In the Court of the Love-Eyed Goddess

Ramayanam Mama, supposedly orthodox to the core, seems least bothered by my short, loose, highlighted hair or my obvious modern cynicism. “Why do you dislike Lord Ram so much? Don’t you realise He suffered as much as Sita did?” he asks gently.

“It’s wounded love,” I explain (presumptuously?) on behalf of Modern Indian Womanhood. “I can’t endure the thought of how he treated Sita!”

“Love itself is a wound!” says Ramayanam Mama. “It makes you vulnerable to every kind of hurt. But isn’t that what life is all about? Isn’t that why this incredible story still matters so much to us?”

A bizarre exchange with a perfect stranger, deep in the bastion of sternest Hindu orthodoxy? Not really, come to think of it. Isn’t this the court of the ‘love-eyed’ goddess, Kamakshi, presiding deity of Kanchipuram?

Anything could happen in this forcefield of raw energy. Masks fall away, feelings seem out on toast even while one behaves with utmost politeness.

The Srimatam is a fascinating example of Hindu orthodoxy’s positive potential for change. It’s an unmistakably strong vibe, coming at you from all kinds of situations and from the people living and working behind its high, cloistered walls.

For one, access to the heart of the Matt doesn’t seem to be on caste or gender lines any more. My taxi driver from Chennai, a proud, true Tamizhan, follows me right in with my little basket of fruit and is spoken to most politely by the priests who conduct me into the darshan area. My eyes fill seeing a mottai paati (shorn widow), the saddest, cruellest creation of Hindu patriarchy, seated right upfront while His Holiness the Junior Shankaracharya performs the important morning puja to Lord Shiva in his form as Sri Chandramouliswara (the Moon-bearer). Paati (granny) is adding to the auspicious vibes by loudly chanting the Lalita Sahasranamam with a group of satsangis. Just ten years ago, the very sight of her would have been condemned as horribly inauspicious for such ‘pure’ and ‘exalted’ sanyasis. I just love it when paati sees me at a loss and hands me her prayer book with a sweet, confident smile. It’s her right to be here as a believing woman — belonging, at last?

Crosslegged on the ground nearby is pale, handsome Thyagu, a slender young man who plays the mridangam during worship and gently guides two little boys, each with his own mridangam. One of them, a stout, naughty-eyed fellow muffs a cue but a glance from Thyagu brings his chubby fingers back in rhythm. Cultural transmission? Yet it’s Thyagu (whom I’ve met before in Mumbai and Delhi as part of HH the Senior Shankaracharya’s entourage), who works the e-mail and supervises the ultra-modern Anna Daanam. This designer building serves free food to groups of devotees — it’s the Hindu langar. The kitchen is unbelievably hygienic and state-of-the-art. “I’m in a gurdwara!” I joke.

A fifty-strong group of simply dressed pilgrims from Ernakulam suddenly flood the courtyard. They wash up in neat lines at a sparkling row of steel sinks. I catch — but only just! — the gleam of quiet fun in Thyagu’s eye as he blows a whistle and they all troop in and sit in orderly rows to be served a delicious meal of nolkol sambhar, rice, beetroot sabzi and spiced buttermilk. While I tuck in, Vilwam, a 22-year-old Telugu priestlet refrains heroically from eating. He’s trying to be a Perfect Ascetic, having shaved his head and undertaken vows of restraint. The other priestlets rag him goodnaturedly about being a “Madi Mama” (person undergoing austerities). “Well, I’m trying!” retorts Vilwam. “What I really want is to improve my Hindi. But I need to be in a Hindi-speaking atmosphere to do that.”

Vilwam and I have been around four temples together that morning and have just had a huge argument about the last one, which I detested because of the disco bhajans played aloud and its rather casual priest, a moody, restless-looking young fellow.

“You can’t say you dislike the temple,” insists Vilwam, not unfairly. “But it’s people who make a place. So many Hindus get put off temples because of rude or sloppy priests,” is my view. But Vilwam and I are in perfect accord over the lyrical beauty of the ancient Kailasanathar Temple.

