, and gives her a bit of room. She's not terribly loud. It's the thump thump they hear, like a heartbeat. It's a calm sound, more powerful than racy, and I must admit, it does command respect

Today I named her Patience. It was my mother who suggested it, in an e-mail that pointed out that I probably needed the reminder. It's true that she can't be hurried. Giving her the gas upon startup will only make her sputter and die, flooding the carburetor, causing yet another delay in a country that is nothing but delays.

I barely got her on the 13th, with Pongol and the weekend nearly keeping the dealership from obtaining the proper licensing at the overcrowded government office responsible for those things. I gratefully left at 4:30 pm, having an hour before dark, and didn't make it to Mamallapurum until well after. But I was going to write about Kanchipurum, and my first darshan at the Shiva temple of earth, Sri Ekambaranathar.

Kanchipuram is a largish town and it is flanked by Dravidian temples with towering pyramidal gates called "gopurams" for which South India is famous. They're unlike anything anywhere else in the world, starting wide and narrowing toward a flat top. Sri Ekambaranathar's main gopuram is 59 meters high, and every inch of surface is sculpted with figures of Hindu mythology. Even so, it took me a while to find it. It isn't the only temple in town and these things absolutely loom over the low stucco buildings.

Where to park the bike? The temple gates were lined with touts who started walking toward me as soon as I was noticed. I rode away slowly, looking for a better place to park, and saw that the gate to a nearby fenced-off building was guarded by a man in uniform. I headed toward him, started to pull in next to the gate and asked him if it was okay. He nodded, and with relief I dismounted, the sweat from the sticky South Indian heat sticking my heavy black cotton pants to my skin, and took of my shoes to lock them, along with other miscellaneous items I didn't want to carry, in the aluminum saddlebags. I donned flip-flops and walked the few meters to the temple.

Shoes must be off in a temple, so I tied the flip-flops to my backpack and went in, the sun-charred stones of the walkway searing my tender white American feet to medium rare. The actual temple was enclosed by a ten foot wall connecting four gopurams, each about a 100 meter walk from it amongst grass and some small sickly trees. There weren't many people about, but it was 10 am and the sun was merciless.

From the shade of the temple building several beggars approached me. I found a coin and gave it to one of them. He looked at it and asked for more. Rolling my eyes, I spotted water and headed toward it. Indeed there was a large square pool with a small temple in the center, even lovelier than I had imagined from photos of these things.

As I reached the top of the stairs that led down to the pool a woman and a girl child walked slowly toward me, took my hands and led me down the dozen or so steps to the water's edge. There were a few people sitting about. An old woman who looked to be washing clothes, and at the end a group of young boys played at jumping in from different heights of steps.

I was enchanted, truly enchanted, by the peaceful surroundings, the serenity, and the gentleness of the scene. In a dreamstate, I allowed the woman and child to sit me down on the steps, wash my feet, and lay baskets of popped rice in my lap. I was floating.

The woman, a small dark Tamil, stood up and put her hand on the top of my head as the girl still lightly held my left hand. The woman chanted something in a low, matter-of-fact tone. It was all unrecognizable, the chanting, until, in the same breath and tone she said "what is your father's name?" I told her and she chanted again. "What is your mother's name?" More chanting. "What is your sister's name?" More chanting. "What is your sister's name?" Only one sister, I said. "What is your brother's name?" More chanting. What is your brother's name." More chanting. "What is your brother's name?" No more brothers, I said, matching her monotone. But I have a new nephew. "What is this?" she said. I told her his name and she chanted once more, stopped, gave me a basket and said "throw."

I threw the basket of popped rice into the water and the surface immediately roiled as hundreds and hundreds of fish opened their hard round mouths to the food. "Throw," she said, and I threw another. "Throw," she said. And I threw another, and for some reason I felt tears. "Throw," she said. And I threw another.

She said something about money. I gave her twenty rupees, and twenty more, and then I gave her a fifty, and then a hundred and then she left me alone with the fish and my questionable tears and that strange lovely lightness. I sat a long time on those steps and when I got up to go I found that all the beggars and touts of the temple were waiting for me.

It didn't matter. I walked past them and followed some Indian tourists into the hallway of the square building of the temple itself. The hallway surrounded the sanctum (which I wasn't allowed to enter because I am not a Hindu) and an ancient mango tree with four branches, each of which represents one of the four Vedas (four ancient Hindu texts).

I followed the tourists at their pace until they stopped at a pillar and began talking animatedly. I passed them and ahead of me was a room off to the side, manned by a sadu or priest clad in orange cloths. Inside the doorway and up the steps there was a huge rock lingham (phallus) carved with thousands of other linghams. I was about to pass but the sadu said "come here" and he pointed to the lingham and told me that it represented the temple and that each of the carved linghams represented one of the pillars in the temple. He told me to come closer for darshan and I made to move away, but he said "yes come only darshan" and I realized that all of the Indian tourists were behind me and probably had been all along. I was embarrassed at their giggles, but the priest started some chanting over the group and they were quiet. He put some ash and some red powder on each of their heads in turn and then he put some on mine, and gave me little packets of more of it to keep with me "if I felt need." Like the others, I put an offering on the plate and started to go, but a young woman took my hand and said "you must sit" and so we sat on the cold cement floor together for a few minutes without talking, contemplating each other and the temple.

The tourists adopted me for the remaining tour of the temple, practicing their English, especially the girls in their beautiful singsong voices. They were from 50 km away, they said, and came in a bus. In the middle of our conversation an old bent over man in a green uniform walked briskly toward me shouting. The tourists looked appalled, and I could not understand what the man was saying. He frightened me, especially when he raised his wooden billystick and hit my backpack.

"Your shoes!" one of the girls gasped.

I had lashed my thongs onto my backpack before I entered the temple, knowing that one is never allows to wear shoes in a temple. But I hadn't realized that shoes were not allowed in the temple at all!

I put them inside the backpack and he was satisfied, though quite grumpy. The tourists, to my relief, all giggled and assured me that it wasn't serious, and then they walked one way, toward the entrance gopuram, and I walked the other way wanting to look at the grounds and the other gopuram. I was nearly alone, and enjoying the solitude and the ancient feeling of the place when the same old man rounded a corner and began to shout at me again. I'd no idea what he wanted now. Or perhaps he had kicked me out and I didn't know it. Maybe it was money he wanted, now that the Indian tourists were gone. And then a small boy came to tell me that the temple was closed and it had been for 45 minutes, and that I was not allowed and I must go now, and I hadn't paid my camera fee of 5 rupees each camera (I had two).

I paid the man and left the cool temple grounds, the sun burning on my head, feeling a bit heavier than at the steps of the pool.

Outside at the food stalls I met up with the tourists again. They handed me their camera, and one man asked me if I was mechanical. The back was open so I closed it, and the power turned on. He handed it back and said "no film." The film was indeed all used. They told me that they had taken only four pictures, and the roll said 24. I figured they hit the rewind button on the back by accident, not knowing what it was, and told them that the film couldn't be recovered and they'd have to buy another roll.

They thanked me but I'm not sure they understood, but gave me a warm goodbye. The bike was parked just a few meters away. With my soul full of experiences I was looking forward to the ride back. I unlocked the panniers, put on my shoes, and patiently went through the starting sequence. Patience rewarded me with a start on the first kick. I put on my helmet and turned to see the tourists standing outside the bus staring in disbelief. I waved, and altogether they let up a loud GOOD BYE! with happy smiles. I rode away with all the buoyancy I'd felt at the pool returned to me.

Also see Visit to Earth Temple Gallery 1 and Gallery 2

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