We Took a Break.

So, remember how we told you how much we love travelling at Indebo? Well, this time we took all that love one notch up – we decided to put together a trip for all our staff at the office. Following a lot of arguments, we figured the one place where such a large group could peacefully relax and let their hair down could only be Kerala. It’s the Malabar, after all – blue water and blue skies, that is, if you manage to see past the deep green foliage above your head, and a significantly relaxing cultural atmosphere. By the time we set off from Delhi, everyone was basically looking forward to some delicious food, some simple travelling and a lot of bonding.

At first glance, the first day of the itinerary looked simple – getting  off the flight at ten, with the next  four hours earmarked as “local sightseeing around Cochin”, following which would be a lavish lunch. Only, that wasn’t entirely accurate – it came with a twist! Once everyone was out of the airport, they were handed an envelope each. A solitary card inside carried the name of a spice – the Malabar was also spice country, after all!

Historically speaking, it is practical knowledge for Malabari chefs – want some spices, get to Alleppey! Anyway, the ones who got the same ‘spice card’ then made a team – so we had six in all. Garam Masala, Red Chillies, Bay leaves, Yellow Turmeric, Green Cardamom and Black Pepper – our six teams then got into their coaches which dropped them off at different points around the city with one line of a clue each.

Indebo Staff at Cochin Airport

Yes, this was the madness behind the innocent itinerary! Inspired by the popular show ‘The Amazing Race’, our organising team had decided to put together a hunt of our own. Within the hour, there were six groups of Indebo staffers chasing down clues across Cochin – clues included everything and anything historical. From one of the oldest churches in the countries (Santa Cruz), sari weavers in Ernakulam district, the famous Cochin Synagogue and one of the oldest gold craft showrooms – clues were scattered everywhere that required the teams to fish deep and think hard. While some searched for the guide who held the next clue at Santa Cruz, others decided to talk to the salesmen and craftsmen in order to scoop out the other clues.

By the time all the clues were discovered, the last of which was the same for everyone – the link to the place where lunch was scheduled – it was the Green Cardamom team led by Ibotombi Singh that had emerged the clear winner. As the rest of the teams trooped in slowly, signs of the gruelling challenge showing on their faces, a large container of Biryani was brought in to be plated. Both relief and satisfaction lined everyone’s face. And based on the responses we got to a review questionnaire after the trip, this meal was rated as the best – not just because it was simply outstanding but because the treasure hunt had made sure everyone was hungry enough to love each and every bit of the lunch.

Indebo Staff at Kathakali performance

That evening, at Casino hotel, all the ladies were handed saris and the men were given mundus – both traditional pieces of Malayali clothing which was also our own dress code for the Kathakali performance scheduled at Fort Kochin at night. The expected unease with such traditional clothing from people mostly used to western formal wear was nowhere to be seen – everyone seemed to be in the mood for challenges and they pulled the garments off in style. Their grace took our hosts completely by surprise – at the Kathakali auditorium, the manager actually asked how many of us were from Kerala itself. He couldn’t believe the answer!

Everyone got a short lesson on make-up art before a Kathakali performance, one of the most crucial ingredients that requires an exceptionally firm and artistic hand. The performance itself was followed by dinner at the Brunton Boatyard – a fabulous place right next to the sea. Given all this activity, we were sincerely hoping the excitement didn’t wear off by the next day – and we were pleasantly surprised.

Everyone seemed ready for another go by breakfast next morning – and this time our destination was Vaikom and Kumarakom. We stopped to take a walk through the large yard and lawns at the famous Sree Mahadeva temple on the way before splitting up into two teams – this time, for sharing time between the activities planned for the day. So while one group went off to learn about coir making and coconut processing, the other got canoe rides through the backwaters, taking notes on fishing and toddy-tapping. A couple of hours later, the groups switched amidst excited conversations about tasting local toddy and shopping for coir handicrafts.

Lunch was scheduled at the village residence of one of Indebo’s oldest associates in Kerala – the meal, served on banana leaves, included all kinds of Malayali delicacies, topped off with generous portions of banana fritters. Needless to say, this meal came a close second on the best meal question in our official review. We spent that night at the beautiful Coconut Lagoon resort, after watching the sunset on the backwaters from the roof of a houseboat on Vembanad Lake. This short cruise got everyone in the mood for more time on the lagoons the following day.

Vembanad Lake is part of a cosy waterway leading to Muhama – so we set off next morning on a luxurious houseboat along the waterway. The smell of spices floated off from the villages lining the waterway and we had cheerful exchanges with school kids on holiday who were lazing by the banks – in India, curious travellers always give kids a reason to share a joke or two, followed by splits of uncontrollable giggles!

Serene Lands of Alleppey

By early afternoon, we had finished off a sumptuous meal on the houseboat and landed near Alleppey. Since the evening was free, many took off to shop immediately – from banana chips, sarees, trinkets and nuts to the conspicuously huge umbrellas and school bags, everyone had an interesting selection of purchases. The bout of shopaholism soon gave way to beach chairs at Marari beach resort – a luxury that no one had in the last two days.

