Last week I watched a talk show on TV. The discussion was about the poor sex ration in India. As per one of the participants about a million female fetuses are aborted every year. This, in spite of the fact that sex determination is illegal in India.  In some regions like Punjab the ratio is as low as 725 females for every 1000 males. The sex ratio in India is 933(the world average in 1025). There were many interesting opinions expressed during the discussion.

One doctor was strongly in favor of sex determination. He asked “What is the purpose of bringing an unwanted child into this world. If the parents don’t want a girl child, wouldn’t the child have to face rejection though out her life?” There was another lady who had gone to the court stating, she had two girl children and she wanted a boy, so she should be allowed to determine the sex of her baby. She claimed that it would be the same if she had two boys and wanted a girl. To that someone replied, ”You cannot have designer families”

An expecting mother said that she would like to know the sex of her child, not because she wanted to select the sex but more because she would be able to bond better with her unborn child. A doctor, who was the creator of the first test tube baby in India said, “Banning sex determination without examining and correcting the larger social context which results in people not wanting a girl child, would be of no use. That is why this law is such a failure in India”.

That is an interesting point of view. I tried to examine this bias from my own social context. Having been born in family of generations of educated women, I never ever felt disadvantaged because of my gender. My mother and my grandma are both post graduates.  I always assumed that this kind of bias toward  boys, happens in a different class of society. I later discovered this is not true at all.

I was discussing this with my grandma. She has three girls, my mother being the eldest. She said that when her third daughter was born after a gap of 10 years, people refused to break the news to her. They thought she might die of shock and disappointment. My grandma told, “ I could not understand what all the fuss was about. But I understand now”. She is 80 years old and although she is financially independent she cannot live alone. She lives with my mom. She feels it is her son-in-law’s house. Whereas if she had a son, she could rightfully live with him. The second reason she gave was very interesting, “As a mother you are very emotionally invested in your daughters. Till you die their problems are yours, their children’s problems are yours. You always feel the need to protect them. Whereas with sons, after they are married you do not have that level of involvement in their life. You don’t feel so much pain”. I am not sure I agree with this argument. I have a son myself and I can’t think of any time when I would not feel the need to protect him or feel less emotionally invested in him.

My dad has two daughters and now I recall several instances when people used to express regret that he does not have a son. I just cannot understand this attitude. If people who are poor, are dependent on their sons for financial support, who do not have the means to get their daughters married what to have boys, it is understandable.  I wonder why this bias among people who have practically nothing loose by having a daughter.

Long ago I read an article written by an American journalist about female infanticide prevalent in several villages in South India. Most of these people live in appalling poverty and just cannot afford a female child. Whereas she found many women in Mumbai, who were rich and educated and hence had access to illegal sex determination clinics and routinely got their female fetuses aborted.  She says she had less sympathy for these women then those poverty stricken women in villages who killed their female children in desperation.

Do let me know what you think what you think about this issue. Why is there are predominant preference for a male child in our society? Do you think banning sex determination is the solution to the problem?

My husband and I are expecting our second child next month. We have been researching on Stem Cell Banking of Cord Blood for some time now. We spoke with two concerns which provide this service in Chennai, LifeCell and Jeevan blood bank.

Cord cell banking typically involves taking blood from the umbilical cord immediately after the baby is born. This blood is processed and preserved at -193C. It costs about Rs 75,000 to store it for 21 years.

From what I understood, stem cells from cord blood have been used successfully in curing leukemia. In most cases it has been used for the relatives, rather than the child itself.  It claims to help in the cure of 75 diseases including diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Arthritis. So far I have not found any evidence of this actually been done. I also heard that these stem cells cannot be cultured. Hence they can be used only once or twice. Which means if you use it for a relative (brother or father etc), it will not be available for the child.

If any of you have information or personal experiences to share on cord cell banking and its benefits, please do share it with me. It will help us take a more informed decision.

