A Sacred Confluence and Serpents in Stone

“Isn’t the time past 10.30?” the elderly brahmin priest asked me as I lingered on for a while where he sat on a low wall that led to the Triveni Sangama a few metres down the paved path.

In a small shop behind him pooja offerings in plastic bags placed on a makeshift wooden plank were on sale to devotees visiting the Sri Bhagandeshwara temple across the road from the confluence of three rivers, more commonly known as sangama in Sanskrit, and kudala in Kannada. I’ve heard people use ‘Kudala Sangama’ together when referring to a confluence of rivers though both words mean the same thing - confluence. Bhagamandala draws its name from Bhagandeshwara, and it was our first stop on our way to Talacauvery in the Brahmagiri hills.

A middle-aged lady in a sari ran the small shop. She was talking to the elderly priest in what I suspect was Tulu when I stepped over to where he was sitting, wrapped tightly in a shawl. The others had taken off their shoes and socks and walked down the paved path to the Triveni Sangama where the Kannike and the mythical Sujyoti meet the Cauvery as she flares up and spreads her girth on her long run across Peninsular India before flowing into the Bay of Bengal.

The priest had wrapped a shawl around his head and upper body, keeping him warm in the sharp breeze that blew in that early December morning from across the road passing Bhagamandala on its way to Talacauvery in the hills of the Western Ghats mountain ranges.

“Yes, it is past 10.30,” I reply, taking in the morning freshness in the backdrop of the mountains, a sight that invariably gladdens my heart and adds a spring to my step. Years ago the five days I spent trekking in the Western Ghats mountain ranges just out of secondary school, living in a canvas tent at the foot of the Western Ghats in a remote jungle location in Goa, left a lifelong imprint on my mind for the formidable mountain ranges, an experience that left me with a healthy respect for India’s rivers, more so those that descend from the mountains. Cauvery does.

“Oobaru barthiney aantha haleydhara, Mysore deenda (The visitor said he’ll be coming from Mysore),” the priest explained me in Kannada. “He doesn’t know the house, so he asked me to wait at the bus-stop. He said he’ll be here by 10.30 am.”

The priest wraps the shawl even tighter as a gust of cold wind sweeps down the steps to where we are. “I’ve been waiting here, it is cold actually,” he says. I nod.

A short distance away from where the elderly priest waited, buses ferrying passengers and devotees halt by makeshift shops by the road, dropping off passengers visiting Bhagamandala, while those from the opposite direction stop for passengers heading in the direction of Madikeri. There is nothing there to indicate a bus stop. Every once in a while the priest looked past me at the ‘bus stop’ for signs of his visitor from Mysore before turning to talk to me.

His face betrays little or no annoyance, just resignation, but I cannot be sure for, with age, as movements slow up, so do expressions and in the pauses that punctuate conversations the moment passes before the aged speaker can muster the appropriate expressions. There’s little such ‘seemingly inscrutable’ faces can tell me, so I usually listen carefully to the often halting speech of the elderly.

He told me he stays behind the Sri Bhagandeshwara temple complex, home to the deities Subramanya, Ganapati, Mahavishnu and Ishwara, pointing across the road to the dwellings behind trees that adjoin the temple. Along the picturesque road from Madikeri to Bhagamandala breaks in trees provided us glimpses of sloping roofs, mostly red Mangalore Tiles, named after the red clay local to Mangalore, the headquarters of South Canara (also known as Dakshin Kannada). On the road to Bhagamandala we passed milestones along the way pointing the direction to Mangalore. It lies over 140 kilometers off Madikeri (Coorg).

Coorg or Kodagu district lies to the southeast of South Canara (Dakshina Kannada) district. North Canara and South Canara were formerly parts of the Canara district under a single administration in the Madras Presidency before the British split Canara district into North Canara and South Canara.

The Canara Bank, founded in 1906 by the legendary Ammembal Subba Rao Pai, belonging to the Gowda Saraswath Brahmin community, draws its name from the erstwhile Canara district. I grew up hearing ‘Canara’ in the years my uncle worked with the Canara bank, for I would visit his family in my school vacations each year, staying with them for weeks at each of the locations his postings with the Canara Bank took him to, namely Dharwad, Gadag, Bangalore, Hubli, Laxmeshwar, Ankali (off Chikkodi), and eventually Gulbarga when he retired from his services with the Canara Bank.

Bhagamandala is sacred for the confluence of the three rivers, Cauvery, Kannike, and the mythical Sujyoti. A stone plaque at the entrance to the confluence notes the Cauvery as being ‘revered as one of the Sapta Sindhu or seven holy rivers and is considered to be the Ganges of the South. A dip in this holy Sangam completes the Hindu Shraddha rites for the departed soul.’ It also notes that ‘The Cauvery flows 800 kilometres from Talacauvery in Karnataka to Poompuhar in Tamil Nadu. Major dams on the Cauvery are the Krishnarajasagara Dam in Mandya District (Karnataka) and the Mettur Dam in Mettur (Tamil Nadu).’

I circumvent the priest to the plastic bags on the makeshift wooden table behind him and seeing me step over to peek into the contents of one, the priest turns his head and says, “The four coconuts and the four flowers in each of the bags are offerings the devotee makes at the temple to the four deities; Subramanya, Ganapati, Mahavishnu and Ishwara (Bhagandeshwara).”

The temple lay across the road from the sacred confluence. Shops lined the entrance to the temple, a narrow mud path that forked away from the road to Talacauvery, where the Brahmin priests I was to meet later had their homes. We were to visit the temple later after we were done with visiting the sacred confluence.

A fresh burst of birds chirping floats on the breeze to the strains of Cauvery Vandana playing in one of the shops across the street that sold among other things incense sticks, devotional cassettes, and puja offerings in plastic baskets, each consisting of four coconuts, four Hibiscus flowers, and four bananas along with a pack of incense sticks.

