Southern India behind the scenes (2)

This article is second in a series of reports from a three week trip through Kerala and Tamil Nadu in Southern India. 

Some say, that you either love or hate India the moment you step out of the plane. Equally the announcement of a trip to India is met with disbelief ("why India?"), horror stories ("all my friends who traveled there had terrible diarrhea"), and occasional enthusiasm ("India will change you, if you let it, and you will come back as a better being").

Indian and US architecture students collaborating on urban research in India

Out of stories about India over the years formed an amalgam that is worse than absolute ignorance: A thicket of bias, half information and news accumulated over a lifetime can easily give the impression of knowledge when it is far from it.

Most Americans haven't been in India and don't really care to know much about the far away place. I was one of those who didn't see a particular need to change whatever ideas were spooking around in my head about the subcontinent from news-stories about train accidents, floods and unsanitary waters.

Until Morgan University's architecture program presented me with the possibility of joining them for a trip to the Indian States of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.  I remember the sixties when India was fashionable and the Beatles went there to reinvent their music. But I didn't want to go for spiritual enlightenment, yoga training or Ayurveda treatments. I simply wanted to see a country I knew next to nothing about.

Kozhikode street scene

The beauty of knowing almost nothing is that learning starting from zero is fast and easy. The most basic facts become revelations. Thus a period of absorbing the low hanging fruits of knowledge provides a sense of success. It is much harder to add the outer tentacles of knowledge than to set a cornerstone, one reason why children learn so quickly.
India consists of states, there are many different languages spoken, often with different scripts. The official languages are: Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urduwith. English is the somehow unifying language.

But English isn't spoken by everybody and when it is spoken it is often hard to understand for American ears and vice versa, Indians can't always understand Americans, partly because of differnt intonations and inflections, partly because they use the British terms and not the US terms. There is a structure for national, state and local government that is in part comparable to the US.

People of  Kerala call the State "God's own country" pointing to the bounty of fruits and vegetation flourishing on the westside of the Chad mountain chain. The people are united by the language of Malayalam and describe themselves as Malayali. Indien states were formed according to language in 1957 when the borders between Karela and Tamil Nadi to the east where shifted to follow the language line.

Coffee beans drying in the sun

The wide variety of available fruits and spices made the area desirable from ancient times on, long before Vasco da Gama set foot in Kozhikode which the British called Calicut. The pepper trade of the middle ages came through the port of Karala which doesn't exist anymore. Karala is one of the wealthier states in India, yet it is currently governed by the communist party. It is only a bit larger than Maryland but has 5.5 times the population. Kozhikode as a city is comparable in size to Baltimore and so is the population of the region (2 million). 

Stone sculpture in Meenakshi temple

One of the obstacles for westerners visiting India is the entirely different sense of esthetics, especially as associated with Hinduism. (Other religions such as Islam and Christian have co- existed peacefully for most of history).

Puritan English minimalists will easily perceive the loud, colorful and in your face ornamentation of everyday life as garish or even kitschy, whether it is the interior of homes, “autos”, buses or temples. Where the spiritually inclined westerner expects peace and quiet, loudspeakers blare music praising the gods in Indian places of worship.

Catholics with their baroque churches will recognize the possibility of worship with color and boasting ornaments, the puffy little cherubs are not that different from some of the opulent gods of Hinduism. But Lutherans tuned to austerity will have a hard time. Western architects conditioned on careful composition of massing will be derailed by the seemingly thoughtless juxtaposition of building elements in a temple compound which follow the order of horizontal and vertical progression. The late Japanese philosopher and scholar of religion Kenneth Inada sees the main difference between east and west as one of flow and process over static and permanence or in his words:

In the West, especially from the early Greek period, the process thought of such
thinkers as Heraclitus, for example, was overshadowed in time by the brilliance and dominance of Plate, who argued cogently for being over becoming,  permanence over impermanence, in laying the foundation of epistemology. Henceforth,we have been heirs to this Platonic legacy for over two millennia. The introduction of Christianity undoubtedly had a great role in perpetuating this
legacy, for example in sustaining the spirit over the flesh.

