Tales Told to the Tooth Goddess

By Abhithakuchalambal

The foundation of this collection of stories and essays is set close to Arunachala Mountain in Tamil Nadu. The stories explore aspects of life and landscape: e.g. local culture, ecology, personal relationships, community politics, womens issues - all told from the perspective of an outsider living on the inside.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Jan 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482819656

Abhithakuchalambal

Abhithakuchalambal is the pen name of an Australian woman living most of the past forty years in the backwoods of South India, engaged in spiritual sadhana by Arunachala mountain, involved in reforestation and environment issues in the area and taking responsibility for the consequences of adopting and raising a local child. The photo is a photo of the big Nandi in Arunachalaeswara temple taken by the author about twenty years ago.

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Copyright © 2016 Apeetha Arunagiri. All rights reserved.

ISBN

978-1-4828-1966-3 (sc)

978-1-4828-1965-6 (e)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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01/04/2016

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Jai Sadguru Jai

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Annamalai!

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

SECTION ONE: SETTING THE SCENE

INTRODUCTION

THE MORAL OF THE MONKEYS

PRABHU!

MOTHER ALWAYS HAS PLENTY OF MILK

SECTION TWO: HIGHLIGHTS - FESTIVALS, RITUALS, RITES

INTRODUCTION

DAWN WALKS ON PILGRIM PATH

PUTTING THE GODS TO BED

DEEPAM – THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHT

BHAI’S PLACE

SHOWDOWN BETWEEN THE DIVINITIES

EQUAL IN THE EYES OF GOD

THE SWAMY

ONE WAY TO SETTLE A DISPUTE

SECTION THREE: BACK TO BASICS: GREENING

INTRODUCTION

WOMEN AND WATER

FOREST MEETING

SECRET WOMEN’S BUSINESS

MEETINGS IN THE BIG SMOKE

SECTION FOUR: VIBRANT DIVERSITY - CULTURE

INTRODUCTION

BREAKFAST IN THE SHADE

ON NOT SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE

THE INSTALLATION OF NANDI NO-EARS

OUR LOCAL LOONIES

LOCAL COLOUR: ORANGE

BARBED WIRE

THE IDEAL BANK

ALL IN A DALIT’S DAY’S WORK

THE ROYAL FAMILY

SECTION FIVE: TALES TOLD TO THE TOOTH GODDESS

INTRODUCTION

ONE SURVIVOR IN A SORDID SYSTEM

MU’S STORY

THE BEGINNINGS OF LOVE

HANDS ON HEARTS

EPILOGUE

SWANSONG FOR AN OLD FOREST

GLOSSARY

PROLOGUE

Almost all stories in this collection are set within thirty kilometres radius of Arunachala Mountain, in Tamil Nadu, South India; this mountain is fondly known as ‘the hill’. The name of the total area surrounding the hill for about thirty kilometres radius is Arunachalam - one of India’s most sacred places. My relationship with this place is overwhelmingly the most significant encounter in the life.

Section one Introduction gives the mandatory overture for those readers not familiar with the hill consequently it can be skipped by those who are. ‘The Moral of the Monkeys’ provides a convivial background to the early days while ‘Mother always has plenty of milk’ encapsulates personal facets of the prism of Arunachalum’s influence throughout the world, although essentially one can only indicate the inexpressible. Introductions to each of the Sections following enable readers to be prepared for what is to come.

All of these stories contain some autobiographical components. Most can accurately be categorised as Non-Fiction since they aim at faithful reportage of the writer’s perception of real events, yet section five contains three fictional stories containing biographical components observed in the lives of various local women friends, and one is autobiographical reportage from the perspective of one individual.

Many of the stories reveal what impoverishment means; many articulate the difficulties encountered by disempowered persons in the backwoods. On the other hand, there is a vibrancy imbuing the lives of all residents of this sacred place which irrepressibly shines through these words; ‘culture’ is a slippery sort of notion, nevertheless it’s the best available in English to describe what exactly it is that is so startlingly vibrant.

My place within the community surrounding Arunachala came to be coloured green - this process was both arduous and meaningful; so the stories in Section three cover the greening process from several viewpoints and any reader who remains curious about this work is invited to visit the website.

‘Swansong for an old forest’ is the appropriate note on which to close this collection.