I love Chennai. Most people cannot understand why. It is not a fun and happening place. It is very conservative.  I have heard it said many times that it is not very welcoming of outsiders. As for me, there is no place else were I would rather live. One of the most enduring symbols of Chennai is the Marina beach.  It is the second longest beach in the world. It is my favorite haunt and I feel it truly reflects the spirit of Chennai.

If you take an early morning walk on a Sunday (by early morning I mean 5:30 AM), it will be buzzing with energy.  You will find all sorts of people in the long stretch. You will find actors and athletes, ordinary people, police men and women doing their early morning jogging, several laughter clubs bringing a smile to every passer by, children playing cricket and football and boxing. Vendors selling tender coconut water, papaya and arugam pul juice (it is made from a variety of grass and is believed to control diabetes). I can’t think of any other city where people rise so early on a Sunday morning.

Evenings are even more colorful. The Marina beach is the greatest leveler. The richest and the poorest can find a place to relax. It also affords an odd sense of privacy. Although there are thousands of people all around you, you feel quite alone, as if no one is really see you. Here are some pictures I took of the Marina at dusk.

The statue of Mahathma Gandhi just outside the Marina Beach

 

 

 

 

Children Shooting Baloons. This is a major attraction which was absent during my childhood daysMerry-go-round, wind mills and baloons

Boats used by fisher men

Many of these boats were destroyed during the Tsunami and were replaced by the government and NGOs from the donations they received. Even today, many chennaites come to the beach on Sunday to buy fresh fish directly from these fishermen.

Another major attraction of the Marina Beach is all the different eatables you get. My favorite is roasted corn.

Lady selling roasted corn. You can see the light house in the back ground.

The corn is roasted over burning coal and seasoned with salt, lime and chilly powder. This is how the process looks when the night sets in.

Roasting Corn

Crow pecking the cord discarded by people

 Another major attraction are the hot bajjis, made from powdered Bengal Gram and onions, potato, chilly and raw bananna.

Bajji Stall

 

Sundal and Muruakku Seller

Sundal and Murukku is generally prepared by the fishermen who live near the beach and sold to the visitors. A majority of these vendors are small children who do this work after school, like the boy in the picture below

A little boy selling Sundal and Murukku

An Indian fast food stall. Very spicy, very oily. Try at your own risk

 

A vendor selling cotton candy

Son Papdi - A sweet made with maida and suger. It is the indian version of the cotton candy

A vendor selling fresh Sugar Cane juice

  

Woman selling jasmine garlends. These are normally worn by South India women on their hair

Mounted police who patrol the beach

A view of the ocean

Sunset from the Marina

Since Marina is on the east, the sun appears in the morning from the ocean and disappars from the other end. Do you notice the white building in the picture. It is the office of the Director General of Police. It was built during the days of the British empire. It was due to be demonished. Then someone filed a public interest litigation against the demolition. It was then renovated and being used by the police. The building is almost half a kilometer in length and looks beautiful in the night.

I carry so many wonderful memories of the Marina beach. Flying kites, playing with my cousins in the water and emerging soaking wet, building sand castles and tunnels in the sand, taking a ride on the merry-go-round. I can never forget the day when my husband and my son went for a walk to the Marina and left just 5 minutes before the Tsunami stuck. My dad used to tell us stories of his childhood in the beach. The entire extended family of nearly 40 people visiting the beach on full moon nights and having a moonlight dinner.  I am sure my son too will have many stories to tell his children. Marina to me is one place where continuity and change co-exist in perfect harmony.

My husband’s brother died of Cancer 6 years back. Ever since then, my mother-in-law visits an institute called Udavum Karangal on his death anniversary and sponsors food for the children of the orphanage run by this NGO.  This year she was unable to make it during the anniversary. She was very upset and we promised to take her next time she comes to the city. We visited Udavum Karangal yesterday.

