Tea stall interior view

     

Scenes from a festival

        For a week, Mylapore fills with thousands of devotees celebrating Panguni Utsavam, a South Indian festival said to be a day for divine marriages, including that of Shiva and Parvati and Rama and Sita. Perched on ornately decorated “cars” carried on long, wooden poles by dozens of men, idols are paraded on the streets surrounding the Kapaleeshwarar temple.                

 

 

                                              Sunday, I happened on early morning temple festivities.      

An idol in waiting

     

The band

        

Securing the idol before the procession

 

 

Carrying the idol

     

     

 

The big “reveal”

       

Seeking sacred ash from the priest accompanying the idol

 

Substantial priests

   

 

Superstar Pizza!

   

Some of my students took me to Superstar Pizza, a shrine to actor Rajinikanth, who, like several other previous and current cinematic idols, has political aspirations. A fun night!  

Rajinikanth watching his fans eat pizza

 

Rajinikanth avatars from each of his films

 

Way down south

                        Dancing to Tamil filmie hits. Cruising the countryside, as Illyaraja and S. Janaki croon vintage love duets filled with flowers and sweet “kunjam kunjams.” Urged by one and all to consume huge quantities of dosai, rice, chutney, paysam and tea. Soaking under a waterfall with dozens of other women. Jumping into the Arabian Sea in Kovalam on the way back to the airport.  

            It was all part of a weekend visit with Alphonse’s sister Jo, husband Ramesh and daughters Darshini and Chittu. Traveled with Alphonse and his daughter Grace to Thovalai, close to the tip of India.   

On the way to the Courtallam waterfalls on the Western ghats, stopped for sweet lime soda and a dance.

   

Can you spot me?

 

Got soaked!

 

Snacked on fresh palm

     

Took in a temple

   

Other waterfallers

 

Slow pokes

 

Nursery detour. Jo bought two rose bushes.

 

My crew

 

My crew

             

Jo 

   

Wild girl!

 

Kovalam beach in Kanataka

 

What would Claribel and Etta say?

   

Tea Country

   

   Spent a weekend in Coonoor, a hill town in Tamil Nadu enveloped by terraced tea plantations tucked into the Nilgiri mountains. It’s all so green! Processing centers, where tea leaves are steamed, rolled,  dried, fermented, dried again and sorted, supply jobs to the locals. But things haven’t much           since Independence. Apparently one caste has taken over where the Raj left off; paying higher wages to their own and leaving the most difficult jobs to others of lower rank as well as bonded laborers.  My driver, Anand, said he has a mathematics degree, but even if a tea company hired him, he would make far less than he does as a driver because he is not of the right caste. Anand’s wife, Durgadevi, also has a college education and taught computer science before she had her first child. The couple grew up on adjoining tea plantations where their parents still work. They fell for each other on the school bus. Theirs is a “love match, Ma’am,” Durgadevi said.  I stayed in a colonial-era cottage converted into an inn called Tea Nest on a working tea plantation. Although the summer tourist season hadn’t started, Coonoor on Saturday afternoon teemed with weekend visitors who left me without a ticket to ride the Nilgilri Mountain Railway, a ridiculously picturesque 


train built by the British in 1908      Railway The next day, tickets were plentiful for the 7:30 am train to Ooty. Snug in a first-class car, I opened a clouded window and cold mountain air rushed in. The train, running on diesel for this leg, climbed 1612 feet over 12 miles. Views from the train:    

Views from the train

   

  An hour and some minutes later, the trained arrived at Ooty, a better-known and congested hill town. Sign for the ladies’ room at the Ooty station:    

                            

                                                                            Sundry Ooty images:  

Wood-fired tea

                                                                         Landscape painted on tea stall wall.   

 Ooty roadside stand    

   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Stranded mermaid

A Kolam for the Cooum

 

Collecting garbage for the kolam (Courtesy of the Hindu)

    In the works for two years, “DAMned Art” would bring thousands of people to a public art exhibition on the banks of the Cooum, one of the three major rivers that run through Chennai. All reek of untreated sewage and are littered with discaded plastic bottles, shoes and other trash. Artists from Germany and India designed site-specific installations that would reacquaint visitors with Chennai’s waterbodies and encourage them to come together to reclaim them.   

