the truth is, i didn’t look that much different after the shave. (photos courtesy of james)
the following day, we procured a car at our hotel to take us to the sri venkateswara temple, on the hilltop village of tirumala. the first order of business was to have our heads shaved, or “tonsured” as they call it. because so many pilgrims come to tirumala every day, there are a number of haircutting halls at which you can have your head shaved for 10 rupees. at each one where we stopped, however, our driver told us it would be a 2-hour wait, until he found someone who would take us immediately, for 200 rupees each. james and i considered our situation; we could have waited the two hours, if that’s what it really would have taken, but we knew it was more likely that our driver was simply ripping us off; and he had conveniently poor english comprehension skills when we tried to argue this point with him. in the end, we decided it wasn’t worth the time and aggravation, so we took care of business and then went to a more crowded hall to photograph other people being shaved.
after this, we joined the “special” line to see the god at the temple. most pilgrims will wait 8-10 hours in line for a two-second glance at the god, but visitors who are willing to pay 300 rupees can get into the special line that takes only 4-5 hours. however, we were there on republic day, a national holiday, so even the expedited line was estimated to take 6-8 hours. we moved 20 feet in one hour, so we gave up and took some more photos around the temple before heading back to town. i wish i could say i took some amazing photos here, but i think i was too busy rubbing my newly-shorn head to really concentrate on my camera. when i went shooting back at the sri govindarajaswami temple that afternoon, however, i took my hat off; and after that, i didn’t have to lift my camera, because the indians wanted to take their pictures with me.
my friend james and i decided to travel to tirupati, in andhra pradesh, to visit the sri venkateswara temple, which is one of the largest pilgrimage sites in india. as those of you who have seen chris rock’s movie good hair may remember, india exports tons of human hair to the west for hair extensions; and a lot of that hair is collected at the sri venkateswara temple, where the pilgrims shave their heads out of humility before they visit the god. the hair gets bought up by exporters, and they sort it, wash it, and prepare it for sale. this is a big business; so james and i decided, what the hell, let’s do it too.
the day we arrived in tirupati, we walked around the town and took some shots outside the sri govindarajaswami temple (sort of as a warm-up), noticing the numbers of men, women and children with tonsured heads; then we went down to the train station, to watch the pilgrims come and go, and to get more photos.
a store selling flower wreaths and other religious goods outside sri govindarajaswami temple; a woman selling human hair; and families of pilgrims who have donated their their hair (i didn’t ask how mom got out of shaving her head in the second group).
an abandoned temple chariot (used for carrying statues of the gods) by the side of the road in pudukottai; detail. and no, i don’t know why this is sitting on the side of the road, but it obviously had been there for a while.
the final post of the jallikattu series: i started out on wednesday morning with the decision to take the state highways, rather than the national highway, back to chennai; taking these roads, i would see the smaller towns and villages of the region. the first stop was thirupattur, where i’d seen the m.g.r. posters the day before. there was a restaurant in town that, according to my companions of the previous days, served the best roti and mutton (goat) stew in the area. when i lived albania, anytime i drove south with the mapo team, we would stop in lezhë to eat spinach pies (byrek) at a roadside stand where all the truckers ate, so i looked forward to having a similar gastronomical adventure in tamil nadu.
the food did not disappoint; even though the chunks of meat in my bowl were mostly kidney, the stew was rich and savory, and the roti were warm and flaky. i debated having a second bowl, but i wanted to get on the road, so i paid my bill and headed back to where i’d parked. as soon as i got to the car, however, i felt everything in my stomach and intestines take a two-inch shift south. after a second of panic, i coolly began calculating exactly how far i might be able to drive, and what kind of bush or ditch i would need to find when i finally had to pull over.
fortunately, everything found a new sense of equilibrium after a few minutes, so i was able to proceed confidently. the first significant town i found was pudukottai, which had been the capital of a princely state of the same name from the 1600’s until independence. it was pretty sleepy when i drove through, and the temple was closed for lunch, so, after taking a few snaps of the town, i drove on. i considered stopping at thanjavur, which i’d visited once before (and i just now realize that i never posted any of those photos – those will come soon), but decided it would be better just to get onto the national highway, as i was getting tired. i headed in the direction shown on my smartphone’s gps and within half an hour was completely lost. this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because i soon drove into thiruvaiyaru.