When we reached Bhagamandala there were few people around and we had the place pretty much to ourselves, the silence was not to last much longer. I look around as the priest lapses into silence. Tunes float in to where I stand. There’s something to be said of devotional strains riding the breeze by a sacred confluence of three rivers. The intonation waxes and wanes in the breeze as if riding waves and in the silence occasional ripples in the water appear to match the rhythm of the song.

Before we, a motley bunch of travel writers, descended the bus that Club Mahindra had organized to take us to Bhagamandala on our Coorg sojourn that they sponsored as a part of their Web Initiatives program, I had imagined the confluence to be a roiling affair where the mighty Cauvery flexes her girth and in meeting with the Kannike and the Sujyoti she would thunder at the sky in a fearsome roar while breaching the banks in the violence of the confluence. Somewhere in the back of my mind memories of the Sharavati at Jog falls and of the Mahdei in the Western Ghats during the monsoons provided for the fearsome context. But when I learned that Bhagamandala lay a mere eight kilometers from Talacauvery where the Cauvery takes birth in the high reaches of the Western Ghats I quickly realized that the confluence lay upstream of the Cauvery and would be no roiling affair. She would run many a kilometer more before adding muscle and acquire the ferocity that would make people worship Goddess Cauvery to propitiate her so that she is less belligerent along her course downstream. Each year worshippers observe the ‘Polinkana’ festival where they propitiate Goddess Cauvery on the banks of the Triveni Sangama with a Maha Puja in the belief it will make her flow gently, releasing the ‘Polinkana Mantapa’ made up of banana stems with a lighted wick riding it. The festival coincides with ‘Karkataka Amavasye’.

I leave the elderly priest sitting on the low wall and walk down the paved path to what looks like an innocuous tank, actually a water passage that flows gently underneath a small bridge at either end of the concrete platform with steps leading to the water, and where people gather before descending the steps to dip their feet into the sacred confluence of the three rivers.

The opposite bank is not paved with a concrete platform. There a priest squats on his haunches and helps a youth with tonsured head perform rituals. Pilgrims performing rituals to their departed ancestors first take a dip in the confluence, perform rituals here before leaving for Talacauvery.

At the far end to my left a flight of steps descends from either side of the embankment just ahead of the bridge that passes over the confluence. In the distance the high reaches of the mountain ranges ring the Sangama (confluence). The skies are clear and touched a deep shade of blue. I see few birds in the sky.

Behind me, on a raised circular platform around the Ashwath (Pipal) tree, stone reliefs depicting the Nag devta (Cobra) lean against the tree trunk while some stand on their own. Kumkum (traditionally made from dried turmeric and powdered with slaked lime, turning it red) adorns the serpents. Hindus worship the Cobra (Nag) on Nag Panchmi. In the morning Sun their texture shows the effects of the elements. I do not know how long they’ve been here, who placed them around the base of the tree or for that matter which of the stone reliefs came first.

From the edge of the platform I watch pilgrims take a dip in the confluence, children shrieking in delight as they splash water on each other even as they hang on to their mother’s saris fearful of being dunked in the water. The water is not deep, only waist high, at places it barely comes up to the knees. However in the monsoons the water level rises. Standing there it is difficult to imagine the Cauvery runs hundreds of kilometers through several Indian states, irrigates thousands of acres of farmland in the Deccan Plateau, descends over mountains in spectacular waterfalls, generates hydroelectric power and evokes awe for its ferocity in the monsoons over wide swathes of land.

An elderly Coorgi lady in a traditional Kodava dress cradles a newborn in her arms while the mother, in a mauve sari looks on. Against the outline of the mountains in the far distance and in the backdrop of what is essentially a benign nature of the confluence on that early December morning they paint a picture of serenity that is as much laidback as it is peaceful and inviting. A young couple with a baby settles on the steps that descend the platform to the confluence. While the mother holds the baby in her lap, they sit in silence, watching visitors splash in the water. Occasionally a motor vehicle sounds over the bridge ferrying visiting pilgrims or maybe returning pilgrims. Sometimes it does not matter what goes on elsewhere for, in the circle of life the radius shortens to the immediate, the immediate that prolongs the moment, stilling time even as it ticks for those around.

I turn to see Amogh train his camera at the opposite bank while Arun paces the platform lazily. Just then a brahmin priest walks in my direction. In the strengthening breeze the saffron coloured shawl wrapped around his neck shifts, its loose end flapping in the sudden gust. He crosses his arms across his bare chest and tucks the loose end in the corner of his elbow.

He is lean and is dressed in a white lungi folded up to his knees. I catch his glance and smile, and like with the Serpents in stone, time has etched its passage on his face. I put his age in the late fifties.

“Namaskara,” I greet him. He replies likewise, folding his hands in greeting before crossing them at his chest. Like the other priest I met at the entrance, Ramachandra Bhat too stays in the village near the temple across the road. He uses the Kannada words ‘Kshetrawadi and Sthaladaavaru’ to indicate that he traces his origins to this place, at least as far back as he can remember.

Pointing behind me in the direction of Talacauvery in the Brahmagiri hills, Ramachandra Bhat tells me that I missed seeing the ‘habba’ (festival) that takes place annually starting on Tula Sankramana, usually mid-October and lasting a month. Tula Sankramana is the day the Cauvery took birth at Talacauvery, and each year thousands from all over the state gather at Talacauvery to witness the Cauvery surge forth in the form of a spring and it is celebrated with much traditional fanfare. The Kodavas mark Tula Sankramana as the first day of the Kodava Calendar year, such is the significance the Coorgis attach to the divinity of the river Cauvery.