Before dinner, we had scheduled another exceptional performance – Kunchan Nambiyar’s legendary compositions as an Ottam Thullal. The other two types of the Thullal are the Seethankan Thullal and Parayan Thullal. While most didn’t understand the Malayalam poetry, the element of satire and ridicule was lost on none – Nambiyar’s excellence as a popular poet revealed itself through the performance as the fourth wall was made to seem like a nonexistent category – the dancer made different parts of the whole auditorium a prop to his art. From the intermittent swearing and the lyrical exposition, there was everything that Ottam Thullal is known for. Such was the energy in the performance that even the audience’s laughter became an accessory for the dancer on various occasions. Memorable wouldn’t even begin to describe the evening – no one could stop talking about it even after dinner.

Next morning was our last day in Kerala. So we decided to pick up bicycles and ride through the famous fishing villages near Mararikulam. Those who weren’t bicycle enthusiasts decided to either laze by the swimming pool or take a wonderful Heritage Walk. This heritage walk was organised by the Ladies’ Wing of the local chapter of the Lion’s Club. Under the banner of ‘Preserve Alleppey’, Mrs. Rani John works with other members to archive and preserve the oldest buildings in the town and promote cleaner streets and neighbourhoods. The Walk included both small and big aspects of the town – from coir-making units and churches to heritage buildings made from stone imported from Surat in Gujarat during the heyday of Gujarati mercantilism in the region.

By the evening, we had even managed to find people enthusiastic for a yoga session with a well known yoga practitioner – the whole day seemed to be about rejuvenation. But our excitement was yet to come undone – there were still some plans left to be unpacked. Mr. Verghese, the Administrative head at our office in Delhi was given a birthday party that took him completely by surprise! While he was summoned by our Managing Director under the pretext of official work, our office team put together a lavish party, complete with party hats and masks – leaving Mr. Verghese to find himself in the middle of a surprise carnival in his honour. The party was also an occasion to give away awards to the team that won our crazy Amazing Race which was then followed up with yet another surprise! Most people felt that it was unfair that Rajesh had to be away on this staff trip on the day of his wedding anniversary – dedicated that he is to his work; we figured it would be momentous if we celebrated his anniversary with him! Rajesh couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw what everyone had got him – a model replica of a famous houseboat with white sails from the workshops along the backwaters in Alleppey.

The drive to the airport at Cochin next morning was a sleepy one. High and dry after the previous night, there were a lot of good dreams to have in the days to come. Such is the nature of the travel bug – it leaves for a while, only to return again with something more novel than the last time.

Self Driving in the Himalayan Range

It’s not the first thing you think of when you think – India. In fact, it may not even be amongst the first ten things you think of. And yet, there are those who love it and devotedly look forward to it in India. No, we’re not talking about snowfall! We’re talking about self-driving across the subcontinent.

Not the American way – with trailers and a thousand miles of black road, shimmering in the sun! Here, we take SUVs and pack off across several kinds of roads – the dirt, the stony, and the wet and yes, the shimmering strip of metalled black. To give you a short glimpse into what we’re talking about, we decided to write about our last self-driving trip that began at Shimla and meandered its way through Spiti valley to finally culminate in Leh, the nerve centre of Ladakh.

Self-driving is an extremely rare indulgence in India owing to the technicalities involved – in today’s travel industry, we remain a leading customised service provider for this form of leisure travel. Here’s what it takes for a visitor to take a car and explore the country on their own – a specific vehicle that’s either a 4x4 or a 4x2, depending on road conditions, that comes with an exclusive 1N – yellow tinted number plate. We add several other features to the setup – for starters, a state of the art walkie-talkie communicator for driving in regions without telecommunications access, backpacks fitted with oxygen cylinders for extremely high altitudes (especially necessary if one leaves the vehicles at a certain point and chooses to trek or ride a bike for some distance), and a substitute driver from our company who can step in for you in case the fatigue seeps in. Before beginning, however, there are several mandatory procedures that need completing – since cars have certain components which are non-insurable (e.g. headlamps), a set of pictures of the car are attested to by all parties at the time that the cars are handed over which is then followed by a complementary demonstration on driving ethics and rules in India.

After we had put all these things out of the way, the bunch of driving enthusiasts decided to step on it. Driving for about 6 hours every day, the set of six vehicles reached the banks of the Sutlej, after passing through Narkanda and a mandatory halt at Reckong Peo, and stopped for two nights at Kalpa – at a lodge nestled within sprawling apple orchards. The mythological cosmos of the town is humbling – while many would suggest waiting to watch the tip of the Kinnaur Kailash (a mountain in the Kinnaur hills that resembles the Mt. Kailash) change colour with the ebb of sunlight, others would find deep meaning in sitting with the chanting monks in the evening. In ways both visible and imperceptible, both Hindu and Buddhist thought have arrived at a confluence of sorts in Kalpa.