thiruvaiyaru is another quiet town, but – as i subsequently found out – it is nonetheless very important culturally. there is an ancient shiva temple there (which i didn’t know to look for) and, according to wikipedia, it’s as holy a city as varanasi, and pilgrims cleanse their sins by bathing in the river. (there were no pilgrims in town when i was there, and all i saw by the river was people washing their clothes.) the city was also the home of thyagaraja, one of the three major composers of carnatic music, and there is a festival there every january. i’ll have to go next year.
thiruvaiyaru appears to be a very quiet place.
unlike the larger cities i’d visited, very few people approached me or mugged for the camera. nonetheless, some local women kindly opened a small temple on a side street as i was passing by, so i could look inside, and i was very happy just to wander the few side streets and market adjacent to the river without keeping an eye on the time. finally, i noticed it was after 3.30 pm; i’d been on the road since 8.30 am and i knew i still had far to go, so i got back in the car. i checked the gps, and saw that by staying on the state highways and traveling at the recommended 60 kilometers per hour (40 mph), chennai was five hours away. the entry to the national highway was so far to the southeast that it made no sense to backtrack; it would be more sensible to stay on the local roads until i reached the outskirts of chennai. off i went.
what i hadn’t counted on, however, was that it is impossible to go 60 kph on these two-lane (one in each direction) state highways: between the potholes, the bottlenecks in the villages, the construction, and the buses – both those in front of you and the ones that force you off the road so they can move into your lane to pass on a blind curve – i was often crawling at 20 kph. every 40 minutes or so, i checked the gps to make sure i was still on the right road, and every time, it said that chennai was 5 hours away. this wasn’t looking good.
by around 6.30 pm, it was pitch dark. the blackness was interrupted only by the glare of oncoming headlights, which left me temporarily blind. i was confident enough of my reflexes and my nerves that i wasn’t worried about ending up in some awful accident, but the fact that i had to keep reminding myself that i was this confident meant that the threat of becoming an object-lesson in recklessness was never too far from my mind. after an hour of this, and of failing to find anything i recognized as a hotel, i stopped in vadalur, a large town at the intersection of two state highways. the only hotel sign i saw was attached to a building that was still under construction, so i ate dinner and turned east toward pondicherry.
to get from from vadalur to pondicherry, you have to take state highway 10 through cuddilore. cuddilore was the town where cyclone thane made landfall three weeks before, and the darkened road was full of obstacles – downed tree branches, pedestrians in low-visibility clothing, and motorbikes with burned out taillights – that made the drive a particular study in concentration. i contemplated getting out to take a photograph, but without my headlights on, the image would have looked something like this:
this wasn't actually taken in cuddilore, but it's not like you could tell.
after a few miles of this, a “road closed” sign appeared out of the darkness. i wasn’t alone on the highway at this point, and we all saw two cars coming out from beyond the sign. the more sensible drivers turned off to the right toward who knows where, but the rest of us figured, “how bad can it be if these guys made it through?” and, edging around the sign, soldiered ahead. for the first few miles, the road was no better or worse than it had been, but then the road stopped completely, and we were confronted with a single rutted dirt path twisting its way through a site full of concrete pylons and abandoned construction equipment. “the only way out is through,” i decided. amazingly, the figo didn’t scrape bottom even once.
after that, the road became progressively easier. i come back out onto the main road and merrily dodged oncoming buses until i got into pondicherry and found a hotel for the night. and the next day’s drive back to chennai was a piece of cake.
a parade of brightly decorated bullock carts rolls through the village for the pongal festival
after a less-than-brilliant afternoon of shooting the jallikattu, we drove into a chettinar village to see a pongal festival. the chettinars are a community of traders who rose to prominence during the 19th century, building businesses and trading overseas. they built splendid houses for themselves, but many of the wealthy chettinars now live in the major cities or overseas, returning to their villages only for special occasions. pongal is the harvest festival, and in a typical celebration, people cook a rice porridge of the same name. the community pongal festival is a great excuse for a get-together (and an opportunity for the single young men and women to size each other up).
