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| Santhakumari Teacher with her husband and grandson |
This again is an interim chapter; I tend to
move away from the narrative around Thiruvannamalai for the time being and
narrate another part of my journey for the sheer sense of awe that I have felt
about it. Whenever I am in my village, Vakkom (about which I have written in
detail in my series titled ‘To My Children’ which too is available in this blog,
if interested you may read it) my young friend Dr.Amritjude Vijayan comes to
meet and takes me to the places that I have not visited or rather visited long
back but have forgotten. Interestingly, like many other people who come to
life, make an impact, remain there or go, I was absolutely unaware of Amritjude
living in my village though I had seen him as a very small child in school
uniform. As he was growing up, I left my village and since then I have been a
migratory bird here, a special one that does not keep any particular time to
pass by. Amritjude is the son of my high school teacher, Santhakumari. She had
a strong presence in school for several reasons; first of all she came from the
next door. She lived and still lives in a house just outside the boundary wall
of the school ground. Second thing is that she was the most beautiful teacher
in our school (she still remains beautiful). Another thing that impressed us
about her was the round shaped gold frames of her spectacles. Generally, it is
a universal phenomenon that while school everyone has a nickname; teachers are
no exception to this rule. (Forgive me Amritjude and Santhakumari teacher) We
never dared to call Santhakumari teacher by any nick name though we had given
her one: Vattakkanni, means Round Eyed, referring to the round golden frames of
her specs. She taught us science and was extremely strict with the students
irrespective of gender. I never remember her using the cane though she carried
one. As she was young and beautiful, she knew the boys would be nasty in their
behavior, so she always kept a very strict face, which made us nervous. She
rarely smiled in the class as well as outside. With or without smile we all
liked Santhakumari teacher; when I look back, I believe we never hated any of
our school teachers. They were like mothers and fathers to us (unlike these
days).
I never knew that Santhakumari teacher had
told her son about me. Amritjude (later on he told me) grew up listening
stories told to him by his mother and grandmother, who he thinks as his early
spiritual guide. In many of the stories related to the high school where
Santhakumari teacher taught, I was one of the characters. She had even recorded
my first Doordarshan appearance as a poet in the year 1989 (or 1990?) in her
Video Recorder, which was a rarity then. According to Amritjude, once teacher
played the video tape for him and my image (a hopelessly romantic poet singing
out the anxieties of a bachelor) got etched in his mind. Amritjude went on to
become a Siddha doctor and he does not like to be called a doctor for he says
that the image of a doctor these days gives out wrong signals. His practice is
different. He makes his own medicine, using the ancient Siddha texts in Tamil
and closely follows a spiritual life. He get so many lucrative offers to
partner with entrepreneurs in the hospitality industry where Siddha treatment
could be made into a package plan. Amritjude resists all those offers and leads
a very simple life with is Siddha practitioner wife, Divya and two small boys.
Amritjude moves around with a pious group of people who are involved in
spiritual studies and archiving. Sreekandakumar Pillai is one such young person
who left his job in the IT industry in the US, came and started an online
portal for archiving spiritual and religious texts from the ancient times (you
could learn more about this site from Sreyas.in and if you want to know more
about Sreekandakumar Pillai please visit my article on him in this link http://johnyml.blogspot.in/2014/08/people-who-leave-things-behind-for.html).
With the advent of facebook, Amritjude got an opportunity to look out for me
and soon we became friends there. He says that it was difficult for him to
connect the image that he had in his mind about me and the one he saw in the
facebook. Then one day he came to meet me and ever since we remain friends and
Amritjude takes me to such places which he thinks as meditative. He has never disappointed
me in this case.
This time Amritjude messages me and the
name of the place that he has suggested for the day sounds very unfamiliar to
me. As I know that he cannot be wrong about the places of calmness and
meditation I immediately agree to go with him. By five in the evening he comes
with his new Enfield Bullet (generally he comes by his car and this time he
chooses to ride the bike because he wants to give me the experience of his new
bike. And while riding he constantly compares this Bullet to the old Ambassador
car which he likes a lot with all its imperfections and the imprecision of its
gear box). I am in my saffron dhoti and a khadi shirt; riding pillion wearing a
dhoti is a task that a Malayali finds a pleasurable one but myself with no practice
of sitting pillion on a bike wearing a dhoti finds it difficult to adjust for a
few minutes. Wearing dhoti is an art and depending on the way it is worn, one
could understand the health, wealth, educational qualification, social status,
etiquette and so on. There are different levels of wearing a dhoti. I belong to
that type of dhoti wearers who wear it for a purpose of being comfortable in it
but remain uncomfortable for various other reasons. Carrying a purse and mobile
is very difficult when you wear dhoti. In those good old days people used to
use the lose end on the left side around the waist as a purse, which is as
secure as a locked vault so long as you are not drunk. But today we carry a
purse with all kinds of identification cards and plastic money and so on and it
is difficult to put it inside this particular area of dhoti called ‘konthala’
(konthala, which means kon-thala which means angle (kon), head (thala) for the
loose end on the left around the waist could be pulled out like a triangle to
make a bundle out of it). Even today there are people who use a particular sort
of underwear with a pocket to keep their valuables. Using it often creates some
social embarrassment as you have to lift your dhoti in order to take out the
purse. While Malayalis are wary of doing it the Tamilians do it so happily and
liberally for them dhoti is a necessary evil around their underwear which is
their real pride.
