Namaste again
I've relocated to the West Coast of India - to Kerala, Land of the Coconut, lauded as 'God's Own Country' and the place where my Indian odyssey began 10 years ago.
I've come to the touristy beach resort of Kovalam to participate in the local Kali temple festival. This is my favourite thing to do in India - I have known the temple and the people for such a long time; I have seen children become adolescent and teenagers attain maturity. Some of my dearest old friends have left their bodies....
The little temple has grown and expanded: this year it has had new wooden doors on the shrines (well on two of them - the main Kali shrine and that of Ganesh, the 'elephant' god of new beginnings) and next year these will be faced with silver. I (at very little expense I should say) am going to sponsor the dozens of little bells that will hang on the doors. This is my 'family' temple and I love it dearly.
The festival will last for a week this year: it started on Sunday and as soon as I finish this post I will head back to my room to don my sari in order to participate in the afternoon's activities. What happens is that the stone deity - Balabhadrakali, the little girl black Kali - stays permanently in her shrine but her processional deity which takes the form of a big semicircular 'headpiece' (about a metre in diameter) is taken out daily to bless homes, hotels and restaurants, accompanied by her entourage of red clad attendants and two groups of drummers and her 'shaman'. I can think of no other word for this gentleman - on two occasions during the festival - at the beginning and the evening before the end - he dances with the 'headpiece' Kali on his head and becomes the goddess. You only have to see the physical change in him to know that he isn't faking it. At the end of an increasingly frenzied dance he collapses in trance. It's tremendously exciting. At all other times he's a sweet and rather shy young man. (He keeps asking me to take photos of him while dancing but I am always too spellbound to remember to use my camera! However, if I do get it together, I'll post some after I get back to UK.)
One of my favourite things to do during the festival is to sit with the women and pull petals off kilos of flowers that are used for the rituals. Such colour and fragrance! Such caterpillars! Last night two girls from Belorus joined us and I was given the job - by a somewhat embarassed temple astrologer and the president - of checking that they were not menstruating. Had this been the case, all the flowers would have been thrown away! The president's wife is German, and a good friend of mine, and she is always very indignant about this 'discrimination', as I used to be, until I learned that a man bleeding from a wound would also not be allowed to touch ritual items as the blood attracts 'lower elementals and bad energies'.
Anyway, this afternoon the group is coming to the beach to bless some of the restaurants so you can imagine what the charter tourists make of it all. (I can imagine some of them watching me in my sari and indeed thinking 'who does she think she is' as Venetian quipped on the Celeb BB thread!!!LOL) I have actually bumped into one couple whom I met here two years ago and again at the river Thames during the Durga Puja about which I wrote on the Hinduism forum. Small world.
Anyway I must go....did I spot somewhere that it's snowing in England??? Here it's cool at night and early morning (I was up at 4.15am) but swimming weather during the day!!!
Much love
Sunanda xxxx
PS Prashna - I didn't notice or hear of anyone in Tamil Nadu celebrating Saraswati Puja. I know they do so during Navratri, but didn't know it had just taken place.
RE: Postcard from God's Own Country (Kerala)!
Hi Sunanda,
Sounds like you're having a wonderful time.
There has been some snow in some parts of the UK, although here in the midlands it's just frosty this morning.
Have fun.
Love and Reiki Hugs
RE: Postcard from God's Own Country (Kerala)!
hi sunanda,
what a lovely post... i almost felt "there"... although certainly not as warm... i was opening my curtains and saw a flurry of snow, albeit lasting about 5 minutes, but i thought brrrrr... i'm staying put!
oooops, gotta go... heres the plumber! 😀
x
RE: Postcard from God's Own Country (Kerala)!
You write terrific posts on India, Sunanda. But then we expect no less from a tour guide! 🙂
I just travelled from Coventry to Somerset. No snow in either place, don't worry, but frost at night and cold, yes. But maybe only as January "should" be.
Question on Kovalam. And sorry to hit a 'grey' note. [:-]Do many people go swimming there? I mean more than just a few yards in? I've read "at least" a couple of tourists drown there per year from powerful undertows, so wonder if it's fit really only - "only"! LOL - for the beach, or whether lots of people do swim?
Ta,
V xxxx
RE: Postcard from God's Own Country (Kerala)!
Oh, I'm so pleased to miss the snow! Snow and I do not agree - I have Raynaud's disease and always get chilblains in cold weather!
Anyway, nice to hear from you all.
David - lots of people swim here in Kovalam but the waves are quite big and fierce. However there are permanent and very very good lifeguards on duty all day. I once watched them rescue a woman who had been foolish enough to go swimming when the red flags were up and I was tremendously impressed by their professionalism. Having said that, one has to take care. BTW, in answer to your pm, Varkala, which is further to the north is rapidly becoming as commercialised as Kovalam but is perhaps not yet as 'developed' ie clean! Personally I find Kovalam more comfy but it certainly is full of charter tourists who are obviously not very aware that they are in India!
Which brings me to the reason for this post: last night, as I mentioned above, the 'entourage' from the Kali temple came to the beach and performed several pujas to bless some of the restaurants. I was absolutely fascinated to watch the reactions of the tourists: each puja was preceded by very loud drumming and some pretty jazzy sort of long trumpets (I should know the correct name for these, but it has gone - a neighbour here in the internet cafe has said that the Hindi name is bansuri, but that doesn't ring a bell; currently the boy who takes the money here is canvassing the waiters in the restaurant outside to see if anyone knows aand now we've all remembered at the same time that it's a shenai! But maybe Prashna will correct me on the spelling!) and many of the tourists spent their time taking photos of the musicians, convinced that it was some kind of performance, completely unaware that behind them, in a temporary shrine made of woven coconut palm leaves, the powerful goddess Kali was having puja performed by a n extremely focused and amazing priest!
Then, too, it was interesting to note the other reactions: for instance, for every tourist who stayed to watch (and take millions of photos without ever once asking if it was OK) there were others who walked hurriedly past, averting their eyes as though some kind of pagan satanic ritual was taking place and they would be polluted if they looked. Others again, amazingly, walked by without even noticing that anything unusual was going on! The reactions to being asked for donations by lads with a collecting box were interesting also. Many people were hugely suspicious, which confirmed my belief that they come to India convinced that everyone they meet is out to rip them off. And yet, if they looked, they would see that every Indian around deposited at least one rupee - and at R86 to the pound, that would hardly break the bank! The norm is that those who make a donation, however small, are offered a plate containing vibhuti - holy ash - a pinch of which they can place on their foreheads. Obviously most foreigners hadn't got a clue what this powder was; for all I know, they might have thought they were being offered a plateful of cocaine! But then I had the inspiration to get the little boy with the ash to say 'blessing' and to apply the powder to the tourists' foreheads himself. This had the happy effect of not only charming the donors but also gave us a clear idea of who had already given, so they didn't have the box shaken under their noses more than once! At one stage though, I was holding the collecting tin and got so upset by the reaction of two obviously well off foreign women (possibly Scandinavians) who firstly looked completely down their noses at me and then proceeded to look into the distance above my heads, while completely ignoring me....that I had to give the tin to someone else before I shouted at them. A polite 'no thank you' would have cost them nothing. Anyway, I remembered that I loved them and offered them blessings in my head, and was very cheered to learn that the total amount of money collected turned out to be a record R2000 and everyone was well chuffed.
Well, forgive me, but I have