Our next stop was at Nako monastery in the tiny town of Nako – another small but symbolically relevant stop in this part of the Himalayas. At Nako, beyond the soaring willows, lies the mystic Nako Lake – believed to be a site where the Guru Padmasambhava pronounced several principles of Tibetan Buddhist faith. For Buddhists, the site remains one of mystery and belief – even the caves in the hills surrounding the lake are believed to be places where great penance and meditation gave way to great knowledge. The road from here went further up the altitude towards Kaza – a route that is lined with famous monasteries like the Tabo monastery and the Dhankar Gompa.

At Kaza, for the first time perhaps, can one find comfortable lodgings – given the nature of the terrain and the niche popularity of self-driving and biking in the subcontinent, most lodges in region provide bare minimum services which are a far cry from the comfort of more popular tourist destinations. To travel here, and especially to drive in these mountains, the discerning traveller must look to both love the excitement of the terrain as well as persevere with it.

The Banjara Retreat at Kaza gave our eager drivers some time to unwind – hot water bags found their way into beds and time seemed to slow down with the hot shower baths. With some fresh dinner, everyone took to the night since the next morning was going to be another long day of driving. The road to Jispa goes through the Kunzum pass – the mouth of the beauteous Spiti Valley –which means that the highest altitude along the road could go up to 4555 meters before descending to about 3142 meters at Jispa. There is the option of taking a slight detour to Chandra Tal – the celebrated lake, famous for its still reflections of the moon on a full moon night, which rises out of water from a hidden underground source and lends its banks to campers every year, from all parts of the world.

The Padma Lodge at Jispa has both tents and buildings to house its guests – with the Bhaga River flowing right by it, we decided to take a day off to simply soak our feet in the river, walk on the river bed and try and catch some fish. We followed this up with taking a walk through the town and the nearby villages in order to get a sense of what life is like here – with scarce supplies of many essential goods and a lack of diverse vegetation. Taking to the road once again, this time we headed straight for Leh via Sarchu, with drivers taking turns at the wheel.

Leh brings to memory everything cold – its climate marks it out as one of the rarest such terrains in the world. Our driving enthusiasts, after a couple of days of acclimatisation, decided to ride higher up into the Himalayas, on our Royal Enfield bikes, to the picturesque Nubra valley. After stocking up sufficient water and food, we took the Khardung La pass, riding along the banks of the Shyok River, to enjoy the cosmic splendour of a silent desert at 10,000 feet above sea level. A visit to the looming Maitreya Buddha statue was followed by some more mountain biking. The Nubra Valley is home to one of the rarest animals on earth – the Bactrian camel – and we even managed to arrange a ride atop these unruffled beasts.

Once back in Leh, part of the group decided to take the route south to Sokar village – tucked away inside Rajauri, this village is gradually gaining a reputation for being a great camping spot. We provided tents to the campers – what followed was a couple of nights of revelry with no one but ourselves around. This journey opened up, for us, a number of stimulating ideas – self driving allows a degree of freedom that other forms of travel don’t. Enthused into making more creative itineraries using unexplored cultural destinations along these routes, our team is now on the prowl.

Since regulations on self-driving in India require specific marked vehicles which are only available in Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore, we’ve decided to open up all these regions to exciting self-drive options. In the coming weeks, we’ll be taking the road from Jaipur to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan and the scenic Konkan route from Bombay to Goa and onwards to the Nilgiri hills. So, if your heart’s racing already, you know where to find us.

Masks - The one and the other

Masks often carry the same function as that of the stage – a plane of space where one can feel as if they were someone or something else. The deep inter-linkages between the role of masks and the place of the stage manifest themselves everywhere. Masks become a metaphor for something that need not even be human – sometimes it could be a superhuman deity while at other times, it could be an animal in the wild. Masks allow that degree of freedom to don one identity over another and tell the tales that regale, horrify and sensitise. Masks are indeed inseparable from the stage – performance is what binds them through disparate cultures and modes of socialisation.

We write in this article about the kinds of masks that play specific cultural roles in different parts of southern Asia. How these masks are made, what they signify and what becomes of them – these are the kinds of questions any empathetic traveller would seek to ask when they encounter such a plethora of masked performances. Here is how we looked through some of them.

The cold nights in Ladakh never impede its famous mask craftsmen – they craft some of the most exquisite masks for annual mask dancing events. One such event that draws huge crowds is the Tsechu of the Drukpa Buddhists – a celebration of the spread of Tibetan Budhhism in other areas such as Leh and Bhutan. While most are annual festivals, the Hemis Tsechu at the Hemis monastery takes place once in twelve years and finds itself a host to vast gatherings of devotees who come to see the dances in order to gain their share of holy blessings. The commemoration of the Padmasambhava who is considered by these sects to be almost as divine as the Buddha is the running theme of these celebrations – the dances depict scenes from his life which range from his birth to his conquests of previously existing devils which enable the spread of his form of Buddhism.

