COORG HILLS

(** LOST PHOTOS: Sara's camera got infected with a virus and over 300 photos have been lost. We will try to repaint them with our words as best as possible **)

The bitter tang of reddish green coffee berries colour the air with their pungent odour. Skies blue and air fresh. The sounds of the forest waking, birds hooting their greetings whilst the tall dark of the trees slowly emerge from the silent mist.

The Codagu region is famed for its coffee and beautiful hilly, lush green landscape. We'd come to trek alone through villages and forests inhabited by the Coorg tribes....and instead found them as mass produced and readily packaged for tourist consumption as the coffee. So instead, we decided to stay on a coffee plantation run by a rich Indian family. A place set into the hilly ridges, with deep forest around and plenty of routes past waterfalls and over hills to walk. And so we walked-into green forests, into dry brown dust tracks, over steep edges and attacking branches, bathing in cold rivers. We met no-one, were hassled by no-one, got lost in deep hillside woods and found a way home scrambling down the river rocks, hurrying against the coming dusk. For a moment, the India of dirt and pollution, noise and vibrant colour, melted like the morning mist, in this haven of nature. For a moment, time shrank back around is and within us- we were children again, playing at India Jones, finding adventures, mysteries and wonders in the unchanging magic of the vastness around us.

UDUPI: temples, temples, temples..

A town of temples and endless streams of pilgrams in black or orange, barefoot, gold and white markings streaked across their sweating foreheads. The town is a buzz with festival excitement that electrifies the air.

The Shri Khrisna temple founded by Sri Madhwacharya and containing an old, stone statue of Lord Kirshna. According to local stories, Sri Madhwacharya calmed a storm threatening to destroy a ship at sea. In gratitude, the ships captain offerered Sri Madhwacharya any gift from his cargo. Sri Madhwacharya refused all gifts except for a large block of stone... which he split open with his staff to reveal the image of Krishna .

Barefoot we join the thronging crowds slowly shuffling their way around the main temple. Inside, men must remove their shirts before the gods...I think of the religious rules and etiquette of my childhood-cover your hair, cover your skin, dress smart, ...do not display the shame of having a body before the Lord....


Our hot feet give thanks to the cool stone floor, the walls are cave like, the light dim with candles. Inside, our sweating bodies are packed tightly against others, as we shuffle slowly past shining stone gods bethroned in cages. Like a zoo, food is offered through the bars, quickly, as if they may bite...A bell is rung, loudly, to alert the gods to your presence, and disturb the presence of those around you...A man prostrates on the floor. Worship is individual, not communal, or perhaps it is communal in its individuality? It is hard for us to imagine how this is experienced and internalised for a devout Hindu as we will always feel a sense of separation from the events. Throughout all this a man sits on a stone ledge, swinging his legs in time to his flute 'playing', an obscure sound of random notes lost without rhythm and mixed with his sporadic chuckles to himself and no one. But rather than labelled 'mad' or 'different' and shut away from society, here in the temple he finds a home, a role, he is a 'devotee' and if he is a little strange sometimes...well, that is because he is touched by the gods.

I am fascinated by the very physical way in which people engage with the deities in the temple. Pujas often involve making food offerings to the Gods and temples are dotted with very visceral evidence of these processes. Parts of them often resemble kitchens, where strange cococtions are being prepared. Flowers, sweets, cotton, oil, tea cups, sugar, red powder, ghee, candles, melons, rice and nuts surround the sanctum, mixed together and in varying states of decay. The deities, though inanimate, are worshipped as live manifestations of the Gods themselves. The monks sing lullabys to them, 'dress' them each day in new jewels and flower chains. People rub ghee mixed with orange powder onto statues and mark themselves on the forehead with the coloured mixture. It feels as if the Gods come very close to peoples lives and bodies through these processes, unlike other religious traditions, in which the sacred is far removed from the physical. There is not the same sense of 'purity'. That which is messy, live and consumable, that which is ordinary and bodily is also sacred.

At the back a small, inconspicous window is another tale that draws fame for the temple. It is said hundreds of years ago a Dalit (an 'untouchable') not allowed in the temple, was praying ferverantly to the statue of Krisha and begged the Lord to turn to see his face. Suddenly, the statue turned to the wall which broke open and allowed the Dalit to see Kirshna with his forbidden eyes. The temple devotee who had befriended us and was relaying all these old tales, was adamant to give a different version of this story. The man was not outcast because he was a Dalit but because he was praying too estatically and disrupting those around him so he was asked to pray outside.... Whether or not any of this even happened was not important, but we all thought it was interesting the devotee did not want to admit the history of the caste systems influence on his beloved temple...

Our new friend the devotee with his friendly face and large brown eyes, insisted we stay for lunch. The humble rice meal eaten off a banana leaf whilst sitting on the floor was slightly marred by being taken to a more upper class room. Rich and glittering saris and the sprinkling of water clockwise around the food before eating indicated we were amongst the high caste Brahmins.....and I thought of our friend's earnest denial that this temple had never adhered to the caste system...