Continuing, Ramchandra Bhat explained, “At Talacauvery the Teertodbhava takes place at the Cauvery’s Ugamasthana (place of birth), where once each year in the Tula month the Cauvery surges forth on Tula Sankramana in the form of a spring from the Brahmakundike (Holy Pond).”

On Tula Sankramana pilgrims from far and wide make their way to Bhagamandala to pay their respects to their ancestors. They tonsure their heads and perform shraddh (rituals for the departed) on the auspicious day.

We turn to look at a large group of schoolgirls who’ve descended into the water and playfully splash each other even as a few among them make a dash for the opposite bank to escape the playful splashing.

The priest’s tone is even as he speaks, making no attempt to be heard over the noise, yet I can hear him clearly, even the nuances. As the flow of pilgrims ebbs and flows behind us, the noise begins to acquire a steadiness of a constant hum, receding to the background even as it plays out upfront.

“This is the Dakshin Kashi,” he says matter-of-factly before continuing, “Ganga comes here from Kashi and stays here for one month. Lots of people come here at that time. It is punyakaal.”

I’m intrigued by the priest’s assertion. I had heard of Bhagamandala as Dakshin’s Kashi (the Kashi of the South) but I hadn’t connected it to the Ganges appearing here to cleanse herself in the Cauvery, in the month following the Tula Sankramana.

The legend of the Cauvery records her as performing tapasya (penance) to invoke Lord Vishnu to grant her wish of becoming the most sacred of rivers, giving life to humanity along her course and sustaining their prosperity through the ages. Cauvery’s tapasya is rewarded with the appearance of Lord Vishnu who, upon hearing her wish, grants it thus: ‘The Ganges is sacred because she originates from my feet; but you are infinitely more sacred to her as I adorn you as my garland’. Subsequently it is believed the Ganges appears underground to cleanse herself in the Cauvery every year, staying back for a month.

“I come here (to the confluence) everyday and perform kriya karya (rituals) for pilgrims if they need it. It’s been forty years that I’ve been doing this (rituals),” he says.

Ramchandra Bhat holds out a fifty rupee note to me and asks, “Do you have change for fifty rupees?” Apparently he has to deduct some amount from the fifty rupees and return the balance to someone. I take the fifty rupee note from him and pass him five tenners. He heads over to someone in the crowd behind me and returns within minutes. Then I take his pictures. He is curious to see how his pictures turned out. I show him the frames in the panel display. He smiles at me and asks, “Do the pictures develop so soon?” I explain that unlike film cameras digital cameras do not need photographic paper. The images are stored digitally.

“They’ve come good,” he says of the pictures.

Ramchandra Bhat lives with his wife behind the temple across the road and has four children. Speaking of his family he tells me, “Dhoddo maga devasthan pujey madikondu idhaney (the eldest son is a priest at the temple). He has children and stays separately (from us). Invobba deshsavey (the other son is in service of the nation – Indian Army). He completed his Diploma in Engineering and joined the Indian Army. He is in a clerical post there. The third son is a priest like me, and performs all rituals like I do. He does puja in Subramanyam Devasthan (temple).”

As I listen to the priest speak in a Kannada dialect that’s at once soothing and melodious I’m reminded of the Kannada our neighbours, the Ramkrishna Bhat family, spoke back in Goa in the late seventies, particularly when Anand’s cousin Kamesh, and his aunt, Shanta (they pronounce Shantey), whom we called Chikki, came visiting the Bhat family from Kumta in North Canara, also known as Uttara Kannada. When they spoke in their native tongue I would usually go quiet in the hope of acquiring their dialect for its nuances and tonality that was quite unlike the one I was accustomed to. In time I did manage to learn the Havyaka Kannada (spoken by Havyaka brahmins) dialect to a degree only to lose it in the years after we moved to another place. Moreover phones were uncommon in those days.

So when I heard Ramchandra Bhat speak the Havyaka dialect, it swiftly wound the years a long way back to my childhood, bridging decades and making me feel at home a long way from home.

The Sun is up in the sky, and steadily climbing. The breeze offsets any heat we might otherwise have felt. Sound of buses halting by the shops carries over to us. By now there’s a fair crowd about the place. Teachers struggle to maintain order among the schoolgirls as they break free in the shallow water, their hair tied in plaits with colourful ribbons.

Talking of his daughter he says, “Magalannu madhvey madi kottu aaythu (got our daughter married off).”

In India’s hinterland life as a brahmin priest is a difficult one economically. Where the son does not take after his father in priestly duties or if there’s no opening for one at the temple they leave the village for the city in search of a job. The Bhats belong to a brahmin sect called Havyaka brahmins, and speak a dialect of Kannada known as Havyaka Kannada or Havigannada, different in tone and usage from the Kannada of the brahmins to the north of Karnataka in the Deccan Plateau. The Havyaka brahmins are largely confined to Kumta, Sirsi, Honnavar, and Siddapur in the North Canara district, and also in the South Canara (Dakshin Kannada) district, bordered by the Arabian Sea to the West. Migration took the Havyaka brahmins to Coorg as well, though their numbers here are far fewer than that in North and South Canara districts. Moreover their dialect is known to differ from the Havyaka Kannada (Havigannada) to an extent, though not by much.

I ask him how many brahmin priests perform puja and kriya (rituals) for pilgrims offering prayers in memory of their departed ancestors. He says there are 5-6 brahmin priests like him who wait on the banks for the purpose and proceeds to point them out to me. One of them is on the opposite bank. Then he points further away along the bank at two other priests and says, “There, two more.”

Apparently two more priests haven’t come down to the confluence today. “There’re not many pilgrims today so they did not come,” he explains, shifting his weight to the other leg. “Sumne kala kallibaku (sometimes have to just while away time). I come and wait here,” he concludes, looking away. I sense a hint of despondency in his last statement, but the breeze catches it mid-air and whisks it away to the strains of the Cauvery Vandana.