This was my first visit to the institute and I was stuck by its serenity and beauty. Udavum Karangal meaning helping hands in Tamil was founded by Mr.Vidyaakar. He himself was an abandoned child. He was bought up by a philanthropist, Mr. Ramakrishnan who provided him with shelter and education.  His mentor told him “you should also help another person like I helped you”. That served as the inspiration for Udavum Karangal. Today Udavum Karangal is home for more than 2000 abandoned children, infants, mentally challenged destitutes and HIV patients.

I want to share with you a few of my experiences at Udavum Karangal. We were distributing biscuits and chocolates to the children. These were 4-10 year old children, very happy to receive the gifts. Yet, they sat down in a disciplined manner and took the gifts only when they were given and acknowledged it with a ‘thank you’. No one pushed or shoved or tried to grab. Infact, when I offered them an extra gift they refused to take it saying they have already received their share. I am not sure if we can expect that kind of grace even among children who get to eat exotic chocolates every day.

When we were stepping out of the orphanage we met Mr.Vidyaakar, the founder of Udavum Karangal. He offered to take us on tour of his facility. We met infants who were abandoned in the hospitals and in dust-bins. Then we went to the facility for mentally challenged adults and spastic children. They were so excited to see Mr.Vidyakaar, they came running and held his hand and called him papa (meaning daddy). These women are not confined to a room. They are allowed to move freely within the premises. He introduced us to a lady whom he found 20 years back, roaming naked on the high way. They located her family recently. They are not willing to take her back. There was another lady whom he found on the road with a girl child. Although the mother is mentally challenged her daughter is normal. She received her education at Udavum Karangal and she is now studying to be a nurse.

There are two schools run by the institute, one for boys and one for girls. They also run vocational training schools for nursing and driving. As I was walking around the premises I was stuck by the beauty of the garden. There were all kinds of beautiful trees and plants and creepers and not a speck of litter. I asked Mr.Vidyaakar who maintains the garden. He said it is maintained by the mentally challenged women residents.

Udavum Karangal is entirely run by contributions from donors and volunteers. These are people from all walks of life. There is a barber who comes there regularly and gives free haircuts to the children. It is people like these who make me wonder what it really takes to be able to serve. I don’t think it is money or time. The secret lies in our attitude.

I have been lax in my writing and I owe all my regular readers an apology. Inspite of my prolonged absence you have been commenting on my blog. Thank you very much. I am very grateful.

I am back again to share with you a story that really moved me. Last week, my husband returned from a business trip to Italy. He told me about a person named Alessandro whom he met at his client’s office.  My husband said that he was a service engineer in his early twenties. Alessandro told my husband that he has visited India several times. He along with a group of friends run a program to help street children in Andhra Pradesh.  It is not a typical orphanage he claims. They have appointed a mother and father to take care of a group of 20 children. They have named their program Manchi Kalalu meaning ’sweet dreams’ in Telugu. This group of young people regularly take time off and come all the way from Italy to spend time with these children. Most of the funds to support the project come from them and their friends.

My husband was simply amazed. He never expected to encounter such a person in Italy. Incidentally, our family has roots in Andhra Pradesh and many of our extended family lives there. How many times we would have walked those streets and not noticed the hungry children. No one ever discussed them. It was as if they did not exist.  Here were a group of people, so far away from India , who have the heart and the will to make a difference to these children who are no way connected to them.

If you want to know more about Manchi Kalalu and how you can help, visit their website

Rig Veda is an ancient religious text of India, comprising of a collection of Sanskrit Hymns. It is dated as far back as 1500–1000 BCE. One of the most popular hymn and my favorite is commonly known as the hymn of creation

In the beginning there was neither existence nor non-existance.

There was no atmosphere, no sky and no realm beyond the sky

What power was there? Where was that power?

Who was that power? Was it finite or infinite?

There was neither death nor immortality.

There was nothing to distinguish night from day.

There was no wind or breath, god alone breathed by his own energy.

In the beginning darkness was swathed in darkness, god was clothed in emptiness

Then fire arose within god; and in the fire arose love.

This was the seed of the soul.

Sages have found this seed within their hearts;

They have discovered that it is the bond between existence and non-existence.