A stream of old temples visited in one afternoon-blur into one another in a confusing colage of colourful images. Lakshmi slaughters, serenely composed. Monkeys strut fearless round temple corners. A crowd gathers to take blessings from a white robed priest whilst a man in red beats himself with rice plants, shouting sporadicly and pacing up and down. Sometimes he breaks open a coconut. A young priest in a dirty temple performs puja (prayers) for us whilst a bat swoops lows inside the cave like shrine. Yellow fruit hangs from ceilings. Frogs swim lazily in holy waters.

Later we return to our smiling temple friend and watch from the pool side as the icon of Hanuman the monkey god is rowed three times round the waters on a fairy light bedecked boat.

A band dressed in navy style uniform, boom-boom their way around the edges.

As soon as they are finished the crowd surges through the tiny exit, pushing and squeezing their way to join the festival frenzy outside. The icons are now placed inside two massive chariots wheeled around the town square by large groups (including us) pulling on long ropes.

Fireworks explode whilst ten foot paper mache men do battle. It's hot...we sweat. We are cramped and squashed amidst the crowds whilst an elephant, pink and gold, strolls past with plenty of leg room.

Why did it happen? Not sure. What did it mean? Don't really know...But faces were friendly and the excitement infectious, it was worth the sweat to be one of the smiling faces amidst the crowds.

GOA

St Francis Xavier's preserved foot
The third component arrives in the shape of one Hannah Williams, and finally our journey and plans of almost two years are complete.

We plunge head first into the tourist trail by holidaying on a Goan beach. Ibethan style tourism at its worst, but still we enjoy the forgotton pleasures of cocktails, beach lazing and dolphin boat rides. The great mystery of the moral landscape of beaches means we are free to expose more skin to the sun without unwanted attention.

Inside though, we are a little confused-is this real India? Are we just escaping to a tourist bubble land? Or is there no such thing as 'real' India? Maybe the search for the 'authentic' is a negation of a modern India where the tourist trade is every bit just as 'real' as village life...For many tourist touts, rickshaw drivers and shop owners, the tourist trade is a life line, but one that only exists for a few months each year as the monsoon drives most people away. In four months enough money must be made to last the year...I try to allow this sympathy to curb my frustrated anger the next time we are hassled by tourist touts or fleeced by a rickshaw driver...

Panaji, the Goan capital is India flavoured by its colonial Porteugeuse past.

Hispanic sounds amidst cobbled quarters and Catholic culture. But it is an Indianised Catholicism, shoes are taken off to enter churches, historically Dalits (the 'Untouchable' caste) were built separate churches, and Jesus is often found on street corners-little icons covered in the same flower wreaths as used in Hindu worship. Paper stars abound-hanging from every window for the Christmas season we had forgotton. We take a walking tour of the town and see an affluence and Mediterranean architecture unknown to other parts of India.

Only with the arrival of Hannah do we realise how far a journey our eating habbits have been on too. The space we have covered on land, is reflected in the subtle distance we have lost to our food.

Cutlery are tools of seperation from food- we are able to sit back, cutting from afar with long sterile implements. In China we were suddenly made accutely aware of this distance-chopsticks cannot be used whilst sitting back from the table. Despite its long elegance, the chopstick demands a closeness to food. You have to lean your face over your food and use it as a kind of shovelling tool. It wasn't long before we joined in with the added slurps and smacks that complete the Chinese eating experience. Then in Pakistan, we edged even closer to our food...implements gone, replaced by the chappatti. At every meal a chappatti is used to pick up the rice or vegetables, it becomes an edible spoon. And then in India, all pretense of separation was gone. Our hands become our eating tools as rice is mashed in with Dal or sauce with our fingers. Scooping up a small clump on the edge of your fingers, the thumb is used to push the rice mix into your mouth. And at all times,the left hand (normally used for less hygienic acts like washing your bottom after the toilet instead of using toilet roll) remains firmly out of sight on your lap. This intimacy with food actually makes it taste better for some unknown reason and is a more humble way of eating-no pretensions of 'civilsation'. But sometimes, in more expensive restaurants, we found ourselves the only ones eating with our fingers amongst Indians. It seems there is a class system at work amidst food, the higher castes do not generally eat with their fingers. Whatever the setting though, our eating habbits come under close scrutiny no matter where we are, sometimes attracting unabashed staring groups of people, bemused, amused, confused or dissaproving of our finger techniques. Our refusal to eat the chappatti first on its own, and instead subverting tradition by eating it rolled up with rice, has often caused direct intervention on trains...'No madam...chappatti, chappatti!". But we are free to laugh and turn this confusion and inept cultural behaviour into a source of amusement for ourselves and those around us. Yet when Ghandi, and countless other young Indian's came to England to study, their cultural experience of food was one filled with terror and shame. Unable to use cutlery, and too mortifyingly embarressed to ask, Gandi remained locked his room, eating only crackers.