India. August 2009.

SECTION ONE: SETTING THE SCENE

INTRODUCTION

In the southeast of the Indian Peninsular about two hundred kilometres southwest of Chennai in Tamil Nadu there lies a flat plain surrounded at about thirty kilometres radius by groups of mountains forming a variegated halo around a central mountain. The area within the halo is revered as the Mahamangalam – the great auspiciousness, called Arunachalam. The mountain is called Arunachala in Sanskrit and Annamalai in Tamil, while locals refer to it as ‘the holy hillock’. Since it is around 2,500ft high it is technically a hill, but in the classical texts it receives distinctive classification as a mountain.

Arunachala is believed to be the oldest protuberance on the earth - at least it grew long before the Himalayas began. The granite core was reported by a visiting geologist many years ago to extend 200 kilometres into the earth; it is a very stable place with very little tectonic activity. As you may realise, a mountain rising in the centre of a plain gives the surrounding ecology a great boon in water catchment capacity. In addition to this physical significance the hill’s contours invite speculation about the meaning of unity within diversity so it has been worshipped for a very long time; it is said to be the embodiment of Lord Siva yet long before the notion of Siva arrived in the south, the hill was worshipped as divine. At the surrounding cardinal points are lingams which are of great antiquity and it is widely believed that this this natural form of the lingam was worshipped prior to the advent in this region of Vedic mythology that infuses our minds with gods and goddesses. The south face of the hill is recognised as Dakshinamurthi - the teacher facing south; from areas directly south Annamalai presents form of the Sleeping Siva.

Once the Vedic culture had penetrated the southern peninsular millennia ago Lord Siva became the notion of most awesome significance in the south and the holy hillock became his embodiment. Kailash Mountain in Tibet is his abode where he meditates, but Annamalai is the lord himself. It was in comparatively recent history that the Vedic Divine personalities such as Lord Siva evolved on the subcontinent; they up-staged the primeval pantheon of elemental divinities worshipped since time before mind: Fire, Water, Space, Air and Earth. Sacred places associated with each of these most ancient divinities all lie in the South; Annamalai - sanskritised to Arunachala - is the place of fire.

Within Hinduism the quality-less Absolute Supreme Godhead called ‘Brahman’ permeates all that is. Our earliest conceptions of godhead gave precedence to the goddess - the Mother of All, particularly in the southern Dravidian culture. The predominant notion in the meaning of Arunachala is Lord Siva himself although the deities in the famous Sri Arunachalaeswar Temple as well as the mythology and folk law even today are insistent on the essential inseparability of Siva/Sakthi: the male/female principle. The Advaitic principle ‘not two and not one’ contributes to the nucleus of meaning here, with its corollary - the strategy for realization: self-enquiry - a teaching implicit in the most famous myth about the meaning of the hill:

Aeons ago the gods Brahma and Vishnu challenged one another; each claimed to be able to reach the end of the universe. the creator – Brahma, headed up into the sky in the form of a swan and the preserver of wisdom and knowledge – Vishnu, headed down into the earth as a boar. Neither managed anything much except attempts at trickery: both cunningly claimed to have found the end of the universe. However the destroyer of ignorance - Lord Siva - pronounced the justice of this situation: that no embodied being has precedence over any other; that only what is prior to consciousness is real, and that is quality-less, eternal and univocal throughout all dimensions of all worlds.

Arunachala is one of the five Jyothi Lingams of South India – the Lingams of Pure Light. Mention of this peels back layers of time to reveal the earliest, animistic, proto-Hindu conceptions [before a personification of the divine]: it was the elements of space, air, fire, water and earth that were worshipped originally; each Jyothi Lingam represents one of these elemental deities. In modern times Arunachala is known as the Fire place, but in fact the true meaning of the symbol is Light since Arunachala represents the very most subtle form of Agni. The light of the Mahamangalam is invisible while the hill is the visible icon enabling us to locate the presence of the divine. Arunachala Karthigai Deepam is a famous festival in which an enormous oil lamp is lit on the top of the hill so that a powerful little light is extremely visible for about thirty kilometres radius .

Deepam festival occurs during the rainy season of the year when all the ponds on the hill-round-route are usually full of water. One of the first known names for the hill was Arunasamudharam: Aruna means fire and samudharam means large bodies of water. The hill-round-route - so essential for pilgrims visiting this famous place, is a fourteen-kilometre path lined with temples and punctuated with magnificent hand-made rock-lined ponds - thirthums.