Who really knows what happened? Who can describe it?

How were things produced? Where was creation born?

When the universe was created, the one became many.

Who knows how this occurred?

Did creation happen at God’s command, or did it happen without his command.

He looks down upon the creation from the highest heaven.

Only he knows the answer – or perhaps he does not know.

It is perhaps the oldest recorded questioning of mankind on the nature of creation. As you read the verse you can still experience the wonder they must have felt. What I find most fascinating about the verse is its humility. Unlike most later religious texts which claim to know all the answers, here is a poem which is humble enough to acknowledge its ignorance. Vedic age is considered by many one of the golden ages of science in India. I feel, maybe it is this ability to acknowledge the fact that we do not have all the answers and search for them led to such great scientific progress. Isn’t it the true spirit of science?

Here are a few more of my favorite verses from the Rig Veda

The Dawn

Look at how the dawn has set up her banner on the  eastern horizon.

She has adorned herself with sunlight

She is throwing lights of red and gold into the sky

……

……

Her brilliant flame becomes visible once more.

She pushes forward driving back the formless darkness of the night.

She gazes out at all creatures of the world and sends her light straight into every eye.

She awakens all that lives -and gives words to every poet

The divine being is born again and again each morning, always dressed in the same colors.

She causes men and women to grow older, pulling them across their span of life.

She is a cunning gambler whom no one can outwit.

She pushes aside her sister, the night, beyond the very edges of the sky

And draws to herself her lover, the sun.

The Power of Speech

I am speech –and I am queen of the world.

I am the point at which all riches meet.

I am the point at which all skills come together

I am the one who gives meaning to what is seen.

I am the one who lives in every breath.

I am the one who gives understanding to what is heard.

Though they do not realize it, people eat, see, breathe and hear through me.

Those who are famous for their wisdom are wise through me;

I taught them what they know – and they heeded me.

I am the one who conveys joy from one person to another.

Those whom I love I make them clever and sharp.

I incite people to compete for knowledge

I have pervaded the earth and the sky.

Ref: 366 Readings from Hinduism

Yesterday I read the text of J.K.Rowling’s, Harvard university commencement address. At Harvard’s 357th Commencement, J.K. Rowling received an honorary doctor of letters degree. It was a great speech and gives insights into the women behind the Harry Potter sensation. I wanted to share it with all of you. I have highlighted the sections I found most inspiring

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

 

 

 President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates,

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

 

In my last post, we looked at the temple from outside. Now let us step inside a typical south Indian temple. Most ancient temples are held aloft my huge stone pillars which are intricately carved

Nellaiappan Temple, Thirunelveli, South Tamil Nadu, India

Here is a close-up view of a pillar

Sometimes huge stone sculptures of mythological creature and characters are mounted on these pillars. This is a famous mythological creature called Yali, very much like the Chinese dragon. You will find them in most south Indian temples. They are supposed to protect the temple from evil spirits.

Here is a warrior

Notice the detailing in the sculpture. Look at the intricately carved hair dress and elaborate jewels.  You can actually see his nails too. He is stamping enemy with one foot and seems to be celebrating his victory. There is so much movement in this static figure. The entire sculpture is carved from a single piece of rock using hand instruments. Just behind him is another pillar with a carved yali and an elephant.

This is lord Rama. Besides him is his faithful devotee, the monkey god Hanuman

Here is manmatha (cupid) the god of love, with his characteristics short stature and sugarcane bow.

This is his wife Rathi

Tribal Couple. Doesn’t their feather hair dress resemble the Red Indians

Here is a divine Nymph (Apsara). As per Hindu mythology, Apsara are courtesans in the kingdom of heaven. They are supposed to be beautiful, ageless and proficient in art and dance.

These temples are sacred places of worship for the Hindus. The deities here are believed to possess power to bestow boons. Most people visit these temples do not stop to observe the beauty within. They enter the temple with the single purpose of reaching the sanctum, offering a prayer and rushing out. These temples were meticulously crafted by thousands of artisans over hundreds of years by generations of rulers and still stand as a testament to their aesthetics, values and culture. When I watch the throng of devotees trying to push their way to the sanctum, I wonder why they don’t stop to take notice.