Referred to as the Charm dances, these dance performances have most monks playing demons while the wrathful Guru Rimpoche vanquishes them after duels which are choreographed with great sense of detail. The themes of these dances are an act of memory – to remember the feats of the Guru Rimpoche is an exercise in cementing his authority in Buddhist thought, given the several philosophical and factional tensions within south Asian Buddhist streams. The same articulations of dances with corresponding narratives line the celebrations of Buddhist festivals in Bhutan. Mask makers in Bhutan, right from the valley of Ha, believe in their own act of devotion as that being a supreme one – that they give the face, literally and metaphorically, to the dance form. To labour on the creation of the masks is an act of devotion that is considered a service that brings more blessing than just being mere spectators of these elaborate performances.

Another such instance of intricate mask craft is the Theyyam – a cult of worshippers concentrated along Wayanad, Kannur and Kozhikode districts of Kerala. The Theyyam cult is fascinating in its own right for several reasons – the most important of which is the constructive presence of non-Brahminic and non-Vedic forms of deity worship. The larger chunk of work during ritual processions or regular acts of worship is performed by either lower or middle caste devotees – this makes the institution a unique site of contestation for different forms of power relations. Something that is most crucial to the Theyyam cult is the role of the mask in its ritualised forms of worship – the mask is intended at exhibiting that which is transitional, or indeed, metamorphic. The dance routine begins with decorations of the face using paint that reflects upon the character that the dancer is portraying – colours match aptitudes of the mythical character itself. This segment of a routine that is often close to or more than 12 hours long is called the Vellattam. Transitioning into the next segment, an ornate head-dress is added to the dancer’s performance – this produces an effect of balance between the bodily movements of the dancer and the intended message of the act, since the head-dress is an even more qualified signifier of the nature of the narrative at hand. Balance is even more evident when one sees the movements of the head being co-ordinated with those of the arms – either one of which hold the sword and the shield. Often masks are changed or added while the devotees respond to this open air performance – stories mostly follow standard scripts that have little use of words but pronounce heavily with the use of percussion and other musical instruments. Stories of Theyyam dance performances have characters that number in hundreds – each with a distinct role and distinct relation to some shrine or deity within the Theyyam cult. While many performances happen for popular audiences as Theyyam is not originally rooted in exclusivist forms of temple worship, there is also a certain kind of centrality given to the local shrine in some groups of Theyyam practitioners.

By the final segment of these performances, the face practically looks like a mask in its own right, given the intricate paint-work. There are dancers who also use an entire mask along with the head-dress. While the former allows for a different play on expressions and facial modulations, the latter gives the dancer the ability to focus more on the sword or shield or other props which makes the dance more animated and expressive in a language of its own. One of Theyyam’s most popular narratives is that of a deity, the Sree Mutthappan Maddapura, demanding drink, or at least some form of intoxicant liquor, as part of the offering – this becomes yet another trope for the articulation of popular religion. One of the larger cosmologies that such narratives are a part of is that of the devotee’s need – given the poverty of devotees, it is argued, that offerings of milk, honey and other such things became less feasible, as a result of which, it was the betel nut, the betel leaf, the cannabis leaf or sometimes even drink, that made up for offerings.

One other tremendously enriching art of mask-making finds its home in the old island town of Majuli, sleepily settled within the course of the Brahmaputra. Hailed within monotheistic branches of Hinduism for its Vaishnav culture and its satras, which can be broadly described as monasteries, this island has preserved its craft for centuries. The craft we’re most interested in, here, is practised specifically by some satras, led by their satradhikaris, while others excel in wood-crafts and weaving crafts. Take the instance of the premises of the Shamaguri Satra, where mask-makers work more than 6 hours a day to produce masks of various sizes using cloth, bamboo and clay which are either used for dance performances during Raas festivals, which celebrate Krishna’s life and myths around his character, or sent to Jorhat or Guwahati – centres for exporting these delicate masks. Recently, mask makers have begun making masks to tailor-made sizes depending upon the market they are exporting to.

Most of the masks represent characters directly from the stories of Krishna’s life and that of the different avatars of Vishnu. But since the mukh bhaavanas festivities are the largest but a limited forum for the exposition of these masks, and exports don’t draw in enough for the craftsmen, the mask-makers of Majuli are not very optimistic about their craft. The story is quite the same with other craftsmen on the island – they claim to live in the same hues as the oil paints that their masks are dyed in but reality is starker still. While the government tries to bring Majuli out into a broader audience, it is really up to keen travellers to make sense of what Majuli is about.

In the theme of mask-craft itself, there are many interesting stories to tell. We’ll leave you to tell some of your own.

The ethos of faith in Kerala

Religious life in Kerala is a powerful social force that works out in different equations and dominates most daily affairs, both in the rural countryside as well as the urban bustle. Amongst other things, it helps organise the voices of the multitudes while acting as a restraining presence which makes the role of the religious ethos an extremely complex one. Hence, travelling in Kerala implies within it a subtle negotiation with its many religious norms and practices while at the same time being circumscribed by the architectural beauty and representations of its religious edifices, which is a story that is broadly similar but also hugely different from other parts of the country. We bring you to Kerala in this piece because we believe that the co-existing set of faith systems and religious order forms a backbone to society that is most unique in India – this is perhaps most attributable to the density of the geography of the state and the nature of the competing interests of different strands of religious order.

