Looking at Air in Tuluva

By Nancy K Shields

Kezzie, a museum curator and photographer mourning the recent death of her husband, comes to myth-steeped Tuluva, now South Kanara, India to photograph spirit dancers (bhutas). Drawn by these souls, who died precipitously leaving them with a strong sense of a life yet to live, Kezzie is at first unsure what to expect. Thrown into an intriguing nest of locals and international travellers, living in a bungalow carressed by the rhythms of the sea, Kezzie moves between the mundane and the spiritual, between the demands -both social and sexual -of her fellow Europeans, and between the harsh realities of India and its more pressing spiritual demands. Interwoven with stories of spirit lives and travellers' tales, Kezzie's journey, perfumed by night-blooming jasmine and vivid with colour and movement, leads her to a sense of mastery over her grief as she slowly comes to appreciate how to 'look at air'.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eland Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781900209229

Book preview

Ancient Tuluva

ONE

Perilous Tales

The Bhuta descends into the Tulu country from the Ghats. Her groans are heard in the four worlds, and her cries in the three worlds.

The Paddanna of the Bhuta Kanaaditaya

GORDON DIED THIS afternoon… so totally unexpected…‘this morning… this evening…so soon.’ And yes, ‘I’m sad and lonely’… Oh the emptiness… of his not being here…of the sense of solitary aloneness…I hate the reality of no one to come home to….

A sudden recall of making pancakes, laughing, hugging in the kitchen this morning…this very morning eating pancakes made of wheat flour filled with blueberries…laughing…teasing… only this morning… the last time… the last time to be with one another came and went….

Kezzie mourns constantly – clumsily. Her own quick self now become slow. Never free of feeling abandoned, wanting to believe it isn’t so she hungers for her husband’s reassuring presence, his smile, his touch, the sound of his voice….

So much like Gordon, he keeps turning up in unanticipated moments… At a service station, as I fill the car with gasoline, I clearly see the two of us on a misty day on the Bosporus, standing alongside a ship railing…looking out at Istanbul… Geologist that he was, Gordon positively thrived on the mysteries of the world. Together we shared a passion for the challenges of faraway places…We reveled in distant sights, smells, sounds…

To her dismay – most of the time – Kezzie feels as if she were locked within a tiny space without a key, unable to cry out. Sadness such as she can express to no one constrains her. In acknowledging that Gordon is gone, it is as if everything, even time itself, has suddenly wilted.

‘You made me smile with my heart’ … Sorrow…loneliness… ‘Words. Words. Words.’ Our old erratic clock seems to have come into its own, acknowledging, as it were, what has become my personal sense of time: now striking the hour not at all; then with an extra chime… I’ve skipped a beat it would seem. Would that I were counting the hours and speeding the clock until we could be together. O Gordon, I know you are gone, yet I don’t know.

With the loss of intimacy, Kezzie begins to perceive the world around her with different eyes. What have once been minor discontents, quiet and undefended truths, previously endured as simply part of being alive, now loom large. Heretofore, she has been able to give her job as a museum curator its due, viewing long-buried coffins as works of art, finding a study of their contents to be an often compelling task. Photographing prehistoric artifacts has frequently immersed her in stories told not by spirits, but by bones. Indeed, inherited diseases, diets, epidemics, that sort of thing, have become her specialized fare.

Now, it seems that the limitations of her profession--so lacking in sunlight, so filled with tombs – relentlessly heighten Kezzie’s increasing awareness of her own vulnerability.

For me curious phobias flicker obsessively. Worries about risks from robust old germs continuously prowl. Anxiety refuses to let me alone. Tears seem always present. Refreshing sleep vanishes. Food offers little appeal. My heart pounds erratically. Decision making seems pointless, if not impossible. With each passing day, I trust my judgment less. My conviction grows that catastrophic medical insurance and retirement pensions are inadequate compensation for what has begun to feel like being buried alive. Most alarming is the disappearance of what once had been a characteristically energetic curiosity.