Note: This is Part Three of my Coorg Diaries. Read Part One and Part Two posted earlier.

Motivation

‘Like I said, patience is the key. Now go, try again. And remember, no defeat is final until you stop trying.’

Note: At times there's no knowing the drama Bombay streets will unfold to unsuspecting travelers. On a late summer afternoon in Walkeshwar, 2005.

A Sunday Delivery

They stopped by a shopkeeper in the corridor and handed him a slip of paper containing an address, asking for directions to get there.

Someone was waiting home this Sunday for their new Sofa.

Loaning Progress

Each day, well before the Mumbai Local comes to a halt, passengers prepare to jump off the train, expertly dodging those on the platform waiting to get in. Physical contact is well neigh unavoidable as you negotiate your way with or against the stream of disembarking passengers. There’s rarely a glance exchanged unless the collusion smacks of a deliberateness that hurts the other, or brings them to the ground in an embarrassing thud, for such is the hurry to be among the first to get to the over-bridge and across it that all forms of communication are held back until one is safely across the bridge to the East or the West (Mumbai Suburban local trains ‘split’ much of the city into East and West portions).

Squeezed in by travelers hurrying down the stairs to the railway platform to the sound of the announcer announcing train arrivals, disembarking passengers quicken their steps up the stairs to the railway over-bridge, eyes scouring for space to negotiate through the ascending crowd, latching onto slender openings between cascading feet, all for the extra step that’ll take them a step past the wall of people packed in on either side by hawkers calling attention to their wares: cheap watches, cheap clothes, toys, dried grapes, wallets, perfumes, vegetables, pirated CDs, and flowers among other things.

On one such morning as I skirted the rush hour crowd, dodging past people to the far end of the over-bridge a hand struck out at me just as I was about to run down the steps to hail a taxi. Seeing it materialize out of nowhere I took evasive action, my hand involuntarily bracing for contact even as it instinctively reached out to the pamphlet he held out to me. His hands were moving quickly, surprising people as they prepared to take the steps down the bridge on their way out of the railway station.

I doubt if Ankush More, a Marathi youth, saw the faces of people he was passing out the HSBC Pragati Finance Personal Loans pamphlets to. His hands were moving far too quickly in holding out the single page pamphlet to people for him to filter recipients for potential customers. Moreover the crowd was moving quickly as well, mostly office-goers hurrying time, people who presumably had more urgent things on their mind than personal loans.

HSBC Pragati Finance offers Personal Loans up to Rs. 50,000, starting Rs. 10,000, while promising ‘Easy paper work’ and ‘No security or guarantee’, a message not very different from those I see in local trains, staring out from compartment walls. I imagine the country must be awash with money to loan out to people if the frequency and scale of coverage is anything to go by. It is common to see banks setting up ‘loan counters’ in reception areas of corporate offices that bank with them as corporate customers.

For sheer volume of people railway stations are hard to beat. Ankush More would have learnt from experience that he had a better chance at getting exiting passengers to accept the pamphlet if he stood at the top of the stairs at the exit than somewhere along the way where people are in a hurry to get past, rarely pausing or slowing down for doing so would mean being bumped against by those behind, possibly to a tune of a few choice words.

Ankush does not process loan applications. He is employed to pass out the pamphlets that carry the name and contact number of the loan agent at the back. I ask Ankush how many pamphlets he manages to pass out on an average day.

“1000 in two hours, and I’m done for the day,” he replies even as he returns to the bunch in his hand.

I do a quick calculation. In a radius of 2 – 2 ½ feet presented by his outstretched hand, excluding people who either ignore him or are in a terrible rush, or those to whom he cannot get the pamphlet out quickly enough to pass it out before they pass him, a minimum of 500 people an hour need to pass within two feet of him to meet his target. And those he ‘manages to miss out on’ must surely equal these numbers if not exceed them, all passing within two feet of him in the morning rush hour!

“I mostly pass these out at railway stations. Sometimes I’m here, other times at some other railway station,” he tells me above the din.

Ankush is paid Rs. 3000 each month for the 30,000 HSBC Pragati Finance Personal Loan pamphlets he gives out.

I point to the slew of pamphlets discarded on the steps where people dropped them on their way down the stairs leading out of the station, and say, “Do people read what you hand out?”

He looks at the mass of bright red and white flyers strewn on the steps before replying, “Many don’t, but some do.”

Volume improves probability. Apparently those who read the pamphlet and are in need of a loan call up on the number rubber stamped on page two of the pamphlet. “Yes, some do call up on the number for a loan, other times they pause to ask me details,” he continues.

‘Pragati’ is Sanskrit for ‘Progress’. The irony in this case does not escape me as I turn to read the hand-out. I begin to descend the steps, and watch my step to avoid stumbling over, for it is a fairly long way down the metal and cement stairs. The others are doing likewise, heads bent to the task at hand. Like everyone else I step on discarded loan flyers at each step even as its bright red colours leap at me from where they lie, ‘progress’ively gathering muddy footprints as more feet land on them.

As I progress down the stairs step by step, each landing on red and white flyers strewn all the way down, I wince at the irony on reading the flyer exhort the reader with the words ‘Kadam Kadam Badhaye Ja’ (Progress Step by Step), and how!!!

I Wander So That I May Wonder

When Mridula first invited me to write an essay for BlogBharti’s Spotlight series, I readily agreed. She asked that it be travel related. I nodded.

But when I sat down to actually write it I had no clue where to begin. A travelogue has a definite starting point, and events on the journey string it along, but an essay? It was then that I actually begun to reflect on what I already knew albeit subconsciously, that I travel as much for the mystery of the open road as for the joy of exploring the documented.