Hinduism in Kerala flourishes amongst a large part of the population. While orthodox religious life is dominated by upper castes such as the Namboodiri Brahmins, the expansion of several Nair castes and Izhava castes shows the fluidity of Hindu thought. A lot of Theyyam devotees belong to either the Ezhava castes or to previously untouchable outcaste communities, thus lending the Theyyam cult a sense of mass popularity. Namboodiri Brahmins have historically cemented their social location as authorities on texts and religious rites and forms of worship – it is the formal Malayalam language today that bears the signs of Sankritised influences of the Namboodiri Brahmins. However, it is the many Nair sub castes that are of most interest to anyone interested in travelling in Kerala in order to understand its sociological undergrowth.

While some Nair castes (as well as some Ezhava castes) have been famously known to practice matrilineal forms of social organisation, called the marumakkathayam, where the husband has historically come to reside at the parental home of the wife and property has been passed downwards between women of successive generations, there are other sub-castes who have historically practised polygamy as well as strategic exercises in hypergamy – marrying into higher castes like the Namboodiris  in order to establish a significant social partnership as well as rise up the caste hierarchy. While this speaks volumes about the flexible nature of caste hierarchies in southern Asia, it also shows the ways in which the systemic logic of caste Hinduism proliferates. Social life and social spaces are mostly affected by such forms of sociological relations – where questions of gender and language become as prominent as the more everyday questions of movement and mobility.

Historians have been at pain to write the complicated histories of these communities for years now and recent scholarship has shed light on these and many other historical as well as contemporary realities. The Ambalavasis are one of the crucial examples of Nair castes which practice many of the carefully planned religious rituals and follow their own specific rules of social cohabitation.

Forms of direct manual labour such as toddy-tapping, weaving, farm labour and ship-making have been predominant occupations of the Ezhava castes. While their numbers have been large, they have had little role to play in the mainstream cultural formations of Malayali society. The reasons being obviously caste-marked, it is also important to mention that one of the most historic anti-caste struggles in Kerala was led by the Ezhavas – an event widely known as the Vaikom Satyagraha, which brought out the social segregation of spaces along caste lines as an issue and mobilised thousands against the ban on temple entry for Ezhavas and other low castes like the Pualayas.

One of the most prominent cultural roles the Ezhavas took up over time was the mastery of the kallari payyattu, the dance-like martial art form which draws thousands of visitors to every performance. However, it is during the fraught years of colonial rule that many from the Ezhava fold decided to convert to Christianity as a method of escaping the hierarchies of the Hindu caste order – the move meant a strong growth of Christianity in the hinterland of Kerala, although it is a pertinent question in contemporary times that caste has pervaded Christian religious practice as well and many lower castes are not considered fair equals within Malayali Christian societies.

The largest space after dominant Hindu religious orders is that of Islam. More than ten centuries of trade between Arabs and Malayali peoples has significantly aided the growth of Sunni Islam in Kerala, which in turn spawned new linguistic designs among those who attained a grasp of Persian along with Malayalam. Changes in the forms of language is common to every other district across the modern territory of India – however, in Kerala, the distinct influence of Persian makes its presence felt like no other place. While Muslims can also be socially understood to be following caste-marked patterns of interaction, the nature and the depth is yet to be discussed in detail in the works of modern historians and sociologists. Mappila muslims in Kerala are mostly involved in fishing and other small industrial activity. One of the most interesting things to watch is a Mappila wedding where the bridesmaids perform singular dance acts for the pleasure of the bride, which is commonly referred to as the Oppana.

Syrian Christians form another demographic community in Kerala. Followers of St. Thomas in terms of the lineage they trace, these communities found deeper roots with the blossoming of trade relations with the Portuguese traders in the Indian Ocean over the last five centuries. The famous church at Santa Cruz and other such landmarks around the state help organise the Christian community – these are also aided by the welfare work of the church and mission education. The profoundly Catholic faith system, gravitating around the symbology of St. Thomas’ Cross today, has distinct resemblances with its Semitic roots – the act of Baptism continues to carry its Aramaic name (mamodisa). While the Jewish influence was curbed significantly by Portuguese orthodoxy, it also holds true that the long history of the Assyrian culture was bound to sustain itself for longer. It is a pity nonetheless that most of the Jewish people of Kerala migrated to Israel in the last century, only to lead lives at the fringes of mainstream white Jewish society. They left behind a history of division based on colour – the older white Paradesi Jews refused to cohabit with those who were gradually converting – the dark-skinned Malabari Jews. However, the Paradesi Synagogue remains the oldest synagogue in this part of the world in a sober reality where the Jewish community in Kerala faces practical extinction.