‘Whatever has happened to my zest for living?’ she asks herself.

Then a job offer, as unanticipated in its arrival as its expectations, comes her way: Would she be interested in gathering data and photographing spirit dancers in South India’s Karnataka, specifically in the District of South Kanara – a region long ago identified, in the stories narrated by travelling spirits, as Tulu country. Little was actually documented by the Tulu speaking people; their language had no written form. The unknown prevails. Early Tamils referred to this narrow strip of land as Tulunadu, but ancient Greeks – historians, geographers and a dramatist – entitled it, simply ‘Tuluva.’ And so, too, would Kezzie come to designate her destination.

‘Could I travel to Tuluva?’ she queries her reluctant and grieving self.

A pilgrimage … possibly the very thing…A widow on the road, albeit considerably less flamboyant than Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’… But then, perhaps, I would be well advised to avoid the word widow altogether in India. No matter how sad I am, this widow is not for burning. Nonetheless, a change of scene … faraway India with its riotous colors and vibrant peoples can but stir my languishing resiliency and encourage looking, hearing, touching in order to be more alive again…

With some trepidation, she takes a leave of absence from her comfortable job with its neat, safe parameters to wander off to India. Her colleagues scold her: to opt for the wilderness, to light out for the territory (forget Huck Finn), is not something anyone really does. Change, however worrisome for her, she finds sometimes arouses indignation in others. Despite the fact that death orchestrates the existence of spirit dancers themselves, she feels herself drawn to this lively spectacle of death in the midst of life.

Forthwith she immerses herself in the demands of the project and begins her preparations in London’s India Office Library. Her notebook begins to be awash with odd but captivating information.

The King of Mangalur? The Bhuta Magrandaya? Or how about the Royal Bhuta Ullalthi and the tiger spirit, the Bhuta Pilichamundi? In South Kanara, specifically in what was (once upon a time) the realm of Tuluva, enigmatic, elusive and difficult-to-account-for spirits called bhutas, who defy glib or ready explanations, continue to be everywhere. Having met death in an untimely manner, these beings feel cheated and retain a strong sense of life yet to live. They are anything but shy about expressing their wishes and making demands in their tongue-twisting, poetical litanies. Bhuta temples (large and small) punctuate the landscape. Bhuta festivals echo through the sultry nights until dawn. Along with sensuous and melodious place names, Mangalur, Atka, Nad, Barakuru, Santandaka, Ullal and Uchilla, bhutas tempt and sometimes ensnare the imagination.

Day after day, at a large table shared with other readers, Kezzie sits before a wooden frame, on which she balances musty documents and maps from the library’s archives, carefully following the rules to record her notes in pencil. She reads everything she can find about the world she is soon to enter. The leather-backed, rat-ravaged translations of one hundred and seventeen bhuta stories (paddannas) collected in the late nineteenth century by a Briton, Major R C Burnell, entice her. Astonishingly, Tuluva, a mother goddess culture cohabited by contentious spirits, invades her fancy.

I have been taking extensive notes today, again in pencil only (so hard on the hand!), and must transcribe them in my notebook while the discoveries are still fresh in my mind. The bhuta paddannas are amazing stories – bizarre, poignant and assertive. They don’t follow familiar story patterns with a beginning, middle and end. Instead they explode every which way with strange and exotic minutiae. In no particular order they list places, demands, unlinked actions, threats, blessings, along with glimpses of objects, events and emotions relevant to a particular bhuta.

Quite unexpectedly, a discovery! In Bhasker Anand Saletore’s Ancient Karnataka: History of Tuluva, Vol. I. (1936), I came across a delightful wee map entitled ‘Ancient Karnatak: Ancient Tuluva.’ I was permitted to order a photocopy which I’ll take withme on my journeyto whatisnowKarnataka’s district of South Kanara.

Earlier travellers’ diaries and writings also expand Kezzie’s horizons. In particular, a translation of a second century fragment of a Greek drama written by an unknown playwright holds her spellbound. Its tale of Charition and her pirate brother, who survive a shipwreck off the sandy undulating coast of Tuluva, teases her imagination.