In my essay Beyond The Open Road, Wandering and Wondering I write of how ‘the mystery of the unknown excites imagination for, it is in the gaps in knowledge and understanding that our imagination can play out, and when the possibilities are many, and the traveler can choose his pick, the journey acquires the personality of the traveler.’

Mridula nudged me along, politely reminding me of my promise to submit the essay to BlogBharti's Spotlight Series, and in writing it I came to realise with some clarity that I wander so that I may wonder.

Freeing Up Gender Space At Kala Ghoda

Like with the opening day of any event, the one at Kala Ghoda Arts Festival is riveting for the activity that defines its spaces as artists, entrepreneurs, NGOs, and performers go about putting their act together for the ten-day long event that’s now come to characterize the city’s Art Scene. Bombay became Mumbai, but the Kala Ghoda Art Festival is quintessentially Bombay.

On the Pavement Art Gallery that runs by the Jehangir Art Gallery, past the Max Mueller Bhavan, before morphing into the seating area of the Open Air Amphitheatre adjacent to the Bombay Natural History Society, a lightly built gent in faded blue denims was bent over a bag while he rolled a contact sheet of photographs in his palm. Behind him a large display board in black stood to one side of the pavement, pictures in fluorescent green displayed at eye level. The other side was rented likewise to another artist, busy preparing his exhibits for display.

Every now and then Chirodeep Chaudhuri looked up to talk to a friend who was helping him with setting up his exhibits - ‘Graffitti’. A sprinkling of curious passersby ambling lazily on the pavement while taking in the plethora of activity by each allocated display space along the pavement and beyond now paused by the photographs, in silence. Where I stood I could not make out their expressions unless they turned sideways to exchange an opinion or two with their friends.

Supported by Project 88, Chirodeep’s exhibits transported explicit Graffitti from Mumbai’s local trains to the middle of Bombay’s Art District. It took Chirodeep Chaudhuri over six months of trawling Mumbai local trains on the Central Line to bring ‘home’, in more ways than one, how graffiti that lie still on walls enclosing commuter space actually intrude and shrink it. In their silence they etch noise. Much as they target women, they seek to concur with like minds while encouraging latent urges into manifesting visibly.

“A group of friends were working on a project, ‘Gender Spaces’, essentially about how women negotiate public spaces. They asked me to shoot for that project,” Chirodeep paused to smile at a visitor before continuing, “but I wasn’t quite comfortable with the approach they suggested. It was a direct approach.” And while I try and imagine what he might mean by ‘direct approach’, he dwells on his discomfort with it. “A direct approach doesn’t work, I mean how do you show something as intangible as discomfort in a photograph, so I refused. But it was kind of going on in my head. At a certain point I heard people talk ‘Compartment mein aisa drawing tha,’ and all that.”

Chirodeep, like many photographers, strings his words like visuals. Where a visual seeks to evoke reactions, it poses questions. Chirodeep articulates the questions so that he may answer them for me. Behind him a hastily drawn female anatomy in a train compartment commands attention at eye level. On my travels by the local trains the morning rush hour ensures that space makes itself felt by its absence. Only late at night, under tube lights, the words emerge, engaging the desultory suggestively while egging on the interested. Over time hardened travelers learn to ignore it like a wart they’ve lived with all their working lives. Only pointed references get the graffiti to swim back into focus, occasionally in a camera lens.

“And I kept thinking about it,” said Chirodeep, of people talking of explicit drawings in train compartments, “and suddenly started seeing it all over again, more consciously than I’d seen it earlier. That’s actually what kind of got me into doing this set of pictures.” He throws a backward glance at the photographs, the black throwing them into sharp focus in the shade of the Max Mueller Bhavan adjoining the Jehangir Art Gallery behind me.

“It can get tricky,” he says of pulling off the photographs without drawing the attention of passengers. “This image for instance,” he points to a photograph in the series before continuing, “people are sitting neeche (underneath), I mean they could take offence, they might think you’re photographing them along with that (explicit graffiti). Most of the time people don’t realize what you’re doing but I don’t think that’s the point. The point is you don’t want to get into an ugly scene.”

Just then a lady in a sari walks up to Chirodeep and asks him if his photography exhibits are on sale. He nods. The lady asks to meet him to discuss the exhibits after he is done talking with me. He nods again and smiles before turning to me.

“So the point was not to get confrontational unnecessarily in a train. I’ve been in lots of confrontational . . ., it didn’t make sense to get confrontational, and I mean how do you start explaining this (photographing graffiti) to people (passengers), so I was trying to see if I could do it (without making it obvious that I was photographing),” he said. He credited his digital camera with making his task easy.

“I could preview the photographs. I would be probably sitting there (in the local train) and . . . it’s like taking aim . . . 28 mm hai, aisa shoot karega tho (if I shoot it from here it’ll need to be at 28 mm), you kind of lift your camera up and take a shot, and check it (in preview mode), and then you do the next frame which is your final frame,” he explains. Turning to look at his exhibits he sweeps his hand to take in the breadth of the black canvas and says, “lot of these happened like that.”

Most of the pictures on display were shot in Mumbai local train compartments at night, in tube light. He explains that if not for digital camera he might’ve never done this series. Pointing to a picture in the series, he says, “Tube light mein tho jaan nikal jaati hai (it gets difficult to shoot in tube light). Digital allowed me to address the White Balance because they were all shot at odd hours.”

Chirodeep credits his stint with PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action & Research) for the idea. He’s worked on several PUKAR projects besides conducting Workshops.

“There are friends who work at PUKAR, so when you have varied friends, somebody says something and an idea comes up. My previous show (The One-Rupee Entrepreneur) also came about while on an assignment with PUKAR. I was conducting a workshop on how to document a city for a group of students and that idea (The One-Rupee Entrepreneur) came out of there. We were trying to do a fairly odd exercise and that came out of that, so you never know (what might strike you when),” he trails off.