the best way to describe the festival is “smoky.” pongal is cooked over charcoal flames encased in what look like old coffee cans, and there were well over 100 fires lit when we arrived. it’s considered good fortune when the pongal begins to boil up and over the rim of the pot, so i included a shot of that below. almost all of the participants were women, either young or old; i saw only one man cooking, and he was well past the marrying age. we walked up and down, taking shots until nightfall.
note: i am editing the format of the blog, so it should be easier to read. send comments if it’s still a problem.
tuesday: the date was 17 january, and we headed out to a second jallikattu in the village of siravayal. on the way, we stopped for breakfast in thirupattur (or tiruppattur), which is a relatively large village in the area, and the posters hung all around town trumpeted that it was m.g.r.’s birthday. m.g. ramachandran (17 jan. 1917 – 24 dec. 1987) was a hugely popular tamil film actor who became a major political figure in tamil nadu. he joined the tamil-oriented dmk party, becoming its spokesman, before creating his own competing party, the admk (later aiadmk) in 1972. he became tamil nadu’s chief minister in 1977 and served until his death 10 years later. when he died, there was rioting in the streets for days and one mourner even set himself on fire in mourning.
the leaders of both the dmk and the aiadmk, the two largest tamil parties, came out of the tamil film industry, and they go for big splashy posters; moreover, it is common for jayalalithaa, the actress who took over the aiadmk after m.g.r. died, to put pictures of m.g.r. and of periyar, the founder of the dk tamil rights movement (from which the dmk sprung), on her posters to advertise her legacy. anyway, given m.g.r.’s enduring popularity, the aiadmk, which currently is in power, wasn’t going to let the day pass by unnoticed.
i am consistently fascinated by tamil political advertising.
anyway, back to the jallikattu. yesterday’s jallikattu was a relatively controlled affair, but during today’s jallikattu, in the village of sarivayal, the bull owners simply let their bulls loose in a field packed full of cars and spectators. the contestants would form a circle around the bull while it was tied up, with the audience surrounding them or watching from panel trucks; the owner would untie the bull; and the bull would run for it while the guys tried to grab it. in fact, as we pulled up to the field, we saw a bull come crashing through the brush and dash across the road.
given that the bull had to dodge the contestants, the spectators who were too reckless to stand back, and the parked vehicles, the opportunities for mayhem were enormous. since we were keeping a safe distance, the challenge for us was to figure out, from among all the trucks, where the next bull would be released; predict from the arrangement of people and vehicles where the bull would run; and then run to get there in time. not surprisingly, this wasn’t very easy, so most of my shots ended up looking, at best, like this:
the bull is released and, after menacing the crowd, dashes off between two trucks parked on the opposite side of the circle from where we were standing.
this isn’t to say that i didn’t get some interesting shots; i just didn’t get very many, since as soon as the bull got into any kind of tussle with a contestant, the crowd would immediately swarm in and block my next shot. the last bull of the day did break in my direction, so with the distance i had given myself, i was able to fire off some good shots before i had to get out of the way myself. i was using my long lens, of course, but if i could have shot with a short lens, i’d have captured some award-winning shots. not that i’d have lived to see them, of course.
this past week, i drove down to madurai to attend two days of jallikattu – an indian bull-taming contest. in a jallikattu contest, young indian men try to grab a bull by the hump on its back and hold on for as long as possible. traditionally, indian men would take part in a jallikattu as a test of strength, or to win the hand of prettiest girl in the village. the season begins after the pongal harvest festival in mid-january, and the bulls that are trained for jallikattu come from a specific breed of cattle known for its pugnaciousness.
sunday: i drove down from chennai that morning, taking the national highway, which is a surprisingly wide and smooth road. at a leisurely pace, the trip took me seven hours, which was what i’d expected. the hotel i had chosen for my stay was a cheap one which had originally been selected for a jallikattu group trip sponsored by the photographic society of madras; the trip was cancelled, but i decided to go on my own to meet two members who already were in town, and in keeping with the spirit of the adventure, i decided to see what a 900 rupee ($19) per night hotel was like. i was shown to my room and i saw the blanket crumpled up at the foot of the bed along with the dirty sheets. the clerk assured me that the sheets had been changed, but a 20 rupee tip to the bellman ensured that i got fresh sheets – in other words, i took the room anyway. this is what i wanted to experience first-hand, after all, and i had my own roll of toilet paper; with the addition of clean sheets, a firm mattress, and reliable hot water, what else did i need? i didn’t notice the long black hairs on the floor until later, but by then it was too late. the fact that the elevator across the hall from my room played a tinny version of beethoven’s “für elise” whenever anyone left the door open or pushed a button, and did so long into the night, was just an added bonus.