Unfortunately the essential role of water in our lives has been shamefully neglected for so many years and to such extent that the area surrounding the hill was recently categorized as moving from the ‘grey’ to the ‘black’ zone of environmental mismanagement: heading fast towards desert. By the skin of our teeth we have a chance now to replenish the denuded hillock with trees so that it can act as a giant sponge, gradually releasing precious water into our artesian basin. Supportive Water Management methods are being implemented on the flatlands and a great deal of mass communication about the work is engendering the psychological involvement of a large number of persons in the community. The time is ripe for plantation.

∞

The population of this part of India is overwhelmingly Hindu. In the South of India, Muslim influence was relatively benign during their centuries of rule and there were no great mass conversions; there is not the vast historical accumulation of antipathy between community groups as there is in the north. Both the religious and cultural fabric of life throughout the centuries of both Muslim and British rule in the south remained in the hands of the bramanas - the priestly/scholarly caste within the Hindu social order who seem to have been more concerned with persecuting untouchables and lower castes within their own fold than outsiders such as Muslims, Christians, Parsees or Buddhists. We have had responsible efficient Muslim rulers in our area and Thiruvannamalai town on the east of Annamalai has several darghars - tombs of revered Sufi saints, such as that of Sayedini Bibi [a mere woman] - the most peaceful place in town right in the middle of the main street.

Whereas in the Judaic, Christian and Islamic traditions there is a basic orientation that can be described as ‘Trust in Allah but tether your camel’, the Hindus are not at all good at tethering camels. This job has even been taken out of the hands of the gods to become an abstraction operating independently in the universe, called dharma. Every person’s dharma is unique to that person and it is up to each of us to discover and live by our own dharma: our own righteous way. As a result the scruples and Mores operating within an individual that the Judaic, Islamic and Christian systems rely upon to regulate an ethical perspective and civic sense, are not in place in the Hindu view of life. For the Hindu the scruples are formed by conscious interaction with the world around us, in cognisance of external supernatural coercion.

The coercion of the supernatural is a very potent force within the folk culture of the backward area surrounding Arunachala - irrespective of religion. Another name for the folk culture is the ‘superstitious’ culture – a point that is relevant here although I should also mention that the distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘superstition’ carries no meaning in this context, as in ancient occidental cultural origins - both Greek and Roman.

Even a rudimentary appreciation of the complex texture of the local folk culture encourages a certain confidence in our chances of return to a healthy system of environmental management despite the monumental setbacks inflicted during the past decades. I say this because the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ is of no consequence whatsoever in folk culture either, while at the same time the coercion provided by our abused environment is in our face - even more visible perhaps than elsewhere. Perhaps gradually this will be noticed by simple folk.

Another distinction glorified by occidentals that carries little weight here is that between myth and reality. As these essays unfold it is noticeable how often what is myth does not require substantiation or consistency, or even congruency with adjacent parameters, not because there’s any doubt about reason’s viability in its own domain - as is very much the case - but just because this isn’t its own domain. Around Arunachala we are in Woo Woo World. See how Lord Siva admires the plantation work! we are happily asked by well educated visitors as well as by big-footed yokels after every good monsoon.

∞

In the old Marriage Hall of the big temple high up on a wall there is lovely painting of Annamalai surrounded with sweet little ponds, reminiscent of the ancient name for the hill: Arunasamudaram. This painting is only about a hundred years old but it is in very bad condition. The hill is represented as a big pile of rocks, nevertheless the overwhelming impression conveyed is that of bountiful water dribbling down between those rocks – as was the case in the early seventies when the hill was absolutely barren: at least nine tanks on the pradakshina route could be floated blissfully upon all through summer. That was before pumpsets hit town.

Myths romantically claim there to have been at least one hundred and eight ponds lining the pradakshina road [the hill-round-route] in the not far distant past although there is not remaining evidence of so many today; at present many tanks are in disuse, some have been renovated very recently. The workmanship revealed in the old tanks during drought testifies to a great respect for water in the past and as I mention above, thirty years ago in excruciatingly dry summers there was always water available for pilgrims on the hill-round-route, so within the pip-squeak of my memory please allow me to shoot up a hand in the back row for the myth conveyed by this naïve little painting and that old name.