Kailasanathar is a dream. None of those elegant formalised lines of later Chola architecture, this is pure Pallava exuberance, energy and beauty (like at Mahabalipuram). A touch of whimsy, a divine confidence in making a House of God is pretty evident. The elderly archak, Subramanya Aiyer, speaks Oxbridge English and is a fount of learned lore. The Shivling here is a massive, brooding monolith with a subterranean passage that only the utterly devout have the courage to tackle.

Under the bright blue sky, the priest’s stories take you back in time through corridor after corridor of tiny cloistered spaces for meditation, their frescoes still bright and beautiful in places.

Imagine, Pulakesi the valourous Chalukya, walked here! (He’s the guy who pushed Harshavardhana of Thaneswar back across the Narmada). The Pallavas of Kanchi had attacked Badami (Vatapi) the Chalukya capital and laid it waste so that it could not rise for fourteen years. It wasn’t just Muslims who broke Hindu temples, you know!

Biding his time, young Pulakesi put together a

huge army and laid siege to Kanchi. But when he inspected Kailasanathar he exclaimed that the world would condemn him as a barbarian if he destroyed anything so brilliant. His queen came up with idea that they should take the Kanchi artisans back with them and that’s how the fabulous temples at Pattadakkal were created, “But in granite, not pressed sand. This technique is a secret and unique to Kanchi,” reveals Subrahmanya Aiyar.

I can’t help noticing though that both he and the splendid temple in his loving care are desperately poor. “How many temples can our society support?” asks Vilwam sadly. But Kailsanathar is so amazingly beautiful, with so much real history!

Anyway, what with spick-and-span hostels for destitute girls, hospitals and perinatal projects in Chennai and an impressive international library near Kanchi — HH wants heaps of books, so if you’re dumping your library, you know where it’ll be

welcome — I’m treated to an impressive whirlwind tour of Progressive Hinduism. It’s devotion to Devi Kamakshi and the Srimatam that makes these people run. They say so, loud and clear.

The magic realism of Kamakshi’s kingdom seems best personified by two people. One is Kameswara Sivacharya, a big, burly,

sarcastic priest who’s a storehouse of myth and legend. An MA, he lives in a tiny

traditional home with his mother and wife, downroad from Kamakshi Amman. He officiates as the archak at a lovely old Kartikeya temple. Trad to the core, but I like the casual, new modern ease to the way he leads me around Shiva Ekambareswarar’s great temple, a sense of once-autocratic ownership that’s now open to sharing without tiresome old gender hassles. Way to go! This relaxed and friendly interaction could be happening in London, Paris or New York, this could be one of the curators at the Metropolitan Museum, NY, showing me around the Magritte retrospective like it happened back in 1992.

“Kamakshi Amman,” I think impertinently, “you’re really something if you managed to swing this

atmosphere. What took you so long, Mother?” I get my answer early at 5.00 am when I rush across to Kamakshi Amman’s great temple to rendezvous with Rukmini Raman aka ‘Tiruchi Mami’. A chatty, knowledgeable little lady who spent decades in Porbander with her now-retired husband, Rukmini Mami wears a nine-yard madisar sari and most kindly carries a thermos of coffee for yawning me. My eyes open wide when she hands me a smart card with her e-mail id. A cyber-mami in a nine-yard sari!

“You’re blowing my socks off!” I tell Kamakshi Amman severely in my head. “Do you want to kill your devotee with shock?” For it is I, the so-called city slicker that feels like a rustic fool with narrow notions.

Our society is capable of much more complexity than we realise, an individual can “contain multitudes” as Walt Whitman put it and reconcile many aspects of life comfortably in one skin. But before I shout huzzas for Hinduism, I need to check Devi out.

Waiting inside that dark, ancient precinct after inspecting the temple cow and baby elephant, I feel the centuries pulling me in. “Spare me this ‘womb of time’ stuff,” I mutter resisting, in my thoughts. The bells ring, the oil lamps are swung to light up Her dark, beautiful face, the perfect amrit kalashas of her red-draped bosom, the crescent moon on her crown, her elegant eyebrows arched in sandalwood paste. The stone srichakra at her feet is the mystic yantra, the ‘wish-giving’ throne placed by Adi Shankara himself.

Serene and triumphantly beautiful, the Love-eyed Goddess reveals Herself to us. There are no words. She simply is.