I love visiting temple. The South India temples are one of the most magnificent and beautiful works of art. Their architecture is unique and very different from the temples in the north. In this post I bring to you some images from my temple tours. Most of these temples are between 500 to 1000 years old.

Every big south Indian temple can easily be identified by the ‘Gopuram’ or the peak which serves as the entrance

This is one of the tallest Gopurams of my home state of Tamil Nadu belonging to a very ancient temple in a small town of Srivalliputur. In the days of the yore these must have been the tallest structures in the town. Very often the towns and the cities were built around the temples.

These Gopurams depict stories from mythology and are painted in bright primary colors. Here is a close-up view of a gopuram

This is the temple at Rameshwaram, considered one of the holiest places of south India. It lies in the southern tip of India and it figures in the great Indian epic Ramayana. It is believed that lord Rama himself made the deity of this temple with his own hands from the sands of Rameshwaram.

The sculptures that you see in this picture, including the pillars, are all made of granite and chiseled using tools available 100s of years back.  

This is an ancient cave temple called Pulliyar patti. Although it looks like a normal structure from outside, when you step in you will find that solid rocks of caves have been meticulously sculptured into intricate figures.

 This is the temple tank of pulliyar patti. Most old temples have a tank. Even today, these tanks serve as a major tool for water harvesting.

These guards are placed in every corner of the temple are a supposed to protect it from evil forces

This is the temple door

A few close-up view of the external walls of the pulliayar patti temple

This is another famous temple called Thiruchendur. See how close it is to the sea. This is a region in south India that was devastated by the Tsunami. Not a single drop of water entered the temple. The story goes that the sea god promised Muruga, the god of this temple that he would never cross his boundaries here. It appears that he kept his promise.

Most temples do not permit photographs insides the temple. All the pictures you see above are from outside the temple. There are however some temples that permit limited access to the interiors. I will post some of my best pictures from inside temples in the coming weeks.

First it was Barak Obama and his pastor. Now it is McCain and one of his endorsers. I am surprised at the religious undertones in American politics. This is the first time I have been following a US presidential race closely and it has been an eye opener. I had always thought of US as a truly secular country, where religion does not intrude in public life. People don’t judge you on the basis of your religious beliefs and affiliations. In the past one year I have been forced to change my mind.

A few says back John McCain appeared on Ellen DeGeneres show. She asked about his stand on gay marriages and he said he believes marriage is only between a man and a women..

“There is this old way of thinking that we are not all the same, we are all the same people,” she told McCain. “All of us. You’re no different than I am. Our love is the same.” He asked him if he would walk her down the aisle.

For a change, I felt sorry for McCain. Why should a leader have to defend his religious beliefs? While I totally agree that gays should be given equal rights as any other human being, I don’t see why an individual should be forced to accept a view which contradicts his faith. Being a Hindu, I believe beef eating is a sin (I think meat eating itself is not right). I have many friends who eat beef and I hold them in high regard. However, I would be offended if they insist that I share their beef steak. That is why I found Ellen’s question in bad taste.

There is another aspect I do not understand about gay marriages. Isn’t marriage a religious ceremony? By making gay marriage legal, aren’t you forcing the church to sanctify a union which it believes to be a sin? Isn’t this against the secular fabric of a democracy? When you talk about separation of state and church doesn’t it work both ways. How can the state force its morality on the church?

In India, Muslims are allowed to marry twice whereas Hindus are not. This was because Muslims were guaranteed at the time of independence that their religious freedom will be fully protected. From what I know, Indian law even upholds their divorce laws which can be carried out by a unilateral declaration by the husband and does not require the husband to pay any maintenance to the wife. Do I find it appalling – yes I do; from the stand point of my morality. But who am I to judge. I am sure there are many aspect of my religion which others may find equally appalling.