The One-Rupee Entrepreneur documented instances of entrepreneurs using the one-rupee coin-box telephones to earn ‘on the side’ while they ran their shops. The series of photographs ‘looks at the phenomenon of the one-rupee pay phones as a metaphor for the idea of “enterprise” in the city of Bombay.’ The series was remarkable for portraying pay phones in settings that reinforced their utility to entrepreneurs - a ‘mere’ side-business.

Chirodeep’s portfolio draws heavily on Bombay. I first saw his work in the book Bombay, Meri Jaan, a collection of writings on Bombay. Edited by Naresh Fernandes and Jerry Pinto, it carried a section showcasing Chirodeep’s Bombay photographs.

I returned to the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival on the last day, and found Chirodeep sitting on a makeshift table. The duration of the festival and the effort at manning his exhibition appeared to have taken its toll.


“How has it been?” I ask him.

“I’m amazed at the response,” he replies. “I never expected it to draw the response it did.”

In not ‘touching’ even as it intrudes, graffiti such as on display constrains, and shrinks gender space. To be able to breathe freely from the suffocation that shrinking space makes inevitable, it’s only natural that the series on display frees up space to vent feelings.

Even though Graffitti is about women, it is not just about women!

Waiting, Watching

Watching a barge navigate up the Mandovi while waiting for the river ferry from Piedade to ferry them across the river to Divar.

At times, on the banks of the Mandovi, only the breeze stirs time.

Dated Yet Timeless

I stood in front of the glass and looked in. A yellowing copy of Young India, sheathed in a protective plastic cover, lies on a short stool by the floor seating. A shaft of sunlight lights up a pair of paduka (wooden footwear) facing the seating as if warming them up for the wearer on the seating, except that there is no one there.

To the back of the room beyond the glass partition, long after they ceased spinning cotton, several charkhas now line the wall in the silence of noon shadows. A symbol so potent that the charkha came to adorn the flag of the Provisional Government of Free India. It is difficult not to sense his presence there, not with his belongings seemingly awaiting his return even though it’s sixty years now to this day. Sixty long years that sometimes feels like yesterday with the portent of tomorrow that refuses to pass, as if in its passing India would somehow cease to be young.

Then I step over to the balcony overlooking Laburnum Road, and look down on the quiet street through the canopy like he must have done many a time between 1917 and 1934.

Stillness pervades the rooms, not unlike the stillness of an era that outlives its age even as it struggles to retain its relevance.

In the late afternoon light, shadows seemingly reveal what the light seeks to hide. I turn away and walk absently to the next room.

Rising Voices releases An Introduction to Citizen Media

Rising Voices, an outreach initiative of Global Voices, a media project founded at Harvard Law School's research think-tank, The Berkman Center for Internet and Society, released last week An Introduction to Citizen Media, a guide/report demonstrating the use of Citizen Media (blogs, podcasts, online video, and digital photography) by citizens the world over, redefining communication between peoples while transcending borders in helping shape communication in societies.

In his introduction, David Sasaki of Rising Voices wrote, “This guide hopes to show readers in North America and Western Europe that some of the most exciting and innovative developments related to Citizen Media are taking place in the non-Western world. It also aims to serve as a reference document for local citizen media initiatives that wish to provide a more international context to their projects when they approach community leaders, politicians, and foundations.”

This blog, Windy Skies, features in the ‘context and case studies’ cited by the guide/report in demonstrating Citizen Media.

Lucidly written, and setting out with clarity and purpose, An Introduction to Citizen Media makes for compelling reading while explaining the fundamentals of Citizen Media to a non-technical readership. An asset in understanding Citizen Media, the release is invaluable in propagating the concept to a wider audience, using its documented case studies featuring blogs, photo blogs, podcasts, and online video as reference.

Download the guide/report here, the first in what promises to be an excellent series on Citizen Media scheduled for release through 2008.

The Road To Bhagamandala

No one who has traveled this way once will forget the journey, ever.

In time I grew used to the turns in the road, swerving with the bus as it rounded yet another bend in the narrow ribbon cut in the hills. The leanly built elderly driver from Bangalore was equal to the challenge of driving in the hills, occasionally barking instructions to his teenaged assistant, Manju, a slender wisp of a boy who made himself busy no sooner the driver dug his voice into him. The road ran thin and the curves ran sharp. Where they straightened out, trees cast shadows on the road, so if you weren't looking at the trees along the road you saw their presence on the narrow tar ribbon. There was no escaping them, and I was glad for it. And every once in a while as the bus driver prepared to take a particularly tight turn or make way for a bus coming in the opposite direction I had to hurriedly draw in my elbow as vegetation swiped the side of the bus, crashing the open windows in a dull kat-kat-kat-kat.

Unfamiliar flowers on the sides of the hill sprung into view time and again. Except at the turns in the road that broke through the vegetation at an angle on a slope or an incline to allow a quick view of the Western Ghats Mountain Ranges through the bus window, gigantic folds in the landscape disappearing into blue outlines at infinity, a sharp wind gusting in through the break, occasionally prompting me into drawing the window shut, the air largely stayed still on our journey from Madikeri to Bhagamandala, and beyond to Thalacauvery (also spelled Talacauvery).

On our way out of Club Mahindra in Galibeedu at whose all-expenses paid invitation we, a group of Travel Writers, came visiting Coorg, the bus inched slowly along the road made narrow by workers digging trenches on either side to lay cables. Outside Club Mahindra dew from the night before glistened on the cables in the early morning sun, freshening up the bright orange from the dust that passing vehicles deposited on them through the day. While the adults worked the earth, making steady progress, their children played in the mud heaped along the trenches.