The heights of cultural achievement in many respects reflect directly on the profundity of a philosophy of life based on the aesthetic nature of things. Kenneth K. Inada Philosophy East and West, Volume 47, Number 2 (April 1997)

Brihadishvara Temple, Tanjavur

  

Unlike Western painters who since the Renaissance tried to create an exact view of a visual environment, [Eastern] painters never developed a notion of space as a measurable geometrical entity by developing mathematical rules to organize space and create precise spatial relations (Delahaye, 1993). Instead, the [Estern] outlook emphasizes a dynamic structure for human relations with the environment, even with the universe, independent of exact physical representations or the proper imitation of objects (Sullivan, 1984; Cameron, 1993). Pictorial perspectives employed in Western and Chinese paintings are, thus, fundamentally different.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2016

In recognizing cultural bias in general, it is important to realize that no normative aesthetics per se exists. Any sense of beauty is a cultural product, no matter how much a data oriented western view tries to make esthetics normative, such as in baby research about what shapes and faces new-borns prefer. It is quite natural for people to associate with what they grew up with and thus affirm themselves through their cultural identity. However, when traveling and trying to understand the cultural identity of others, these templates of association and affirmation can become obstacles. Indian aesthetics are influenced and described in Bharata’s Natyasastra.

With regard to the psychological states, four sorts of things are distinguished. The first is the determinant or external cause or stimulus (vibhava) of the psychological state, so in the case of erotic love, for example, the stimulus might be the season or a flower or ornaments or anything beautiful or desirable. The second is the consequent (anubhava), the immediate and involuntary reaction to the stimulus, so in our example, this might involve glancing coyly or mouthing sweet words. The third thing is the deliberate or conscious reaction (vyabhicaribhava), which in the case of erotic love might involve such of the thirty-three transient, complementary states as languor or suspicion or jealousy. Finally, there is the total effect of the durable psychological state (sthayibhava) – love in this case – which dominates the other three even as all four together make up the relevant rasa, which in our example would be erotic love.  Saam Trivedi, Evaluating Indidian Aesthetics

For a person whose travel have been confined to western cultures, stepping off the plane in India can be quite disorienting. Most of the usual framework is upended in spite of global homogenization. Americans who come to India via Doha (Qatar) like we did, have just received another boost of the normative power of their own culture by finding Doha’s new airport quite familiar and comparable to the better airports in the US, including the familiar brands and logos and airport configurations and English as the prevailing language, it is all there in the Arabian desert, even bigger and better than in the US and augmented by a deft sprinkle of the latest European technologies. Landing in Calicut is quite different.

Kozhikode Airport New Year's Day

While the Indians coming off the plane pass through immigration without much delay, the few foreigners on board have to present their paper of the e-visa approval and receive a stamped visa in their passport. For the procedure one has to step up to some kind of dais where initially one and then two officials sit behind a desk with a camera and a finger printing machine mounted to it. Activation of both requires a good number of keystrokes and attempts, since our fingers are either too sticky or too dry to produce a proper image. Still, compared to US immigration the procedure is painless, we eventually get the stamp and can pass, one by one. 

The time is three thirty in the morning and a group of bleary eyed travelers has their gaze glued to the conveyor belt endlessly circulates a bunch of big heavily taped up cardboard boxes which look suspiciously above the 50 pound weight limit imposed by Qatar Air. Judging from the tepid pace of incoming new luggage pieces only one handler is unloading while seven idle duty free shop sales people have formed two chat groups to fight sleep and boredom since no passenger seem to be interested in the goods bestowed with the brightest lights in the room. Eventually the tightly woven ring of folks jamming the belt with carts and already retrieved luggage thins out and we spot our pieces coming down the belt as well. We are now ready for a new world.

The money change stations are manned and autos and taxis wait at the exit of the international gate, even a food vending trailer is open, all in all an astounding level of activity given the hour.

Late night arrival and departure seems to be an Indian thing, whether by train or plane probably because of the heat. It saves the arriving air traveler from the immediate immersion into the midday tumult of the streets.

Traffic in Kozhikode: Bikes, autos and buses

Finally our entire group is packed into two minivans careening off into the streets of Kozhikode, left hand traffic, of course, which means most of the time, because any vehicle in front has to be passed, no matter what, which means that half the vehicles are on the wrong side of the road at any given moment. “When you are on the wrong side of the road everything comes your way” traffic education signs say, which doesn’t sound as bad as it is. 