monday: i met my one of my companions, named narayan, and we set off for the village of palamedu, where the first jallikattu would be held. on the way, narayan explained that in olden times, there’d be just a few of the village strong men who would take part in the competition, but nowadays any number of drunken guys take part and crowd in on the bull as soon as it’s released from the gate. once it looks like someone has a good chance at catching the bull, the others are supposed to back off, but it’s still a mad crowd. i asked narayan whether people got injured, and he responded “yes, and sometimes guys even killed.” he stopped for a minute. “no, every time.”
we arrived at the village and walked to the arena. palamedu has one of the more famous jallikattus in tamil nadu, so it has a small permanent structure built in the center of the village, but the event has grown so big that they extended it with bamboo stands and chain link fencing. i am terrible at estimating distances, but i’d say that the extension ran about 150 yards long and 40 yards wide. there was coconut matting spread over the first 100 feet of the arena, and i subsequently found out that this was the official catching area: the contestants had to grab the bull before it ran past the matting, or the round would be over and the bull would be free. unfortunately, i didn’t know this sooner, because after narayan conducted a little negotiation, we took a space in the one of the viewing stands, and we were a good 30 yards beyond the matting’s edge.
after we settled in, the 80 or so contestants ran onto the field. each of them had been given a green shirt so the judges would know who was allowed to be in the arena. (whether any of them had to pass a sobriety test before they registered, i can’t say.) we watched from the stands for about an hour, and each round followed one of three patterns: the bull would come out, half the guys would crowd in on it while the other half ran away, and then either (1) one or two guys would try to grab on, and one would maintain his hold; (2) one or two guys would try to grab on, they’d get tossed off, and the bull would break through the crowd and run across the matting; or (3) none of the guys would get close to grabbing the bull before it got away. while this was happening on the field, i added my own pattern, in that during each jallikattu round, i had to push back against the short drunken guy who came in 15 minutes after the start of the event and decided to squeeze himself between me and the pole i was leaning against. he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. the crush of people was bad enough – the stand owner didn’t limit the number of people he let in – but having to fight off some guy who was trying to wedge his entire body into my butt cheeks while his hot, beer-soaked breath stained my neck … let’s say that i now understand how some of the girls felt at my fraternity’s parties.
the bull comes out, and a number of contestants immediately fall upon its neck and back; by the fourth frame, one guy has emerged with the best claim to the bull’s back, and in the fifth frame, he appears to have control, but by the sixth frame, the bull is fighting back. the bull throws him by the eighth frame and he’s down in the ninth, but he has held on long enough to claim his prize (and walk away unhurt). total time from start to finish: one minute, nine seconds.
so, what makes these bulls so fierce? as i noted above, the bulls are bred for their fighting ability; the owners train them and give them special feed to make them strong. however, in the past, the bull owners would increase the bulls’s anger by rubbing chili powder in their eyes, getting them drunk, or clamping their testicles. in response to the complaints of animal advocates (including blue cross of india), the government began to impose restrictions on the jallikattus, and all of these types of practices are illegal. there were three veterinary vans on the grounds and the animals were watched carefully while they were in line for their turn in the arena (there were 500 bulls, so the line was pretty long). everything seemed pretty legit. still, even in a non-enhanced state of excitement, the bulls can do some damage, and all during the contest, a snippet of tom lehrer’s “in old mexico” kept coming to mind:
the moment had come, i swallowed my gum we knew there’d be blood on the sand pretty soon the crowd held its breath, hoping that death would brighten an otherwise dull afternoon
a lot of guys did get tossed but we didn’t see any real injuries. one guy get hooked by a bull’s horns but, miraculously, the bull only caught his shirt and didn’t rip his back open. in the sequence below, a contestant had to get carried off, but from the grins on his friends’ faces, i assumed he wasn’t hurt too badly:
and what does the winner get for catching the bull? in many cases, the prize was a bicycle, although there also were a few large cooking pots and bureaus. (if the bull won the contest, the owner might collect the prize instead.) coupled with the pride of taming a bull, for these village guys, the prize was a big deal; i’m just not sure it’d be worth getting gored or stomped.