While travelling in Kerala, one can also see forms of Jain religious organisation and other smaller faith systems as well. However, what is important for any well-meaning traveller is the sheer concentration of different faith systems across the landscapes, which vie with each other for sustenance and yet coexist in order to shape the everyday of Malayali society. All along the subcontinent, there are different religious mores but it is in Kerala where the density and the compactness of such life is most visible. It is meant to be both educative as well as thrilling for a visitor as he or she travels through the region – witnessing the myriad ways in which the public sphere is influenced by religious thought and faith systems. What may seem superficially suffocating and looming is perhaps what is most interesting about Kerala – its ethos of faiths.

Rath Yatra in Jagannath Puri

Rath Yatra

The month of June is a month of laborious affairs in India – one of the most laborious being the Rath Yatra in Puri. To call it anything short of humungous would be unfair – it is literally the melting pot of the faithful, each of whom stake claim to some part of the massive forty five feet high chariots which they can attempt to pull, albeit for a few seconds. The chariots belong to the deities of the famous Jagannath Temple in Puri – Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra. But more on that later.
The Puri festival has indeed gone global, if one were to go by the numbers of overseas travellers who hit the shores of Puri last month. It is generally argued that the ISKCON’s international outreach has given this festival to a western audience but one suspects there is much more than just that. In any case, the present writer himself has been witness to the Rath Yatra being celebrated in a city as distant from South Asian Hindu faith as Prague in the Czech Republic.
On a tranquil summer day not so long ago, a lazy siesta on one of Old Town Square’s many benches was disrupted by the clanging manjiras of the many Krishna bhakts who accompanied their own chariot (about 20 feet high itself!) down to the banks of the Vltava – not that they could customarily set it afloat but the numbers watching or chanting for the same was indeed a surprise. They didn’t get what they wanted but the point was made – the Rath was no more about Jagannath’s trip to his aunt’s home – it was now a signifier of popular Hindu faith and festivity in a manner much different from the Kumbh or Pushkar.

Sudashan Pahandi in Rath Yatra

So what is Puri about, in the month of Ashad in the Hindu lunar calendar when the moon is at its golden best? It’s an old story which has slowly made its way into the pages of Grandma’s Tales for every school goer in East and South East India – the mighty Jagannath travels to meet his aunt and his queen on this day, thus allowing one and all to view him in all his glory. Jagannath, the limbless god of story books, comes into his own through Vaishnav traditions which borrow somewhat imaginatively from the Skanda Purana and the Rg Veda. The most well-known of the lot is the tale of how Vishwakarma pretended to be a carpenter who arrived at the court of Indradyumna (an otherwise disputed figure himself among Indologists and historians) to carve out idols from a holy log of wood, on the condition that no one else would view his work till it was finished. As is stuff of myth and legend, the condition was broken and the transgression punished – the grand architect vanished without a trace leaving the wooden statues of the siblings limbless, when Indradyumna (or Gundicha, his queen, depending upon one’s source) opened the door to his workshop out of curiosity once the sounds of work had died down.

There are other versions of these tales, depending on whether one factors in the rise of Buddhism in the early centuries of the first millennium A.D – with the spread of Buddhist faith, Puri found newer articulations backed by some more imaginative thinking.

Emerging Devotees flock to pull the Holy Chariots

The most cogent understanding is, in fact, that the Jagannath myth predates these interventions – that is, the Vedic and the Buddhist and even the Jain. Like all dominant religious thought and rituals which need to co-opt and imbibe forms of smaller and less powerful faith systems in order to gain acceptance within larger fora, Vedic writing and cultural production is a resonant story with Jagannath being one instance in a long and fraught history of such ‘assimilation’ – in this case, Jagannath was claimed as an avatar of Vishnu. Combining elements of tree worship along with the cult of the ‘daitas’ as all-purpose servitors, the Vedic intervention brought with it a more ritualised and Sanskritised form of worship. Neem, the tree which Jagannath, Balabhadra and Subhadra are made of, is also a prime constituent of local non-Brahminical and tribal forms of worship – and while the temple does not have an inherent caste hierarchy (which may well be a remnant of Jagannath’s pre-Vedic past), it still is witness to a strict division of labour between ‘daitas’ and the ‘purohits’ who are strict Mahaprastha Brahmins.  
These nine days that the deities leave their abode are considered extremely auspicious. While on a regular day, non-Hindus aren’t allowed entry into the temple, this is one day that everyone seems to be able to partake in the virtues of the holy trio. The Garud-Dhwaja is the official chariot of Jagannath which is followed by the Tala-Dhwaja with Balabhadra and the Padma-Dhwaja with Subhadra. The flags atop the chariots give them their names – each with more than a dozen wheels and a small pantheon of nine blessing deities. These massive chariots are such an exhilarating sight that children save up money over the year or rely on generous grandparents to buy them miniature models of the same – which are then pulled along narrow by-lanes as part of friendly races or just another imaginative game. Craftsmen making these miniature models are their busiest before June – working day and night across Odisha and West Bengal to make sure the models reach the intended markets.