∞

As mentioned above the element primarily associated with Annamalai is Fire; a superficial interpretation of this has achieved monstrous proportions in recent decades even though the significance of the symbol actually lies in the subtle form of the element - which is not fire that burns grass, wood, insects, reptiles, animals and humans, but pure light. The flame rising from the top of Annamalai during the yearly Deepam Festival is an indicator of the column of invisible light – the one and only such manifestation of The Brahman. The Deepam light also reminds us of the Light of Consciousness - that which veils the immaculate void of our true nature. For this reason Advaitic Self-Enquiry is regarded as the teaching of the hill: realisation of the Self requires penetration beyond consciousness.

Nevertheless, despite such transformative conceptions our sacred site has burned black every single summer in living memory; those ponds still surviving on the hill-round-route have been ravaged along with the artesian basin, as well as polluted by our reckless modern way of life - just a little flick of ruination in the hill’s vast canopy of time.

∞

In the early seventies visiting foreign pilgrims could not help but be impressed by the ecological soundness of the local way of life. The holy hillock was as barren as ever, much more than it is now. This sign of mismanagement - conspicuous to anyone with ecological interest, drew attention to other aspects of the local way of life: that there were almost no pumpsets in the agricultural community - bullocks were used to pull up well-water as well as to plough. Dry crops such as millet, ground nuts and sesame were the rule except in the salad bowl area adjacent to the village Adianamalai on the northwest and in the area on the south when the lake waters were released to fields during winter.

Until the mid eighties the reflection of the hill in the seasonal lake was a reliable delight. Unfortunately the lake’s access channels were cut off in recent years by unplanned irresponsible building development. As a result this lake has been almost or completely dry for many years, but good rains will restore it and perhaps in future we can find sufficient community interest to tune in to these needs – perhaps someone will remember the extraordinary wildlife that gathered here so reliably for so many years prior to the degradation of those access channels.

Thirty years ago the rural community almost exclusively ate millet instead of water-greedy rice. Moreover eco-friendly plant produce like sekakai and soap nut were everywhere grown and used - there was a special grinding machine at the mill in town exclusively used for grinding hair-washing powder from such seeds. Village shops contained no shampoos, no chemical washing powder, no sweets except handmade peanuts in jaggery. Although used by a great many persons, the water in the tanks surrounding the hill was full of life; you were obliged to keep moving while bathing in the big temple tank otherwise thousands of fish would nibble your skin and immaculate tiny frogs with gold rims around their eyes graced this tank for many years until soap and chemical shampoo polluted the water. The rainfall in those years was scant, nevertheless there was some water in some tanks all through the summer and most good wells in the fields seldom went completely dry. Very few houses – only those of the very rich, had municipal water connexions and tap fights were a scandal during the summer months for everyone else. Consciousness of the primary value of water was enforced by deprivation; the way of life for most was austere. Despite there being some water in tanks on the pradakshina route, villages surrounding the hill suffered a terrible drought one summer in the late eighties and no doubt from time to time this has not been rare.

∞

Decades ago the population in the urban area was far smaller and the municipal facilities were just as absent as they are today, yet most human waste materials were either organic - hence eaten up by cows, pigs and dogs, or they were utilized by human scavengers and re-cycled. Re-cycle businesses can be found in the poor part of town even today where accomplished Masters make things out of broken bits of other things, still humbly providing a usefulness far superseded so inadequately by progress.

All cloth shops provided cloth carry-bags with all purchases, no plastic bags were available at all. Plastic of any kind was rare, even plastic buckets had not taken hold in the mid-seventies. Cellophane and cardboard were used for the packaging of the small variety of products available. Sesame oil was cold-pressed in small family businesses, soon to be outmoded entirely by new law restricting wholesale of sesame oil exclusively within the plastic bag technology. At that time paper bags hand-made from re-cycled paper were provided in shops to contain produce. The story was circulating that a foreigner bought chick peas in a bag made from a page of an original notebook of the poet Tagore and I remember noticing handwriting on bags from official government sources of some considerable interest at that time. These are just a few examples of a healthy way of life.

