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Monday, January 31: Reflections Cape Cormoran, Tamil Nadu I walk into the water at the pointy tip end of India into the confluence of three seas and lose myself in the significance of the trinity. Here meets the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Bengal Sea. Here pilgrims come and pray to the creator, the protector, the destroyer. Bramhin Vishnu Shiva. The father, the son, and the holy ghost. I was never so lonely as I was today, driving an obscure little backroad from Madurai to this place. It was lush and tropical, then scrubby and desolate. The rough one-lane road was asphalt poured thinly onto earth in a winding ribbon crumbling at the edges. Oh yes. I remember. I have been this lonely before, riding to Big Bend in Texas, and through the Gobi Desert in China. It's the kind of loneliness that has an edge to it, where suddenly you notice that there are no gas stations and no other traffic, and you wonder if maybe you missed the "road closed" sign or the nuclear war that wiped out the rest of the world Here there was that kind of loneliness, and I was saved. Around one curve a church spire pierced the skyline. Around another the flat-topped gopuram of a Dravidian temple held up a cloud. A graveyard's stucco crosses appeared painted in pastels, lavender, pink, and blue. Then there was nothing again. No thatched huts, no shops, no petrol stations. Today I would test the limits of Patience's petrol tank. Miles of nowhere. Several times there were people walking somewhere from nowhere. A woman in a bright green sari carrying a huge bunch of twigs on her head. Two men both with new wooden pitchforks slung over their shoulders. Then another oasis, and beautiful children playing in the water.
Three times I stopped to let a bus or truck pass on the one lane road, praying they wouldn't force me off into the sand. I stopped for cows and for fifty miniature burros walking down the middle of the road toward an oasis - a little pond and some coconut trees. Then it was scrub again. Sand and aloe and acacia, and trees with many branches and few leaves, their tops flat from the sweep of wind. Twenty kilometers into the reserve tank I am suddenly in civilization. It always happens that way -- my worrying is worth nothing. I buy a full tank of gas and fend off the efforts of a tout who wants to show me a hotel room for 180 rupees. I drive a kilometer more. The sea appears, and sunset, and so with all the other pilgrims I head to the shore. We sit and watch in silence, except for the man in white and orange having his photo taken to commemorate this moment, the last stop on his pilgrimage. Hundreds of us sit on the beach. A few dabble in the water, protected by the smooth brown rocks that break the waves.
We watch the sun setting and we watch the two woman who are submerged to the thighs, their saris undulating in the gently heaving tide like yellow and lavender seaweed. I press my my bare feet into the sand and walk in after them, the brown cotton of my pants darkening with water. The sea is warm and the salt stings my wounds. The sun is sinking.
The bald heads of those who gave their hair at Tirupati are smeared with yellow ash. Foreheads are dotted with yellow and red. They know why they are here, these pilgrims. They come in ragtag groups crowded around the buses in which they arrived. They roll the dough for their chipati breads by hand, cooking it over a communal fire. Someone stirs a huge pot of dahl. They are experiencing hardship, as they should, on a pilgrimage. The road here is difficult, and they are poor, but they, at least, know what they are looking for. They, at least, know that they have found it, that they are fulfilling an agreement made since the beginning of their many lives. And that this is only one more of many to come. I say that
I am not a seeker, yet here I am in a country where seeking and
finding is a natural part of this particular life. Though road signs
that proclaim "be careful, only one life" to most karma is a factor
that tempers the fear of the end of this life. Previous lives lived
well promise reward in the next. You can speed up the schedule toward
enlightenment by walking around mountains and deities and other
rituals unknown to me. Such rituals! They are lovely and In this era of the New Age maybe I am a little embarrassed to be seen as a dabbler in all this, or perhaps I am just embarrassed to join the throngs of seekers. I have always made a little bit of fun of seekers, with the ohming and the crystals and the rituals to Mayan Buddhist Hindu whatever god is in season. But India does something to you that creates a wondering. Cripes, I meditated in a room with the largest crystal in the world. Tell me that there's not some energy in that. I mean, whatever shaped this clear pure stone is a physical force that I can get into, spiritual matters aside. But I am being bathed in the sunset now, along with these pilgrims from all over India. I like this Land's End feel, paired with the trinity of the seas, trined with the three gods that anchor the Hindu religion. The waters whirl, ebb and flow at my feet. When one thinks about water, the rivers and the rain and the trickling down down down to the seas it is easier to believe in reincarnation. The cycle. The karmic wheel. I killed a dog. Does that shave some of my time off my enlightenment process? I rub the sea water into my wounds and the salt stings good. The thick scabs that have formed on the tops of my wrists, my knees and my left shoulder, are softening and beginning to bleed again. I still can not remember the impact. The tumbling. Only the sound of the helmet bouncing in my ears, and then blessed landing, consciousness, and water in my face. The dog was still screaming as they took my keys and put me in the van. I looked out the window. It lay there on its side. It was a gray black dog, an adult, healthy and vibrant, with short shiny fur. There was no blood, but it lay panting heavily, its eyes open wide. I know I hit it square on, right in the middle. The moment I hit it is frozen in my memory. "Is the dog dead?" I asked the woman in the green sari who was performing heathen blessings over the my bloody knee. "No," she said. "It is not yet dead." "It will be dead soon?" I asked. "Yes," she said. "It will soon be dead." I hated it for crossing the road like that, without looking. I thought it deserved to die, the stupid hateful creature. And then I was sorry. So sorry. Days later I still fluctuate between the hate and the sorrow, and I remember, along with this confusion, the feeling of the blood, so warm at my knee, and then colder as it ran down my leg, soaking the white fabric of someone's fine cotton sari folded under me. There is no moment that I forget where I am. India is full of dirt and beauty. The dirt and the beauty never cease contrasting. Each is balanced by the other, there is nothing that might be labeled bland. There is the boy with the twisted legs and the wide black eyes skittering on his hands along the sidewalk silently begging. The woman piebald with leprosy glaring hate and spirit. The old crone with her hand sticking from a ragged silk sari, her toothless mouth croaking "maw, maw." Shall I go on? There is the
glossy white cow chewing through banana peels and pomegranate husks.
The girl child supporting her baby sister on a tiny, jutted hip.
A line of sadus dressed all in orange sit with their beards and
their hollowed out gourds along the swept-clean gates of an ashram.
A stoned hippie argues with a rickshaw driver over a nickel's worth
of taxi fare. Goats toss their heads ripping through plastic bags
at garbage piles, their yellow eyes glittering under the There's more. A brown skinned child squats over a foot-wide flowing sewer of greasy garbage. Fragrant white flowers are tied to glossy black braids of every young woman. Water buffalo snort contentedly nearly submerged in a muddy pond. Clean green spikes of rice sprout from a shallow silvery lake.A new bicycle rickshaw shakes with bells and fresh paint, its gap-toothed owner smiling proudly. A metal bus runs doglegged down the highway, horn blaring a short Christmas jingle. Green coconuts hang tied in a bunch from a branch at the crossroads.
Tomorrow I
leave the state of Tamil Nadu, full of these dark Dravid men wearing
blue-plaid Madras skirts called lungis, and the women who always
wear fresh white flowers in their hair. I leave the temples piled
high as a wedding cake with elaborately sculpted icons telling stories
of creation and destruction. Kerala, I hear, is full of literate
Christians, tourists, and white-sand beaches. Varkala is my destination.
Then Periyar, and then the hills of the tea and coffee plantations.
The Cardamon coast of the spice traders. Then Mysore, then Bangalore,
then Goa. It seems a long way from here. I hope I don't forget.
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