What route would early Greek maritime seafarers have used to reach Tuluva? Arab and Indian mariners had kept a tight hold on the secrets of Indian monsoons and their influences on Arabian Sea travel for as long as possible. Would the Greek pirates of the drama have known the ‘Periplus Maris Erythraei’, a first century guide that describes how monsoon winds could aid in Arabian Sea crossings and provides details about ports, islands, rivers, tides and winds along the way? It seems likely to me, that the sister and brother traversed the Mediterranean Sea to Alexandria. From there they could have taken the canal route that connected the Pelusium Nile and the Red Sea. Or perhaps they dismantled their vessel and transported it overland, crossing the desert from Coptos, that captivating central point on the Nile for caravans to and from the Red Sea. Or maybe, on reaching the Red Sea, they sold their first vessel and purchased another.

I conjecture that the travellers continued their voyage down the Red Sea’s eastern shore to the southern coast of Arabia where they then crossed the Arabian Sea to the mouth of the Indus. After negotiating a thousand miles of the Malabar Coast of India, the ship sank near the port of Malpe, then an active Tuluvan trading center.

In all probability, the survivors returned by the same route, having chosen, however, to cross the desert near Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. It was in Oxyrhynchus that the papyrus scroll containing the fragment of Charition’s tale had surfaced in the late nineteenth century.

Perhaps the very existence of that fragment with its suggestion of Charition’s unfinished story stimulates Kezzie’s curiosity. Or perhaps, it is simply that the best tales are not always complete. For whatever reason, Kezzie’s imagination inseparably interweaves the story of Charition’s voyage and her ensuing life in Tuluva with those of the open-ended bhuta tales.

Even in my dreams, reverberations, of wind and sea and of the creaking of a wooden sailing vessel, mingle with my expanding perception of that woman traveller. Vicariously I experience Charition’s arduous journey afloat under the blistering brilliance of the sun and the relentless gales. In a monsoon storm presaged by a sky heavy with black clouds and a torrential rain, the waves mount; the ship plunges wildly and disappears under the waters of the Arabian Sea. I empathize with the terror of that disaster at sea in every fiber of my being.

In London, night after night, Kezzie awakes from dreams of the unknown fate of this unheralded wanderer. At the same time, in those lonesome, fertile moments Kezzie longs for Gordon intensely. Loss, as powerful as the suck of quicksand, threatens to consume her. It is as if a dry and menacing wind has brushed not just across her skin, but has penetrated deep within. For now the racing of her heart, the moistening of herself remains quiescent.

Abruptly, Kezzie decides that she needs actions not words.

‘Why delay longer? It’s now or never.’

She books a flight from Heathrow to Bombay.

In Bombay as she waits for her domestic flight to Mangalore, Kezzie finds that her fellow travellers are mostly men returning home to India from jobs in the Emirates. To her surprise she hears a British voice addressing her.

‘And what brings you here?’

She turns to find a pleasant looking man standing next to her.

‘Oh, Mother goddesses and dancing spirits. Things like that, you know…’

‘Can’t say that I do, really?’

‘Well, they are the residue of what was at one time the ancient realm of Tuluva. I’m on my way to South Kanara to photograph spirit dancers,’ she surprises herself with the ease of her response.

‘Spirit dancers! Will they be on coffee plantations in Coorg? That’s where I’m going.’

‘Actually, I believe so. Spirits – locally called bhutas – remain alive and lusty today not only in South Kanara, but also into Coorg and just a bit over Kerala’s border. Bhutas were at home in these areas in the dark period of Tuluva’s concealed and obscure past.’

‘And how do these – uh, bhutas – feel about outsiders?’

‘That I don’t know – yet. All I can say is that bhutas, whether animals, humans or invisible beings, make demands of the living. One of them, a female tiger spirit, the Bhuta Pilichamundi, is particularly feared.’