Loudspeakers did bombard the community on festival or political occasions with audio pollution, but neither they nor the horns of trucks and buses had become the vicious weapons they are today. At that time rural children were not lured by sweets because there was always some puffed rice or roasted corn for them to munch on. Village people didn’t seem to use money at all since what was needed from day to day was grown in the village. Herbal remedies for common illnesses were known by most women and used widely. Coming from countries wherein our collective suicidal predicament had already become apparent, visiting foreigners were encouraged to have confidence in the health and welfare of this community. Within the austerity and poverty there was and still is a big-hearted generosity. This was not very long ago and many traces of this remain still - particularly the generosity, even though poor people are much poorer now.

This story is international as I realised this suddenly in an International Conference on Climate Change I was fortunate to attend in 2006; nevertheless this story still needs to be spelt out.

Gradually during the eighties when pumpsets began to be installed on every tiny agricultural plot with the help of low-interest agricultural loans, the level of the wells in the fields in summer became increasingly lower; rice and sugarcane began to replace the dry crops, villagers took up the eating of rice and hand-pounding of rice went out of vogue; village shops began to expand with biscuits and candies, shampoos and soap, and injections of antibiotics became the panacea for the smallest physical disturbance or wound. The life deteriorated within a shell all for show only. Villages sprouted star-spangled TVs. In the early nineties, plastic bags hit town.

In 1992 Free Electricity for Farmers was perhaps the augury for the beginning of the end. The collective life within villages and families was breaking up and as a result soon almost all half-acre blocks had a barbed fence around them and a pumpset. Sinking of borewells became a roaring business, which continues indiscriminately until this day. Soon acres of green rice made the prognosis even clearer. Pesticide took hold. Artificial fertilizers became essential. Old varieties of rice vanished. Suddenly the wells became dry regularly in summer. The tanks surrounding the hill that had previously maintained a fair water level during the hot season began to lose their capacity entirely; they lost their life too, since quickly the waters became polluted by chemicals.

This international story is painted here in our own particular local colour. Even Sadhus and goat boys now use shampoos and soaps, they can choose from a very large number of varieties in every tiny shop. Many women have forgotten what sekakai was, even very poor women.

∞

The familiar summer sight of the burning hill has until recently been visually spectacular, but for those of us who recognise that our autonomy is a function of our interdependence with everything else, this sight fills us with dread. It is ignorant evil, an abhorrent waste of the lives of millions of living beings, of the saplings and small plants, of the foliage of the few fire-resistant plants who may survive - set back yet again in their growth. And a waste of the time and effort put into the plantations of the previous season. The damage extends to the underground water table now moving from the grey zone into black; it involves our futures and the futures of our children and children’s children unless some involvement of the community stirs to prevent this vandalism. Instead of burning the entire hill every summer, if we planted a forest, then - provided no fires ate it up - at least ten years would need to pass before the effects of present plantation would be noticeable in water levels in wells. Trees are the most important guardians of our waters and our futures, but they need time to manifest their essential contribution.

All unauthorized burning on the hill is prohibited by law, yet in the face of this savage robbery of our collective future, the systematic burning of the hill that has occured every year saves no more than the energy required by just three hundred seasonal grass cutters to cut the lemon-grass stubble back to ground level. That’s all. The majority of the hill fires in the past thirty years have very probably been stubble burning; I say this because everyone can see when the burning is systematic. So much is lost to save the muscle work of so few.

Although we have plenty of law we have never heard of the prosecution of an arsonist, not in more than thirty years that I know of. Faced with the potential danger to the community over these fires and although it is undoubtedly very difficult to provide surveillance of the entire huge body of the hill, still it is intriguing that despite our substantial population nobody seems to report sighting an arsonist; it is inconceivable that this relentless annual burning occurs without pervasive community collaboration.

Over most of thirty years whenever the hill is burning in summer I have asked people randomly who lights the fires; the reply has always been bad people of one sort or another - nobody has ever mentioned grass cutters or stomach-aches, dowries, washing machines or Lord Siva’s lavish desire for black summer duds. So it would appear reasonable to conjecture that despite everything, the majority of people here are not unsympathetic to arsonists blanketed in the label bad boys.