As our mini-bus eased down the altitude by over 200 metres in covering the five kilometres between Galibeedu and Madikeri (1060 msl), before heading South-west to Bhagamandala, dropping a further 150 metres in altitude over the thirty-nine kilometres separating Madikeri from Bhagamandala, every once in a while I turned to look at the driver concentrate on negotiating the narrow stretches, wondering if we would have to reverse all the way back should a large bus come at us in the opposite direction, luckily we were spared of it that morning on our way out, but we copped it on our way back to Galibeedu from Thalacauvery that evening.

Manju, the teenaged assistant to the bus driver had given up his seat by the bus engine to Joy, and Joy in turn gave it up for me. Manju sat on the steps in front of me in the driver’s cabin, his head rising up to my knees, barely clearing the height of the engine box while I sat straight without the luxury of a backrest. A door separated us three in the driver’s cabin from the rest. To our left houses lined the road on the sloping hill side, their roofs barely rising above the level of the road. Some houses had sloping roofs, others didn’t.


However most of the houses were set back from private entrances with flowering trees arching over gates opening into their front-yards. A house named Cauvery Krupa idles past as the driver coaxes the bus into a lower gear to make way for a car honking its way past us. We come upon the Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa College dating back from 1949 and affiliated to Mangalore University. At a split in the road Harangi Fish Stall straddles the turn, a short run later the University of Agricultural Sciences draws up on our way before lush green agricultural fields open up the landscape near a Police Station not far from the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) office.

The mini-bus groans up an incline as the driver quickly throws the gear low before taking the climb to Madikeri. Down the side of the hill houses with sloping roofs fall away like terraced fields.

At Madikeri we stop for diesel at a pump off the Field Marshal Cariappa Circle where his statue in military uniform stands erect in martial pride. I get off the bus as a pump attendant comes up to the driver.

A board in green beyond the compound wall separating the petrol pump from commercial establishments announces in Kannada ‘Koli Masada Angadi’ (Chicken Flesh Shop). A Rooster seemingly shedding blood from its eyes stands erect while a headless Chicken hangs from a hook in the entrance to the shop. On the wall inside a large poster latches on to two birds amid lotuses to paint serenity and exude some ‘Spring Joy’, letters that I cannot quite make out from where I wait for the pump attendant to tank up the bus. Dead Chickens do not understand irony! And live Chickens do not live long enough to understand it either!

Behind me a man in rolled-up trousers dips a mug into a used HP Laal Ghoda plastic container filled with water to wash a white Maruti car. The Sun lights up the spray, each drop enclosing its Sun filled canvas of Madikeri. Laal Ghoda 20W-40 is a Hindustan Petroleum Multi Grade Diesel Engine Oil product, for use in Diesel Engines of Buses, Cars, Tractors, Trucks, Pumpsets, and Diesel powered Generator Sets. The sturdy containers are rarely thrown away once empty, usually reused to ferry or store water for washing purposes.

Madikeri has a laidback feel to it that I quite identify with. That morning only a few people were about the town as we pulled out of the petrol pump and eased down the slope, heading East before eventually turning West to Bhagamandala where the Cauvery, revered as one of the ‘Sapta Sindhu’ or seven holy rivers, meets the Kannike and the mythical Sujyoti in a sacred confluence (Triveni Sangam) of great significance to the Hindus.

Like before the road ran narrow. Out the window to my left I trailed my eyes along the distant contours of the Western Ghats each time a break in the vegetation afforded me a view of the mountain ranges. On the outside of a gate letters in white paint read N. J. Achaiah, behind the iron bars a narrow trail disappeared round a bend in the trees lining the mud path. In time more names flashed past – Kuttappa, Madappa, Thimaiah among others, names peculiar to the Kodavas, the original inhabitants of Coorg, and proud bearers of what they believe is the Greek legacy from the time of Alexander the Great.

With tourism booming, and tourists looking elsewhere after overrunning the whole gamut of over hyped destinations until they retained neither the original allure nor the hype, it is now time for Coorg to open her arms to new promises that travel agents coin for gullible tourists, who in turn live up to the pictures painted for them. Resorts, Hotels, Homestays now announce vacancies along the route. I pretend they don’t exist even as the corner of my eye ‘catches’ Misty Woods Resort along the route! I’m desperate to leave them behind if only to experience a semblance of authentic Coorg, whatever that may mean! As a tourist I’m living on borrowed time, and so is the timeless Coorg. The irony doesn’t escape me!

Five kilometers from Madikeri we pass a milestone: Thalacauvery 42 kms., Mangalore 137 kms. Here, we leave the road to Mangalore behind and turn left in the direction of Virajpet. Shortly after, we take a right turn in the direction of Thalacauvery. Bhagamandala lies 34 kms. ahead, enroute to Thalacauvery, the birthplace of river Cauvery.

At Appangala we pass the Cardamom Research Centre of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. A board outside the facility announces ‘Indian Institute of Spices Research’.

Each time the bus rounds a bend and aligns with the road I quickly point my camera out the window while keeping my eye out for the next bend, jerking off shots, hoping for minimal shake as the bus rattles along, passing tiny bus stops along the way every now and then. Mostly empty the bus stops remind me of Goa.

As is fairly common in hilly terrain one leaves a road to a destination behind only to happen upon another road later that joins the road you left behind earlier. Now we turn left and leave the road to Mangalore behind the second time. Bhagamandala lies 29 kms. ahead, and Talacauvery eight kms. ahead of Bhagamandala. In all this time while we chipped 5 kms. off the distance to Bhagamandala the last time we left the road to Mangalore behind, we only managed to knock off 1 km. off the distance to Mangalore (from 137 kms. to 136 kms.) now! In the hills it is easy to lose a sense of direction.

Plantains and stray betel nut palms shade the small bus stop at the turn in the road beyond a narrow culvert passing underneath the tar. A shin-high wall painted white marks the spot where the culvert passes under the road to the other side, draining water from the fields. I imagine villagers sitting on it in the evenings for gup shup. Back in Goa it is known as sakho.