there is a lot more i could have said about kerala, particularly kochi (cochin), where we spent the first night – it’s a lovely town on the water, it has a colonial feel, it was a center of early jewish life in india (there is still a “jewtown” with an old but still functioning synagogue that has just six members left); we also had a relaxing evening on a houseboat, which is what one does in kerala; but abby and i will probably go back there later, so i will do more of a photographic study then.
we ended our trip in mumbai, where we visited the famous elephanta caves, which are enormous caves on an island off mumbai. the caves were carved with statues of gods and demons between the 5th and 8th centuries A.D. the hindus used them for worship; however, the portuguese, upon their arrival in the 1400s, used them as target practice. many of the statues are missing limbs and faces as a result. the light was not good, so i didn’t take many photos.
the final highlights of mumbai were the slum tour and the visit to dhobi ghat. first, in the morning, we visited a slum area of mumbai that houses a huge number of workshops and recycling facilities – textile block printing, plastic bottle shredding, oil can cleaning, paper collecting, animal hide tanning, and so on. the area is so important economically that people commute to the slum from other parts of the city. there also is a residential section composed of two- and three-storey houses that open onto narrow, dark alleys full of possibly less-than-clean water. it’s quite remarkable. unfortunately, the ngo that operates the slum tour doesn’t allow cameras in, “to preserve the slum-dwellers’ dignity”, they say, while i think it’s to protect their photography monopoly. this gets to an embarrassing aspect of a photographer’s mindset, at least for me: the “is it worth going to if i can’t photograph it” syndrome.
in the afternoon, we saw dhobi ghat, one of the great central open-air laundries in mumbai, where workers (dhobis) wash clothes and sheets from hospitals and hotels all over the city. i wasn’t able to go down into the ghat, so i could only shoot from the overpass. again, this was pretty frustrating, but it gives me a reason to go back to mumbai.
elephanta caves: two representations of shiva: one in which he slays andhaka, his son, in a myth that is highly reminiscent of the oedipus story; and one as the trimurti, a 20-foot high sculpture showing the three aspects of shiva (brahma, vishnu and shiva – creator, preserver, and destroyer).
first of all, i have had it with google’s blogger/blogspot service, which causes my computer to crash when i try to upload photos. i’m now on wordpress, which is not as easily customized – at least, not for free – but i have hopes that it won’t keep causing me frustration. and now …
after our time in rajasthan, we flew down to kerala. the highlight for me was the kathakali performance. kathakali is a highly stylized classical dance form that incorporates make-up, elaborate costumes, and very precise facial expressions and body movements. the dancers reenact stories from the mahabharata and other myths. the performances usually last 3-4 hours, but the performance we attended was just a half-hour sample. we also were able to watch the make-up session and look into the dressing room.
actor being made up before the performance; in the dressing room.
a demonstration of the various facial expressions and body movements, with their meanings.
scenes from the performance, in which a demon tries to slay krishna by disguising himself as a comely young woman. in the last photo, the demon has revealed himself in his true form, and krishna is about to slay him.
between jodhpur and udaipur, we stayed in the village of nimaj, in a tented camp overlooking a lake and a bird sanctuary. it was very relaxing after the bustle of the cities. the food was rustic, the rooms were comfortable, they had dogs – what else does one need?
the one full day we spent there began with a tour of the village itself, and then in the evening we took a walk through the bird sanctuary. the village was pretty quiet; the highlight of the visit was the school and then the pottery demonstration. apparently, there once were three potters in the village; now there is only one, and none of his five children plan on taking over the business once he retires. with the cheap availability of plastic and metal containers, there’s not a lot of need for earthenware water pots. i suppose one can find something philosophical or nostalgic to say about this, but is it better to have local potters or engineers? it depends on whether you’re the one who has to be the potter or not.
kids at morning prayers; and kids in the classroom.
the potter at work.
in the evening, we took a walk through the bird sanctuary, led by the camp owner and his dogs. normally, i’m not big on nature photography, but it was rewarding when the birds stayed still long enough to be captured.