The existence of the coarse stubble will greatly inhibit the new growth of the next season but it’s too much trouble to cut it back, hence the grass cutters burn. As long as we are in the process of growing the forest cover on the hill, we absolutely need the grass roots to prevent further erosion and hence we are committed to cutting the slender stalks of grass. And - importantly, since we need to minimize fire danger - we are absolutely compelled to cut back that stubble since until the hill is covered with trees, this grass will be tinder for fire in summer in a community who can’t be trusted on its own behalf or the behalf of the children of the future. We have a serious problem of social ecology.

Now that attention is being paid within our community to the reforestation of the hill by the recent formation of the Thiruvannamalai Greening Society and we seem to have [in 2004] administrative officers who understand the problems and have the dynamism to make the necessary moves to persevere with plantation and perhaps implement law - always one of our weak points due to our ubiquitous corruption, as well as address the serious problems of fire fighting, then - without paying too much attention to the wind turbulence which fire-fighters are forced to deal with high up on the mountain, not to mention the abysmally poor equipment that they have at their command - nevertheless, relatively speaking we can claim now to be better equipped than we have ever been to deal with the problem of the seasonal burning of Annamalai. We pride ourselves on the truth of this statement although this surface aspect is only the tip of the volcano.

Underneath this lies a very deep and vast problem: within what we refer to as the folk culture - the beliefs and myths of the illiterate and semi-literate people, there is the myth that Lord Arunachala Siva does like to be burned in summer; there are many stories. One is that if you have a stomach-ache then you go up and start a hill fire because Lord Siva will be so pleased he will remove your discomfort immediately. But as I mentioned myths are not required to be consistent; in this case the story behind the story is that Lord Siva will be so discomforted by the fire burning his body, taking his mind off his new summer outfit, that he will be willing to do anything in exchange for the cessation of the pain. In other words this turns out to be just another bribery story - but that’s acceptable because our gods are venal.

There are many such stories. To the disempowered, backwoods, backward, semi- or illiterate people and the cognitively incompetent literate ones - those who have not the know-how or initiative or capacity to tether camels even if their children’s futures are going up in smoke - the fact is that Arunachala is advertised as the Fire Place of South India. We don’t question much in Woo Woo World. ‘The Dreambody of the god in the folk culture’ - we can say in psychological jargon – ‘likes a black outfit for summer’.

∞

In the ancient vedic texts there are numerous references to the timeless importance of the forest which once clothed Annamalai but of course these notions are part of the classical educated culture and hence ignored lower down the ladder. In the domain of the present folk culture of this backward corner of Tamil Nadu, notions such as that trees are the guardians of our waters or of the finitude of our artesian basins or even notions about our children’s futures, are not prevalent at all and there is very little apprehension of causality. The fact that if we had begun reforesting our hill fifty years ago we would now have a healthy water table and a foreseeable future - even with the recent great rise in our urban population - is not an entertainable notion because the past is fixed and cannot be envisaged differently. This means that in this folk culture we are not equipped to learn from our mistakes. 

Young men with not much going for them go up and light a fire for impact - there being no scope for it elsewhere, except perhaps access to a volume knob connected to a tape deck and bucket loudspeakers. Drunkards no doubt recklessly toss lighted cigarette butts at clumps of grass without a care in the world. Justifications for burning are tossed about but people aren’t conceptually equipped to notice that their stomach aches do not vanish after they light a fire or that Siva does not rain boons into their needy lives. The self-reflective apparatus is unfortunately absent in the dividuated folk culture. This is real poverty. This is what ‘backward’ means.

Since Annamalai is one of the oldest protuberances on earth, we can safely conjecture that it was for many millions of years clothed abundantly with forests and contributed greatly to the generation of this stupendous world. Perhaps now we can acknowledge a great need of our earth in the light of this sacred place. Let’s hope that the majority of us find the courage to acknowledge that the territory in which the dreambody of Arunachala Siva remains black in summer is simply suicidal, and that traditions can become dangerously outdated in the light of circumstances like changing weather patterns, monumental rise in population, global warming, etcetera. Dangerously outdated traditions can be relinquished. Perhaps Hindus can come to terms with this; they have had to do so before.

Since Lord Siva is the Destroyer of Ignorance there is the inbuilt capacity to turn the tide of mindless destruction by reforming the dreambody of the deity in the psyche of the community. This can be achieved by suggesting that Lord Siva needs his green duds in order to sustain his devotees living near to his body or visiting from other places to walk around his beautiful form. This reconstruction can only be achieved by the voice of one respected by the masses. There are several possible candidates.