Buses to Mangalore stop here for passengers. Like elsewhere along the way film posters cover the walls of the bus stop. A corrugated sheet makes up its low roof. On either side of a pillar holding up the roof, and in full view of passengers awaiting transport to Mangalore, two posters, one each in Kannada and English, scream BETRAYAL while lamenting the demolition of Babri Masjid, the ‘anniversary’ of its demolition due in five days time. As shade from tall trees by the side of the road weaves the sunlight into a soothing pattern on the tar I sense a silent undercurrent in the air. Instinctively I look around for signs of a local masjid to explain the presence of the posters; instead I find a board directing the Muslim faithful to Yerumad Dharga, in the same direction as Bhagamandala. There is no one on the road, not a single soul, lending the message in the posters an apprehensive air. Not knowing who makes one turn and look over the shoulder. We turn left in the shade of trees.

Five kilometers on we break out into bright sunshine. We’ve left Madikeri 15 kms. behind. On a signboard by another of the quaint bus stops, Karnataka Tourism announces ‘One State, Many Worlds’. To our left, Napoklu and Yemmemadu lie 7 and 11 kms. respectively. We keep straight, passing trimmed hedges enclosing front-yards of houses. Like before, an anguished poster screaming BETRAYAL at the demolition of the disputed Babri Masjid stares out from the wall of the bus stop. A man, his hands crossed at the chest stands in the shade of the signboard while a lady reclines against the wall in the confines of the bus stop. Nothing stirs in the air outside, the roar of the engine fills my head. I wonder how the driver can keep at it in the cabin all day with the engine crying hoarse inches from him. Maybe in time it is possible to shut everything out except that which matters. I cannot tell for sure though.

We pass more houses with sloping roofs, some barely rising to the level of the road, while others look down upon us from short embankments. Every once in a while our mini-bus slows down to make way for a public transport bus belonging to Shree Vijayalakshmi Motor Service bearing down on us from the opposite direction, returning from Bhagamandala. The buses are colourfully painted and lend a festive feel to the journey. However, for much of the way we encounter little or no traffic. I look forward to the hide and seek our bus plays with trees along the route, their shade interlocking sunshine into random grids, lending calm to the sharp air outside.

Streams and irrigation channels criss-cross the landscape, evident in the string of culverts and small bridges along the route, the narrow bridges fenced along their length by three rows of concrete strips painted white, setting off the road against the green of the countryside. We passed them by the dozen, sometimes on turns in the road disappearing round the bend amid thick vegetation, other times flanked by paddy fields, cows grazing in earnest in the backdrop of the Western Ghats mountain ranges.

Ten kilometers on Cherambane draws up. Single storey structures with two-tier sloping roofs run the length of the road as we make our way through the village. Like all old villages and towns across the country, commercial establishments in the heart of the village run out of traditional structures, the newer ones starting off from pucca concrete dwellings. The rows of shops under Mangalore tiles might as well be a scene out of Goa. Try as I might I cannot resist drawing comparisons, except maybe for the rafters that arch in tight semi circles along the length of the sloping roof. A board advertises Prakash Studio and Video services. Bhagamandala lies 14 kms. ahead. We motor on.

A village school under a drooping roof set back from a smallish playground with the mandatory flag pole, and images painted on the front wall draws up to our left. An image of a pirouetting peacock among those I suspect to be of pre-independence Indian figures reinforces the stereotype of village schools from the hinterland even while lending it an innocence that is as refreshing as it is grounded in the village ethos. Yet again I say to myself, ‘Why, this school might as well have been tucked away in Sanquelim and none would have been any wiser for it’.

A quick run between paddy fields against the backdrop of the Western Ghats and Chettimani draws into view; a milestone records the name of the village and its elevation (2592 feet). Outside a shop by the milestone, a cat warms itself in the morning Sun. A yellow coloured PCO is nailed to the wall behind green, yellow, and red plastic pots sheathed in transparent plastic to keep out the dust. Vegetables heaped on the floor await customers. Glass jars line the shop counter, more likely than not filled with confectionery. A red postbox hangs from a hook in the wall. Out in the interior people still await the knock of the postman bearing mail from afar. Two men, one clad in lungi and a shirt, the other in trousers stand outside the shop conversing, turning to look in our direction as we rumble past.

Shortly after, in the backdrop of the mountains we leave a temple complex behind. I marvel at the feel that mountains lend to temples even as I recollect similar scenes from my travels by the Konkan Railway. Set amidst vast expanses of paddy fields, or breaking out from dense foliage along the banks of rivers snaking through valleys in the mountains, temples far out from nowhere add an allure to the mystic, strengthened by long intervals of silence between devotees arriving at their doorsteps. Crowded temples in the middle of everywhere rarely invoke such allure or so I feel.

Bamboo must be plenty out here if the creativity people display in fashioning gates is anything to go by. Not all gates to houses have flowering trees arching over them, but where they do the houses look inviting. I draw in my elbow as the wheels take the edge of the road, come close to swiping stray branches as the mini-bus swerves before straightening up and splitting a paddy field into two. Cows graze in the distance. I turn to look through the windshield for signs of Bhagamandala. It cannot be far now, I tell myself. Manju wakes up and stretches his neck. He caught up on sleep at infrequent intervals along the way, resting face down on hands crossed at upraised knees. It is a comforting pose to sleep in, reminds me of all those days.

In the mountains time stills journeys. Even as distance runs under groaning wheels, the timelessness of it hangs still in the air.

Ten minutes later we touch Bhagamandala. I take a deep breath and stretch my legs, aware of the significance of the moment.


Note: Except for three pictures in this post the rest were taken from the moving bus. This is Part Two of my Coorg Diaries. Read Part One and Part Three of the series.