Traffic is one of the first things any visitor encounters and impressed by. Traffic makes for a favorite topic, because it unfolds so diametrically opposite to the US norm, from driving on the other side to the size of vehicles to what behavior is expected. Cars (four-wheelers) are small to tiny, motorcycles, scooters and “autos”, the motorized rickshaw taxis dominate, on the other end are the endless number of buses which are the absolute king of the road. After some observation,what initially seems like utter chaos, can be deciphered as a well-orchestrated dance in which every inch of space is utilized, and no time is wasted and everybody pays 100% attention. As a result, even in the thickest tumult, there is always movement. Total standstill occurs only at the occasional traffic signals or when police directs traffic.

downtown Madurai with the temple towers dominating the
skyline

Indian crash statistics are not good, but they are probably more a reflection of the windy, narrow roads, high traffic density and lack of safety features than of the driving habits. We traveled hundreds of miles and didn’t see a single accident. But we witnessed four bus drivers and countless “auto” pilots navigate their vehicles with a skill level that puts the average American driver to shame. In the most impressive case our bus driver backed up his full size tour bus over some 800 feet through a narrow parked up street after an oncoming bus made passage impossible. There were only inches to spare, but there was no cussing, just a consistent mirror guided backwards motion with the driver’s sidekick clearing out the rear.

Many Americans take their shoes off when they come home but generally we don’t like to walk barefoot in public areas. The need to take shoes off for temples, mosques and even museums throws many tourists off base. Socks or no socks? Will I find my shoes again? Will I get foot koodies? Then there is the onslaught of vendors and activities outside and sometimes inside of the temple confines. Then the question if one should follow the Hindu rites and receive an ash-mark on the forehead or whether it is blasphemy to do so. The cultural insecurities take the curious westerner nicely off any inappropriate sense of superiority.

Ornate column capitals at Meenakshi Temple

The big temple Brahadeeswara in Thanjavur is walled and has a moat, it is beautifully located along the river and greets the visitor with a tall and elaborate entry gate.  Inside at the main building there is a mad crush to get into the inner temple. More accidentally than by intent  I become part of the maelstrom of bodies that allows no option to turn back. The heat, the pressing bodies, the unfamiliar smells, the chants and the slow progress through the hall towards the inner sanctum instilled fear, discomfort and also a sense of aw for an entirely new experience. Arriving finally at the priest and the relieving breeze coming through the side entrance, ashes for the forehead were dispensed by a priest and the culmination of the procession was also and relief thanks to the re-emergence of sun and air. 

At the Meenakshi Temple in Madurai the temple sits in the middle of the downtown of a very busy city. It, too, is walled and four large gate structures provide access. Although access from the east would be the preferred way to get in, that gate is closed for some reason and we arrived walking from our hotel at the west gate anyway. Once inside the walls the hustle and bustle of the busy streets is almost inaudible. The temple is huge and there are many side and approach halls (Mandapas). In the center, though, big signs keep all non-Hindus out of the inner sanctum (Garbhagriha), where the god lives. 

The Brahadeeswara and Meenakshi temples are very different from each other, even though both exceed in their scale anything the westerner may have seen in soaring cathedrals, structures usually much younger than the Hindu  temples from a period over a thousand years ago. 

Meenakshi Temple West Gate

Both temples are not just one building but a temple city with concentric rectangles in which shrines and structures are placed in various locations around the main building and the gate-towers (gapuras) marking the directions of the sky. The Thanjavur temple is made entirely from granite and in many cases large carvings are made from a single block of the stone, which cannot be found anywhere near the temple site within a 60 mile distance. The logistics of bringing all this stone to the temple location must have been astounding, including a very long temporary earth ramp that allowed the heavy stone cap to be placed on top of the tower. The Meenakshi temple is made from stone as well but the colorful  towers are clad in painted wood sculptures. In both temples sculptures are the main expression of the architecture.

The impressive heights are not always utilized in full inside where the spaces are constructed by stone posts and beams capping rooms off with flat granite slab ceilings. The pyramidal shapes of the southern Hindu temples resemble mountains. The final central statue of the respective god sits under the highest point on the main axis. "The sanctuary shrine structure typically has a roof, a niche with the temple deity, a protective monster mask and images of Brahma and one of the avatars of Vishnu".(source).

Worship at the temple is not congregational. Instead, individuals or small groups of devotees approach the sanctum in order to obtain a vision (darshana ) of the god, say prayers, and perform devotional worship. Because the god exists in totality in the shrine, any objects that touch the image or even enter the sanctum are filled with power and, when returned to their givers, confer the grace of the divine on the human world. Only persons of requisite purity who have been specially trained are able to handle the power of the deity, and most temple sanctums are operated by priests who take the offerings from worshipers, present them directly to the image of the deity, and then return most of the gifts to the devotees for use or consumption later at home.

