#19. Why this Kolaveri Di? (Or, What the Nets Brought Forth.)

The Bommyapalayam Dispatch, Part 2 (of 3). Expectations Vs. Reality; Temple Trauma; Murderous Rage; Moon tugs sea; Beach dogs rescue me; The Obstacle is The Way; Radical Acceptance; The Sunlit Path.

Jul 05, 2023

– Marcus Aurelius

After a few quiet days at the little cottage by the sea in the middle of a fishing village in Bommyapalayam, I began to hear a distant drumming. This was followed by wailing, and finally, through loudspeakers relentless, traumatic “music”. Traumatic to me, that is. The woman employed to clean the cottage came in beaming with the news: You’ve come at an auspicious time - the start of a temple festival that happens once a year!

(O, dear God. Please, no.)

Her thirteen-year-old son, who speaks some English, is her translator. They’d brought mangos from their tree and an invitation to partake of the ‘juice items’ that would be available at the temple later that evening. They are kind and warm and welcoming, helpful and cheerful. Why then when the festivities began in the evening did I feel rising within me a Murderous Rage? I was the intruder here! When I return from my wanderings in Pondicherry and Auroville, they guide my car carefully through their narrow lanes, their children, their chickens, their goats - yet do not seem to resent me at all.

I should be grateful. Which I am. But also, I am not.

I have travelled far for solitude. For wilderness. And now there is a woman in sequins yodling on a makeshift stage! There is a man with decorative headgear spinning through the crowds. There is another one climbing up a very tall pole with a sack of lemons and flinging them at the people gathered below. (True story.) I fantasize about cutting speaker wires. I pray for rain, for power outages. I grow grim. I laugh darkly as I quote myself from my last post: “There are no tourists here, apart from us, all night we hear the roar of The Bay of Bengal”.

Ha!

Be grateful for all ordeals, they are the shortest way to the Divine.

– Mirra Alfassa, Words of The Mother, Vol. 2.

The days are exquisite. I step out of bed straight into the ocean. I have siestas. I float through mangroves. I backward roll off fishing boats. I see dolphins. There are morays and pufferfish and groupers. I drive to cafes in the middle of the forest and quench my thirst on Hibiscus coolers. I meet people who build their own homes with own their hands and whose grandparents rewilded a wasteland.

In the evenings when I get back to the cottage, the drumming closes in on me. On day three, I walk down to the beach, away from the noise. But still the infernal hammering! I walk further and further, as far away as I can from the temple, where finally there is no one. Other than perhaps The Divine. I hear only the hush of the ocean. I see only two blues: one for sea, and the other for sky.

I sit down on my mat. Coconut trees stand in solidarity behind me. I look at the water. The waves inhale. The waves exhale. Who was I to disagree? I close my eyes. Moon tugs sea. Sea tugs me. I breathe out My Expectations. I breathe in The Reality. I startle as I feel something icy on the back of my hand. It’s the nose of the black and white beach dog. Hello, dog! He leans against me. He brings his sandy paws onto my mat. He sits down next to me. Anyone would think we were old friends. Two beige dogs come to investigate. Black and White growls. They growl back. I look the other way, not wanting to get involved in their politics. Or anyone else’s for that matter. The beige ones trot off. Black and White leans into me again. He owns me, he owns this mat. I’m cool with that I tell him, and pat his head. He smiles.

After a while, I walked back to the cottage and looked at it from the beach. Was it not exactly what I wanted? As I stood there, a free-floating piece of advice I got as a new mother (all those years ago) comes to mind: Sleep When The Baby Sleeps. Advice I’d thrown on a heap with all the rest. But like good compost, it came back gold: Sleep When The Village Sleeps! This time I listened. I got in a few winks. On the penultimate day of the festival, the cleaning woman’s son asked me: this is disturbance you? pointing in the direction of the temple. No, no, I lied. Torture! his mother said in English, grinning. She hasn’t slept in days her son said. We laugh. (Politely, lest we offend The Almighty.) Okay bye, said the boy. I will leave it here, where the cat dreams. He meant he would leave the food they’d brought on a chair that a feral feline uses to sleep at night.

Where The Cat Dreams. I write the words down so I’d never forget them.

I think about Tamil, the oldest language in the world (older than Sanskrit?). I hum the Dhanush song with the ancient folk rhythm that went viral on the internet. Why this Kolaveri, Kolaveri, di? Why this murderous rage, girl?! The next morning I cannot answer the question. Quiet revisits the village. From my desk, I can see The Bay of Bengal dwarfing the boys swimming in it. The boys come back with jellyfish stings. We treat it with warm salt water and vinegar. I go back to my desk, but I’ve lost my train of thought. I go for a swim. I come back to my desk. It is afternoon and too hot. Time for a siesta. All day I come and go to my desk in waves. In the evening when I sit down to write again, there comes a slide show:

I see the fishing boat at Pondicherry Harbour with a painting of a dog and cat in SCUBA gear on it. I see the dolphins off Temple Reef. I see the golden orb of Matrimandir. I see the ray of light that beams down its oculus. I see the banyan tree that is the beating heart of an experimental township. I see my bare feet on the rocks at Promenade. I see the pretty avenues in White Town, the names painted in both Tamil and French; I see the beautiful faces of new friends in Bommyapalaym, in Auroville, in Pondicherry.

“There is always the path of struggle and then there is The Sunlit Path”, tumble forth The Mother’s words. Who was Mirra Alfassa? How was she sure? I think about The Murderous Rage. I cannot feel it. What am I sure about? I am sure I am not my thoughts. I am sure I am not my feelings. I am sure that whatever I am is at the bottom of the ocean, looking at me twinkling above. There is a white-breasted kingfisher on the garden wall. The dongle is behaving. The connection is strong. This piece is not perfect. But I will let it go.

(Perhaps raising consciousness, like raising children, takes a village?)

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Read The Bommmyapalayam Dispatch Part 1 here and Part 3 here!

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