Once the Indian airlines plane is airborne it maintains a low altitude, travelling south along the coastline of the Arabian Sea. With the exception of an occasional fishing community, the vista below mostly looks to be uninhabited. For a few moments Old Goa, once the capital and prosperous jewel of Alfonso Albuquerque’s sixteenth century Portuguese territories, and the first Christian colony in India, lies beneath them. Despite its magnificent edifices, the city proved to be pestilential and had to be deserted. Now it is a ruin of hulking cathedrals.

Soon only crescent bays, stretches of pale sand, palm forests and lapis lazuli waters can be seen. Wide rivers curve throughout the landscape. A few rivers have bridges; but primitive ferries, made from two hollowed-out logs supporting a platform of planks cross at other places in a manner similar to those so frequently mentioned in bhuta tales. As those dancing spirits of the dead thrust themselves into Kezzie’s thoughts, she forces herself to confront the question she has been avoiding.

‘Whatever have I gotten myself into?’

Recall of Gordon, sharp as a Swiss army knife, pierces her for the moment.

Then her attention returns to the present as a Tuluvan landmark, the mountain peak Kudremukh, some 6,173 feet above the sea, northeast by east of Mangalore, comes into view. As the plane approaches Mangalore, a red-and-white striped, seventeenth century Portuguese lighthouse, the first landfall for ships at sea, dominates the landscape. Its base stands on ground some two hundred and forty feet high and about a mile and one half from the Netravati River entrance. Turning inland, the plane then glides over irregular patterns of bright green rice paddies trapped between forested land and rivers, toward Bajpe airport, some 22km north of Mangalore. Red dust roads turn and twist among hills of black rocks. The airport itself perches on a hill top; cerise and orange bougainvillea cascade over the terminal, a small, open-sided building. The runway is short. During the heavy monsoon rains, planes often skid dangerously.

When Kezzie steps from the plane onto the tarmac, stifling waves of heat pulsate about her. She feels as if she has been shoved into a well stoked and monstrous oven to be baked alive. Her breath flows shallowly as she slowly wills her feet to move toward the chaotic luggage area. Her camera equipment has now become impossibly heavy.

As gracefully as she can, she makes her way through a predominantly female crowd comprised of wives, mothers, daughters and sisters whose vivid saris (yellows, purples, turquoises, pinks and oranges) seem to generate additional heat. Adorned with bracelets, necklaces and earrings, they eagerly await the return of fathers, sons, uncles, husbands and brothers. These male travellers, with their wages from abroad, have brought many treasures from other lands, flush toilets, TVs and electric sewing machines, often for villages with neither running water nor electricity.

‘So welcome to Tuluva,’ Kezzie calls out to the British coffee merchant.

‘You haven’t seen any – what do you call them? – Bhutas, right?’ the British coffee merchant asks jovially. As someone who knows far too little about a dangerous subject, he laughs at the very idea. ‘I hope that tiger spirit isn’t waiting to greet either of us.’

‘Me, too! Pilichamundi straight off the plane would be a bit much.’

‘Good luck with your photos.’

‘Thanks. I’ll need it. I hope that you find your Coorg coffee plantation to be cooler than here,’ she says in farewell as she settles into a ramshackle taxi.

‘Will we pass by any bhuta shrines on the way to town?’ she immediately asks the taxi driver.

‘What do you know of bhutas?’ the driver replies quite sensibly, but politely, observing this female farengi (foreigner) in his rear view mirror.

‘I want to see bhutas. I’ve read that here in South Kanara, bhutas and their shrines are found just about everywhere … in palm forests and rice paddies … on hilltops.’

The eerie likelihood of being accompanied by a spirit suddenly seems somehow remarkably possible to her in this landscape with its oppressive heat.

‘If you will look to the right side – just there in that field beside the large palm trees – you’ll see a small shrine that belongs to the Bhuta Dhumavathi. It’s that small pink windowless construction with a tile roof.’ The driver pulls over to the side of the road and