dust and jasmine

kolam
Fri, 16 Sep 2005

The billboard down the street reads:
"Life is an illusion and you are the dream"

An advertisement for a very swanky sari store...India never ceases to inspire me.

Amidst all of the pollution, dust, traffic, chaos and poverty people still conduct their lives with such dignity and grace. The dirt-poor taxi driver I've been hiring for our daily gallivanting makes a point to purchase strands of jasmine flowers to hang from his rear view mirror each morning. So there we are, knee-deep in scorching sun, smothering humidity, cars, rickshaws, two-stroke mopeds (spewing the worst exhaust of all!), lorries that laugh in the face of government weight limits and city buses so overflowing with humanity that only God's Grace keeps them from tipping over as they round a corner...and the jasmine swings on.

Yesterday was the festival of Onam, which I’ve now learned, is celebrated primarily in Kerala (the state west of Tamil Nadu) but as the Indian Diaspora is in full swing, this holiday seems quite popular even in Chennai. There are many stories attached to this festival mostly associated with King Mahabali. A flower carpet called 'Pookalam' is laid in front of every house to welcome the vanquished king, and earthen mounds representing Mahabali and Lord Vishnu are placed in the center. Rituals are performed followed by a lavish feast called 'Sadhya'. Onam also means new clothes for the entire family, sumptuous delicacies on banana leaf plates and much consumption of sweet payasam...so sweet in fact my adrenals haven't quite forgiven me. I mentioned to Shyamala that the quantity of sugar people consume here in a day is on par with what I take in a year, her response, "It's ok because it’s dissolved". ...I'm gonna take her word for it.

more kolam

One of the women who directs the dance school at which Shyamala is a senior advisor is from Kerala and invited us for her Grand Onam Lunch. It was truly spectacular- banana leaf plates contrast so nicely with the multi-colored arrays, textures and tastes of Kerala cuisine. They showered us with gifts and afterwards I delighted in a chat with a Tanjore Style painter who had just completed a "Traditional Saraswati" mural in the woman's dance studio.

saraswati devi

He gave me enough details about his painting techniques to leave me feeling like a silly-ninny-yahoo who can simply gush with exuberant glee but never really grock the complexities. My impression is that any art which is less than 500 years old is folly.... the sari store down the road is a mere 105 years old ...mere youngsters!

Speaking of saris, the house across the road from Shyamala's is under construction from sun up till sun down. Those in charge of delivering bricks and cement are all women.... IN SARIS of course! I mention this with such volume because it is just so dang lovely to watch them languidly scale the outside of the building with no less than 12 bricks piled atop their heads, saris waving in the breeze. At times I wonder if I am a total dork for admiring a site like this but it really is way beyond extraordinary...like a rainbow dancing across a sky scraper. ...Oh and what passes for a ladder in these parts is a few rickety (the goats chew on them) bamboo poles tied together no less than 3 feet apart by some very frayed jute rope.... more of God's Grace.

Tata from the land of Dust and Jasmine