Old Goa is a riverside graveyard of forgotton churches....the ghosts of colonialism past now filled with foreign faces, but this time as curious tourists.

The churches are huge and filled with an eerie sense of abandonment. The battle against termites and the inevitable crumbling of time feels rather futile and limited, giving once imposing buildings an ephemeral and almost ridiculous presence.

In the 'Basilica de Bom Jesus' are the preserved remains of St Francis Xavier, displayed for pilgrims to worship in a glass casket. The story of the body is rather bizarre and grizzly...first buried on an island off the mainland of China, it was dug up a year later and found to be miraculously preserved. It was then moved to Malacca, before dug up again and shipped to Goa. His right forearm was later detached and is now displayed in a church in Rome. Once a year it is paraded through the streets for a festival.

Down by the river we find an empty old church, sunlight drifting through windows high, silent stone cool against the day's heat.

And only in this empty silence can a taste of that mysterious 'something else' be savoured...and we sit to savour that presence that is too often absent. We sit and we sing, our voices curving into the echoeing high ceilings. A local woman in old, tired sari stops to sit and listen. And together we all hold a moments breath for that silence after singing, the presence of a deeper, richer sound...

Stop your singing!

Stop, because,

as I heard it,

I heard also

another voice

coming from the interstices

of the gentle enchantment

which your singing

brought unto us.

I heard you,

and I heard it,

at the same time

and different,

singing together.

And the melody

which was not there,

if I well remember

makes me cry.

Your voice:

was it an enchantment which,

unwillingly,

in this vague moment

woke up

a certain being,

to us a stranger,

which spoke to us?

I don't know.

Don't sing.

Let me hear

the silence

that there is

after your singing.

Oh! Nothing, nothing!

Only the sorrow

for having heard,

for having wished to hear,

beyond the meaning a voice has.

Which angel, as you spoke,

without your knowledge

came down to earth

where the soul wanders

and with his wings

blew the embers

of an unknown home?

Stop your singing!

I wish the silence

to put to sleep

the memory

of the voice I heard,

misunderstood,

which was lost

as I heard it

(Fernando Pessoa)

PERIYARMUDALIARCHAVADI (try saying that quickly when a bus is about to depart and you need to check if it stops at your village!!)

Roof-top New Years Eve gathering...

For a month, we swap our forest life for a local street two minutes walk from the beach, and rent a house amidst the village. From our balcony we become voyeurs on the life of Indian village street life, whilst we often find ourselves the subject of another's voyeuristic imaginings...how do we dress, what do we eat, how do we behave...all are sources of endless wonderings.

Many Indian houses have their own room for Puja's (prayers)....Christmas Day lunch

Frequeting the local Thali pitstop cafe. Thali is a pile of rice on a banana leaf with a selection of hot sauces, all to be eaten with the hands. You can ask for more as many times as your belly can handle, all for the bargain price of 15p.

And although our thick walls often provided a sense of much needed privacy, sadly it is not a boundary the local temple respects. At 4.30am each morning we are kindly greeted with the blaring sounds of temple music-a mixture of Bollywood sounding pop and traditional Indian music. It is the call for life to begin, for the roosters to crow, the engines to start revving and tooting on the roads, the women to call to their children in the streets and the men to begin the great mysterious act of looking like they never do any work...

Each morning, our little street was a riot of colourful patterns and designs with the morning ritual of 'Kolums'-intricate patterns drawn on the ground. On Christmas Day and New Years Day we were greeted with festive wishes written in English along the streets. It is the job of the women to create this auspicious art work whilst later children, wheels, feet and wind of every day slowly rub them away...apparently a sign of the fragility of life.
Some say it was traditionally started to invite birds and small insects into the home (as rice flour was used) and thus served as a reminder of the co-existence of all beings. Other say it is to intice Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, across the house threshold whilst others maintain it is to ward off evil spirits...Either way, it is interesting reminder of the auspiciousness of the home's threshold-the symbol of one's relationship with the outer world....

Throughout the month, we bike back and forth to Auroville and Pondicherry, cycling through the life of the surrounding villages. I pass a funeral one day where crowds of women weep and wail outside the house. I pass the next day as the men wheel the flower bedecked corpse on a platform whilst eunochs dance to music and drums. Behind, the street is strewn with flowers...even in death, India is alive with colour, fragrance and life.

The Monkey god Hanuman popped round on Christmas Day to sing a song for a ruppee...

One morning, I wash my clothes outside- scrub, rinse and beat it on the ground to better absorb the soap bubbles. Below me I hear a similar echoe of rhythmic beats and look down to see a local woman, sari tucked up around her waist, washing her clothes too. For a moment we just stand staring at each other, each projecting ourselves into the other in idle contemplation of all the selves that could have been. And, for a moment, we each smile, life isn't really that different sometimes, a sea of cultural difference sailed over with soapy washing water. For a moment, two women washing are nothing more than that....just two women washing.