Golden corn spread out on the road; women washing in rivers; pots and baskets and sugar cane balanced on heads; a dead man in his best clothes being carried to his pyre; goats, bullocks, monkeys everywhere; baby elephants ambling through traffic…
After a week of it, I turn to my guide Rajai and announce somewhat dramatically, but meaning every word, ‘I think I have lived more in the past seven days than ever before.’
‘That’s India,’ says Rajai matter-of-factly, as if I’m just one more Westerner having an epiphany. Rajai, a multilingual expert on art history and architecture, is a little frustrated by my emotional approach to sightseeing and is, I suspect, not convinced that I’m up to scratch as a tourist.
I look left when I ought to look right. ‘Right! Right!’ he shouts as we drive past the fort in Chennai. But I’m looking the other way at a line of boys queuing for employment registration, jammed tight together, all with their hands on the shoulders of the boy in front.
That was on the first day of my tour when I was able to concentrate slightly. When we meet again as my journey snakes back towards the city after six days driving through the lush delta of Tamil Nadu I am virtually a basket case. I have drunk in so much of the beauty of southern India that I’m legless on it. I drift about emitting ‘ah!’s at the least provocation like a daft old hippie.
At Mamallapuram I am tired and emotional. I can feel tears welling in my eyes as Rajai diligently tries to shoo a little boy out of the way of my camera and line up a better shot with the temple wall unblemished by people. Rajai is a brilliant guide, and knows everything there is to know about Dravidian temple carvings — his discourse on the significance of the number of flaps on an elephant’s ear is particularly fascinating. It is not his fault that I’m intoxicated by eucalyptus and tamarind and cashews and cane, or that during a night-time wander through Karaikudi a passing elephant blessed me with his trunk.
So I try to explain to him that I am a country girl at heart, that I’m doing my best to concentrate on the carvings of the shore temple but I cannot help focusing on the lone bullock strolling philosophically along the beach beyond it, framed by women in green and purple and yellow saris and pilgrims in the brightest red I have ever seen standing windswept on the sea wall. He harrumphs.
Back in the car I give Mayil a look. Mayil is the driver who has been transporting me through paradise in a big white 4×4, occasionally leaping out to rummage in the boot and produce neat little trays of chilled drinks and biscuits.
Mayil has endless patience. On the journeys between villages when there is no official guide to point out what I’m meant to be looking at, Mayil shows me India.
As we drive over a bridge he shouts ‘Mam! Crocodile!’ On a dusty road: ‘Mam! Monkeys!’
On the drive from Tanjore to Chettinad he and I form a bond. He shows me a picture of his wife and children. He asks me about my husband. When I say I don’t have one, and that I’m 39, he almost swerves off the road. ‘Mam! Why mam?’ he cries, sounding desperate. I tell him not to panic, but he is beside himself.
I suddenly see myself through his eyes. I could give him the spin about how happy and independent I am, but it doesn’t seem relevant here. So I tell him I’m sad. And we sit in silence for a few miles and feel sad together.
At Brihadeeswarar temple I have a guide called Mrs Ashai who points out a tree festooned with rags. They are pieces of the saris of women who are asking Siva for help. Some are made into little cradles and have stones inside symbolising babies. I have already whispered into the ear of a statue of a cow in the temple at Chennai so I decide to give this one a miss. But then there is a shriek from some boys standing under the tree and Mrs Ashai tells me they have seen a lizard. If you see a lizard on the tree it means your wish is certain to come true.
I decide it would look churlish of me to let such a precious opportunity slip by so I rifle through my handbag and find a bright pink leopard-print fabric sunglasses case bearing the legend Dorothy Perkins and tie it to the tree. ‘It looks just like a cradle,’ says Mrs Ashai with a smile.
Comments