Sandy Does The Subcontinent

Kanyakumari was never on our travel itinerary. We only decided to go there after talking to Santosh Tom, who owns the Vasco Homestay in Cochin. He is an Indian Catholic living in a strongly Catholic city and state that has a history of Christianity reaching back to the 52 AD, even before Christianity arrived in most of Europe. Yet, the glow on his face as he described worshiping God came not as he was talking about church, but about bathing in the sea at the tip of the country, where the Bay of Bengal meets the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. It is a place of pilgrimage for Hindus, where they bathe in the sea as the sun rises. Santosh explained that this is a way of giving thanks to God for a new day and for all the new days we are blessed with throughout our lives.

We were convinced. It had nothing to do with his words and everything to do with the enthusiastic devotion on his face and in his voice. And so it was that five days later Mary and I found ourselves standing ankle deep in the confluence of three seas, surrounded by four thousand Indian pilgrims, all of us watching as the sunrise painted the sky pink. We were the only westerners but there were enough nuns in the crowd to make me think that this group was strongly ecumenical.

Women came down periodically to anoint their heads with the water and then touch their face in a pattern that is still a mystery to me. But mostly there was just a lot of splashing and laughing and waiting, until everything became very still as the halo of the sun began to peek from behind a mountain of clouds piled at the horizon. Four thousand people becoming still and silent is a very loud sound. And at the moment the sun emerged, everyone pressed the palms of their hands together in prayer. Ahhhhhh. Light, warmth, love – all the greatest things we have to be thankful for – flowed through that moment of silent prayer offered simultaneously by thousands of people of different classes, nationalities and religions.

This is what I was looking for in India. Hinduism, besides not recognizing a separation or duality between Creator and created (which is one thing that made the moment of worship so powerful), is very inclusive. I’ve been getting increasingly interested in inter-religious exchange, and especially of the ways that people can value and retain their own traditions while worshiping together with people of other traditions. It seems to me that if the world is getting smaller and therefore more volatile as we’re clashing through misunderstanding and the fear it creates, maybe the best way to resolve conflicts is through faith sharing. Simply put: people who worship together understand each other in a deep way and are going to look out for each other.

Anyway, I’ve learned a lot so far, by participating in my own tradition as interpreted by another culture (like how in Kanyakumari, there are no pews so everyone sits cross-legged on the floor at mass – it’s so great!), and by worshiping together in different ways with people of other traditions, whether that was hours of singing and chanting at the ashram temple or one concentrated burst of loving prayer on the beach.

Like I mentioned last time, the plan was to catch the jungleboat ride at 3:30pm from the ashram to get to Kollum, where we’d have to spend the night and then figure out how to get to Kanyakumari (at the very tip of India) via Trivandrum the following day. It all sounded a bit exhausting and we’d been traveling pretty hard, so I took immediate note when I noticed on the travel info board that one of the options to Trivandrum was a pre-arranged taxi for 1500 rupees (about $38). And then it occurred to us that maybe we could just get driven all the way to Kanyakumari and be done with it. The conversation about whether or not to spend $75 to buy ourselves a whole day where we didn’t have to do anything lasted all of about three minutes.

As it turned out, an Italian guy came along too so we only paid $25 each for the five hour taxi ride to the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu, but we still felt like decadent western mem sahibs stepping into our silver SUV with tinted windows.

We kept it going by checking into a hotel with cable tv, a balcony overlooking the ocean, and… wait for it… room service! Surprisingly, we managed to wait until the staff had dropped off our bags and left before jumping around singing, “I love it! I love it! Yay!!” Mary vowed to do nothing the next day except watch tv and order room service. As I write this at 5pm we’re laying on the bed watching the Discovery Channel and trying to decide what to order up for dinner. It’s the best thing ever.

All this ease and luxury made me ambitious. I’ve needed scotch tape so I can tape all the little odds and ends I’ve accumulated – ticket stubs, newspapers clippings, etc. – into my journal. The concierge pointed me to the main bazaar, where people pointed me to a general store, but the store was out of tape. As I was leaving a man in a storefront called out, “Madame, internet.” “I don’t need internet,” I replied, “I need cello tape.” He pointed across the street to the general store. I told him I’d tried but they didn’t have it. He looked at me like the clueless, incapable child that I basically am in their culture and said only, “Come.” We went back to the general store where a typically long, involved exchange took place in Tamil before Internet Guy was satisfied there truly was no tape to be had. So he pointed me to another store I never found.

I’d already asked about three hundred people but figured I’d ask one last person before turning into the driveway to my hotel. The exchange went like this:

Taxi Guy: Madame, taxi.

Me: No taxi. But I do need cello tape.

TG (clearly not getting the t-word at the end): Tomorrow?

Me: Maybe. But now I need cello tape.

TG: Temple?

Me (trying not to laugh at his serious, concentrated attempts to guess what I wanted): Tape.

TG: Tape, tape, tape. (Long pause before an idea dawned on him and he made a hand-to-mouth gesture)  You want eating?

At that I couldn’t help laughing. “Usually, but not right now. Thank you for your help.”

So now we know what whitey wants: taxies, temples and eating. Sounds about right to me.