So, the Rath Yatra is not just about Jagannath – it is about a festival that holds different meanings for each of those who partake in it and remains a contested site. For the Vaishnav fold – it is about preservation just as for the Kondhs and other non-Brahminical and tribal communities, it is about memory and the power of myth. For each child, it is an indulgence that he/she will soon grow out of and for all of us who wish to travel to Puri to see what else the Rath Yatra is about – it is an open canvas.

INDIA: A History - by John Keay

Cover Page

John Keay’s ‘India: A History’ is an engrossing read for any lay-reader of history – it uses a wide range of sources and crafts the stories into rather lucid prose. While the book lacks sufficient primary material from the archives scattered across the country, the author seems at ease with collating and substantiating ideas using an assortment of secondary publications. One is even heartened to see the amount of space given to what is termed, for lack of a better word, “ancient” history – something that is not as popular as the period spanning the last 300-600 years, in academic circles of historical study. The book retains its ease with language through the five hundred-odd pages, thus providing its readers with an accessible narration of different historical incidents spanning more than a couple of thousand years.

In addition, it is commendable in terms of its use of pictures and diagrams which manage to simplify chronologies that would be otherwise rather addling – take the case of what Keay calls ‘Other Indias’ or the history of the mainstream nationalist movement, where a diagrammatic representation helps one understand the broad sense of time within which things took shape in just a few moments. The book combines evidence and narrative in a manner reminiscent of the likes of Percival Spear. The book follows his other overviews such as his book on the East India Company – a work which similarly brought together an excellent knowledge of secondary studies and some interesting primary work in order to show the mechanisms of control that evolved with British imperialism.

However, the classicism in the book’s narrative gives way to several gaps – one may even call them silences. Take for instance the notion of an overbearing sub-continental sense of nationality that comes into being with the chapter on Vedic Myths – although the influence of Romila Thapar’s writing ensures that the ‘Aryan’ is represented by Keay with all its flaws as a ‘misnomer’ (ref. Aryanisation) – the understanding of Aryan migration and the hybridity of cultural exchange gets subdued and ‘India’ comes into the fore as a presupposed geographical and political territory. While ‘dasa’ culture finds scant mention, the silence on these early roots of ‘gotra’ and caste bear heavily on the narrative. What is impressive, nonetheless, is that sources are treated as such and not as factual representations while a healthy amount of scepticism lines the use of dated sources.

The author tends to take the scepticism too far as well – describing a ‘nagging problem of Indian history’ to be “light on dates” and “rip-roaring hero narratives” as he departs from the works he owes much to – those of Kosambi and Thapar. While his momentary disregard for “contexts – geographical, social, environmental and economic” seems a bit fruitless, it is further exposed as such when he alternatively sets out to lend “historicity to the hero” but only manages to provide obvious conclusions from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata using basic tenets of source-criticism. He never manages to return to “dates”, settling regretfully for “an entire river basin and a timespan of centuries”.

John Keay

Beyond the ossified understanding of the term ‘India’, he even manages to replicate the biases of his sources on several counts dealing with the period following Ghaznavid influx. Here, he collapses the distinction he held for the Aryan intervention, between “invasion” and “migration” and settles comfortably for “invasion” – a bias long established in colonial historiography. The ‘Muslim’ period is as much a misnomer as is the “Aryan” and this contradiction is evident even beyond William Dalrymple glowing reviews of the book’s impartiality on its back cover. Keay goes on to comfortably summarise and tie up his knowledge of secondary sources in order to gradually start providing accounts of wars and violence in as authentic a manner as he possibly could – while strangely (or not?) the same tone is missing while discussing the Gupta rule and the Aryan intervention itself. The tone of authenticity is substantially suspect because of a lack of references – a cursory look at the list provided at the end of the book will be enough to give one an idea of the problems with Keay’s assumptions and conclusions.

What he seems to miss is an ability to acknowledge that certain things are not so easily explained given that they occurred several years ago and the sources we see today are merely ‘traces of the past’ and not a direct and authentic ‘window’ into the past. Things change subsequently when he deals with the British conquest of southern Asia, which he comfortably again compartmentalises into ‘India’. Taking from the works of C.A. Bayly, Bernard Cohn, Thomas Metcalf and others, he provides a succinct account of events but gives in to the constraints set up by his own ambition for the book – crucial critical perspectives on the political work of Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah go missing while the substantial political interventions of Ambedkar and Periyar are practically absent. Events like the Naval Mutiny and the role of Subhash Bose’s Indian National Army are glossed over. While one can understand this book to be priviledging a longer duration of time that spans the flawed periodisation of “ancient” and “medieval” as against the “modern” which gets a lot of attention by historians, one also must acknowledge the book’s limitations in perspective. The level of criticality to be expected from an author as experienced as John Keay is found wanting.

Having said that, the book makes some things very noticeable in the way that it is divided – the most important being the role of commodities. Salt, rice, metal and other such forms of commodities which allow for different narrations of history through their own trade circuits and registers of labour and cultural value find important mention in Keay’s work. It is now for newer historians to take up the task and add more knowledge to what is already known about the lives of artefacts, commodities and other substances.