She or he needs to speak out loud and clear preferably with loud speakers in a very public place or perhaps on television, in film. It took Rajni Kanth only a few sentences in a tenth rate Bollywood stint to initiate a regular influx of pilgrims on average of possibly half a million a month going on twenty years now: the Arunachala Full-Moon Phenomenon. Fortuitous it is that within a traditional culture like this, the voice of an authority is listened to. So: set up those loudspeakers.

∞

THE MORAL OF THE MONKEYS

During the heat of summer days Grandpa, King, Old Uncle, Grandma and all the mother monkeys from the ashram family used to sit on a low branch at my back door, lined up huddled together ear to ear, very still. Those on the ends of the line intervened if necessary in the gamboling of the young ones below, using the characteristic ‘Watch it!’ face - eyebrows way up, eyes popped, mouth in an open O. Oppressive heat passed in the shade with activity below and occasionally on the edges. Tails hung down straight behind, eyes closed, the blue lids still. There’s nothing like the great heat to keep quiet the monkey mind.

The monkeys who lived in the old forest at this time were even more tranquil and harmonious than this urban family. If I remained still they soon forgot me observing their interaction, much impressed as i was by their communicativeness, their sense of justice and ethical behaviour. Quarrels seemed to work themselves out without the scapegoating and false accusations evident in suburban monkeys.

At ashram mealtimes the suburban family of around sixteen rhesus bonnet monkeys who lived there sat up at the window bars of the dining hall and we would take them handfuls of food that long fingers quickly conveyed to simian food-pockets in their cheeks. Their king was young strong and very handsome. Old Uncle had a tick in his facial muscles and his lower lip hung down with a depraved look; a bit of a crook he seemed to be although the young boys were all very fond of him. Old Uncle had the look of a sleaze too and once he won the heart of the king’s favourite queen. The showdown happened on my roof where I was sitting at the time, so I saw the whole story unfold with all the facial expressions - particularly the chagrin of the king. The outcome was that he just had to get used to old Uncle with Queenie - they remained a steadfast couple from then on.

Grandpa was an unusually calm monkey with a very long thin face. When the young ones were playing and the adults not about he seemed to settle in to staring meditations, continuing for so long with neither of us blinking that his left eye would remain alone in my visual field, articulated in a shifting optical sea of gold/green light. Nevertheless he was very attentive to the needs of the young ones; if very little monks happened to be gamboling unawares in the path of oncoming men, he would calmly step over between men and kids so that the men’s shouts and perhaps stones thrown at him would send the youngsters scampering up safely away.

Once Grandpa and a couple of boys suddenly dropped over the stone wall at the back door of the little tunnel room where I lived, to find a couple of iddlies left for them on the bench. The boys sat respectfully not too near Grandpa as he nibbled contemplatively on the windfall, watching humbly. When Grandpa had eaten some of one, he casually tossed the remainder behind to one side of the bench toward one little boy who happily dusted it down and began on it while his brother quietly crossed to the other side of Grandpa and waited while his honourable elder nibbled at the other iddly. Then Grandpa tossed the remainder of that to the other side for the waiting grandson, who pounced on it with an appreciative look. Grandpa then turned his back, put one foot up on the wall, leaned an arm on his knee, and thoughtfully savoured the iddly after-taste. He was a dignified elder. He died before a terrible affliction blinded and finally killed Pati, his partner.

Sometimes showdowns between the ashram monks and the rabble mob from the fields behind the back stone wall would erupt in that huge compound. Mothers, Pati and kids would stay up big trees and heckle, while the men would rouse up a commotion showing off big teeth around the edge of the central clearing. In the unlikely event of the worst coming to the worst there would be a fast scruffle or two in the clearing, sometimes resulting in wounds and always ending with a lot of bravado as the entire ashram clan chased those marauders over the back wall right back to the fields where they belonged. These showdowns only happened during drought but they were worth climbing up on the roof to see. The aftermath would always be embellished by expressions of righteous indignation and exclamations of reassurance to polish up the enhanced group solidarity in victory.

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I’d been away in the mountains some time when Grandma fell afflicted. The day I returned she was walking around the ledge that rims the inside of the