Hindu temple plans are based on yantras : diagrams of the universe. The simple ones are a circle within a square, within a rectangle, with four gates to represent the four directions of the universe. At the center of the temple is the sanctuary, where an image or symbol of the temple deity is kept.  ....as microcosms of Hindu cosmology [the] central tower or towers represent Mt. Meru, the five-peaked home of the Hindu gods and the center of the Hindu universe. The halls, arranged around the sanctuary in a square plan, represent the mountains on the edge of the world. Temples are usually built facing east towards the rising sun. [Source: Library of Congress, James Heitzman and Robert L. Worden, editors. India: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1995.]

Udayarpalaiyalam Temple, Gangaikonda Cholapuram

Gangaikonda Cholapuram

Temples are the place for many activities including festivities that have many characteristics of fairs. At the core of the festivities are celebrations in honor of one of the gods. The also have social functions.

India's temples feed millions of people every day. They are among the world's largest food buyers. Many have their own agricultural land. The Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams temple in Madras spends $70 million a year to provide free meals. Sikh temples also provide lots of free meals

It was around 8pm when our bus pulled into a dirt lot in a village and the sound of loudspeaker music flooded the night. We climbed off the school-bus under the leadership of a local architecture  instructor whose father is a leader at the local temple. We were about to watch Kalamezhuthu Pattu. He went to negotiate with the organizer of the ongoing festivity and with the priest whether our group could attend and witness the proceedings. On sticking point: Our US students collaborate with local architecture students of a minority school for Muslims and there were a number of students with hijabs on the bus. We received the green light and proceeded through an illuminated gate and a path leading to the temple with a LED image of a goddess on the side. There were vendors in stalls selling trinkets, there were bright lights, and the music was occasionally interrupted by commercials for local apartments. The temple leaders came out to great us and announce our presence to the crowd seated in chairs facing each other like the parties  in the English parliament. In the center was a small open shelter with a maybe 8' image of a hunting god created on the cement floor with natural colored powders. to the side there were tables arranged like in a beer-garden but without benches and people stood in rows eating food obtained from the temple volunteers who handed it out on stainless plates. Wheat grains and lima beans.Since everybody eats with the their fingers with the usual wash-bassin for hand-washing nearby the people took their plates back, rinsed them off along with their hands and then stacked them up for the next group of people coming to eat. Behind a tarp enclosure a group of musicians went through a specific sequence of repetitive drumbeats accompanied by a brass instrument and what looked and sounded like a hunting horn. The men making the music were shirtless and wore double dhotis, the wraps for men. Eventually they moved around a route that ended at the temple. Hooded men formed the tail end of the small procession carrying the goddess statue.

Kalam powder image of god during ceremony

These festivities last four days and we witnessed night two. At the last day the carefully crafted powder likeness of the god will be destroyed.

The kalam is a unique drawing also called "dhulee chithram" or powder drawing. The artist uses the floor as his canvas. Kalamezhuthu pattu is performed as part of the rituals to worship and propitiate gods like Kaali, Ayyappan or Vettakkorumakan.
This ritualistic art is a common feature of temples as well as noble households. The kalams or drawings are erased at the end of the ritual to the accompaniment of musical instruments like ilathalam, veekan chenda, kuzhal, kombu and chenda.
The coloured powders used for the kalam are prepared from natural products only. The pigments are extracted from plants - rice flour (white), charcoal powder (black), turmeric powder (yellow), powdered green leaves (green), and a mixture of turmeric powder and lime (red). It often takes more than two hours to finish a kalam drawing with appealing perfection.

Such dance and image ceremonies are common in the temples of Kerala, which is not only a State by governance but a cultural unit with pride and lots of history. Visitors would not easily get access without local connections the Morgan State and the MES College of Architecture, Kakkodi, Kozhikode cooperation provided and which were so immensely useful in replacing whatever preconceived notions there were with a better and deeper understanding of at least one region of the vast Indian subcontinent.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

 Additional India articles are planned about the MES/MSU architecture school collaboration, house and palace architecture and more. See also the first article in this series: A boat for the Sheikh 

Approach (Mandapas) to Meenakshi Temple

Nandi Bull sculpture Tiranjavur Temple

Detail Meenakshi Temple West Gate

Temple pond Meenakshi Temple

Small temple on Kozhikode shopping Street

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