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| Dr Amritjude Vijayan |
Amritjude rides
the bike with a lot of care but my hands are firmly gripped at the small back
support additionally fitted there. Alamcode is a place that we consider as the
territorial limit that we could call as ours. The places beyond that are
foreign lands not only because the highway NH 47 cuts across the place diving
the familiar land and the foreign land beyond but also because the planes end
there; across the road you start climbing to a different terrain with paddy
fields, coconut groves, hillocks, estates and real rocky hills. Today’s
destination is ‘Kadalukaani Para’, which means the Rock from where one could
see the Sea. Generally sea and hills are separated by at least fifty
kilometers. The Kerala landscape is divided into three vertically namely, Mala
naadu, Ida naadu and Theera Pradesham (Mountain land, In between Land and
Coastal Region). We live in coastal region and we could reach the sea with ten
minutes. The in between land is the arable land where mostly one sees paddy
fields. This in between land has mostly planes than undulating areas. Mountain
region in fact begins as an extension of the in between land and then it
becomes the boundary between two states (either Tamil Nadu or Karnataka). In
Sangham literature too the land is clearly divided in to five namely Kurinji
(Mountain region), Mullai (forests), Marutham (paddy fields), Neithal (sea
shore) and Palai (desert). Hence seeing sea from a rock emphasizes the height
of the rock/hill; it could cover a neat fifty kilometer direct in vision. We
cross Kilimanoor, which is famous for Raja Ravi Varma (http://johnyml.blogspot.in/2015/05/foouckling-raja-ravi-varma-and-art.html
) and then pass by Nagaroor. With Nagaroor the climbing starts. Nagaroor means
the land of hills. And in a few kilometers we reach Karette and we hit a small
road on our left. It looks like an apparently small climb and we reach at the
foot of a hill with huge boulders jutting out to welcome us. A small tea shop
at the edge of shows some kind of human activity there. Besides there are some
motor bikes parked. From the size and shape of it I could make out that they belong
to some young boys who have come either for some thrills or for taking selfies.
Confirming my ideas I could see a few boys taking selfies and groupies at a
lower cliff. They do not seem to be interested in climbing the hill. We start
our climbing after putting the bike on its stand.
By the time we
reach the top of the hill, both of us are panting and heaving. It is a steep
climb and the moment we are on the top of it, we keep our foot wear aside and
settle down on the rock. From here we see the horizon line in a distance and
between the undulating line just before it (this must be the tree tops) and the
actual line of sky touching the imaginary line of earth we see a straight line
of a solid grey, which Amritjude says is the Arabian Sea. If you try to train
your eyes you will see the solid grey line. It stands still because we cannot
see the waves. Amritjude mentions that people hardly see that line even if they
know that somewhere there is the sea beyond that undulating line of tree tops.
The vision from this hill top is exhilarating and awe-inspiring. If we are very
familiar with the terrains that we have crossed by now, we could easily
identify the places. But unfortunately both of us are not from this part. Still
using our rudimentary understanding of the locale and geography we start
identifying places. We hear the devotional songs coming from various levels. At
times we feel that is coming right from inside the gorge down there. At times
it comes from some far off places. Sometimes the voice of the singer is so
clear that we think that there are some loudspeakers fitted at the nearby
trees. There is a tree growing from down and reaching further above the hill
top and as I raise my head I see three loudspeakers perched on the branches of
it. They are silent and the very look of them tells me that they have been
dysfunctional for quite some time. Darkness falls slowly. As the bluish misty
blanket spreads over the valleys we see lights coming out from various sources.
The areas which have been a blanket green, now surprisingly in the darkness
comes distinctively alive through the mist and we see a galaxy down there; a
galaxy of a different kind in which the beings are no longer alien but could
turn into alien at any given time. They just need to be given some reason to
fight with each other. There in the sky, at the clear patches of deep blue and
grey with red borders stars try to flicker as if they were seeking out
attention. We sit there still, silently for a long time. And then we start
climbing down; slowly, step by step. I feel less daring these days and I ask
for help from Amritjude. Finally we are down here. Behind us like the ancient
giants the granite boulders stand still as if they were the externalization of
the minds of yogis who are unmoved by happiness or sorrow, day or night and
summer or rain. Amritjude’s Bullet drills a tunnel into the darkness ahead of
us with its powerful headlight and the engine makes the rhythmic voice of
machine heart. And Kadalkaani Para becomes a silhouette behind us as we wind
the road down.
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