“The citizens of Chennai have turned away from the damage done to their rivers and water. ‘It’s the Cooum,’ we say, not acknowledging it as a river, it’s just an expression of disgust,” writes the director of the Goethe-Institute which partnered with the nonprofit Embrace Our Rivers. “Our vision was to make people turn around, face the river and embrace it.” Here’s the exhibition website: http://embraceourrivers.in/programmes/public-art-awareness/ City officials denied permission for the riverside exhibition on the grounds that “the area is extremely fragile environmentally.”   

The project, which included four weeks of concerts, films, lectures and other programs, was forced to move inside to the Lalit Kala Akademi, an arts institution. There, the gardens, fountains and structures envisioned by artists and architects were mostly confined to design plans, drawings and documentation of what might have been. Visitors were challenged to envision the installations as well, which arguably gave more meaning to the foiled exhibition.

One artist managed to bring the Cooum inside the Akademi. Chennai-based Parvathi Nayar, and volunteers combed the putrid Cooum for trash and recovered a disgusting bounty of sandals, flip-flops, clogs, crippled toys, light bulbs, bottles, tooth brushes and more. Nayar arranged the trash into the symmetrical form of a kolam, an emblem of good fortune that many South Indian women draw every morning on their doorsteps with rice or chalk powder.  The garbage kolam exposed the city’s “extremely fragile” excuse for tabling the site-specific show.     

Day at the Madras Races

       Should have bet on Powder Puff. Ridden by C. Umesh—resplendent in pink and blue silks—Powder Puff caught my fancy. At least, her name caught my fancy.  She was the first horse listed in the first race of the day at the Madras Race Club on Sunday. Just had a hunch. When paraded around an emerald green paddock before the Water Falls Plate, Powder Puff pranced and bucked a bit. And then, she ran away with the 1100 meter turf race. I could have won all of 50 rupees!   

Go, Powder Puff! (Courtesy of Madras Race Club)

 

Powder Puff and her crew (courtesy of Madras Race Club)

  Later, I did bet, tiny amounts, but didn’t win a thing. Nor did my ACJ colleagues Andrew and Nikhil. But we had big fun during a day at the races that culminated with the Guindy Grand Prix and the Original Vel B. Sampath Kumar Memorial Cup.  (Had to turn in our phones, for some strange reason, so we couldn’t take photographs inside.)

  Few came for the early races. No one in the grandstands, except a dead pigeon or two. Pimlico-esque. Most of the action was outside the booths operated by the track, where we placed our mingy bets with touts. Serious players kept a large circular pen ringed by stalls run by bookies. Each stall had its regulars and when the odds came in for each horse, they were scribbled in chalk on a chart for all to see.    Behind me, a man shouted out the odds from other stalls so that bookmakers didn’t stray beyond the general margins. As the odds were posted, men clamored to place their bets; Rs 500 appeared to be the minimum. Lots of commotion and shouting; kind of like being in the pit of a scruffy stock exchange.   

  Outside the bookie den, in posher territory, owners (and probably trainers) dressed in suits and chic saris or Western clothing performed their own dying rituals, advising their jockeys, patting their horses and posing for photos after a win, place or show. 

Pomp and Circumstance (courtesy of Madras Race Club)

  After each race, three day laborers came out and tamped down the sod. Dogs frolicked  around the track. At times, curious music, such as “Morning Mood” by Edvard Grieg,  came  over the sound system.  In a section called “Racing Incidents,” the Rs. 20 race program reported infractions by jockeys and unpredictable moves by their mounts.    A jockey named Saddam Hussain was fined Rs. 5000 for “the improper use of the whip.” A horse named Betty Boop “jumped awkwardly ‘in’ and lost a length at the start.”    Turnout grew throughout the afternoon, but the grandstands never filled. Most fans stayed close to their bookies and watched the races live on video screens while also keeping their eye on the broadcast of the races in Bombay.