With the Thunder Dragon I

a regular sight in bhutan

Bhutan has been described as many things, from the scenic to the authoritarian. It has been made out to be the last “Shangri-La” in different representations by a cross-section of writers, commentators and film-makers. Those who are too taken by its natural beauty and splendour find it an “unspoiled kingdom” while others lament its lack of openness and freedoms given the overarching presence of Buddhist religious life. But this bind, we find, is a rather troubling one. Bhutan for us, replete in its beauty is also a land with its own complexities which cannot be simply wished away or be fossilised in a romantic antique frame. Let’s take one example of the diversity and difference that gets hidden in the romanticised narratives of Bhutan - Its languages and dialects are aplenty although the average version you’ll get is that all Bhutanese people speak Dzongkha. Languages like Lakha, Brokkat, Bumthangkha, Olekha, Chalikha, Tshangla and Brokpakhe and many others often get overlooked as Dzongkha is promoted as the national language.

The example of language is just one way in which we absorbed the overwhelming experience that is Bhutan. Our travels through Bhutan, from the Valley of Ha in the west all the way to its South Eastern borders, brought us face to face with many of the different realities in Bhutan. The valley of Ha is mostly a flat terrain irrigated by the Ha Chu River and it is here that one first realises that the broad assortment of deities in Bhutanese rural life stretches much beyond the formal and more visible Buddhist ones. One of the most famous deities in western Bhutan is the Jichu Drake, the resident deity of the massive mountain with the same name. A hike to Chele La will give anyone a spectacular view of the Jhomolhari and the Jichu Drake. Like most other great natural formations like rivers, aged trees and overgrown medicinal plants, mountains are often treated as local deities. In some cases, these deities and their singular mythical tales have been woven into the narrative of the rise in Buddhism in Tibet but in most others, they remain distinct in their presence within the stories of local village communities and sometimes even the whole valley.

prayer flags on the roadside

The rise of Buddhism in Bhutan in the last millennium is also a story of the gradual overpowering of local deities. Almost every other mythic tale that we encountered around Guru Rinpoche, the young monk said to have schooled at Nalanda and learnt his scriptures in Tibet and then brought Buddhism to Bhutan, is a tale of vanquishing undesirable local deities. Over time, Padmasambahava, as Rinpoche is ritually known, acquired a status that is second only to the Buddha in Bhutanese formal religion. Myths of different monks subduing diverse local deities who were always either too frivolous or unpredictable or unreliable lasted much beyond the Rinpoche stories themselves, as we carefully discovered, and are now part of the official narratives of Bhutan’s history. What was most heartening was that these stories of vanquished local deities did not entirely erase their presence. In terms of how fondly they are held in local cultures, we found many to be quite alive and present just like the formal Buddhist deities, although they are not as popular.

It is in Ha that we witnessed our first local archery tournament. The sport that most men play in Bhutan is also a catalyst for great social interaction. Two teams of thirteen players each battle over a strip of four hundred and sixty feet with each archer getting two shots per round. The teams had their own families and friends and other locals supporting them. The groups of supporters and fans often tried to sledge the other team and pass hilarious comments on missed shots and faulty postures of the members of the opposing team. Intermittent shows of local dances and the regular call of hawkers selling different snacks to the spectators entertained us thoroughly, a lovely distraction from the noise that accompanies cricket matches back home. Some of the dances are also ritualistic ones which are performed on other occasions for different spirits and deities.

an archery match in progress

To help you get a hang of the broad nomenclature, here is our small reference list – ‘Lu’ are mostly aquatic deities residing in the abundant water bodies in Bhutan, ‘Nyen’ are the deities of trees, ‘Tsen’ are the spirits of rocks and mountains and ‘Za’, the deities of different stars and planets. Together, they form a cosmology of faith that is quite complex. One small example of this complexity is the free flowing sexual humour associated with these archery tournaments. The wild and contagious laughter from both men and women that followed someone yelling at their favourite archer in the tournament - “Get that shot right or you will have many lonely nights in bed” – told us that all the religious symbolism around us didn’t quite create an atmosphere of formal tight-lipped reverence. The spirit of the ‘popular’ was well and alive in this case.

We hiked from there to the Taksang Dzong, otherwise called the Tiger’s nest, redone completely after it was burnt, most recently, in a fire in 1997. The hike up the hill slowly unfolds along the way, the spectacular beauty of this dzong, its dusty yellow and white facade shimmering atop a 3000 feet high cliff. Dzongs are like fortresses which also perform important religious functions. Each valley has its own dzong which is the central seat of most annual events. Festivals in Bhutan are placed around a yearly calendar, which depends on the date which the highest authority of monks in the Kagyu order, patronised by the state, decide to announce as the first date of the year. The other dominant order is the Nyingma order, which allows laypersons to perform rituals and is not as strongly hierarchical as the Kagyu Buddhists.

A jeep ride to the famous Punakha Dzong, standing atop the confluence of the scenic rivers Po Chu and Mo Chu, was our next plan. The oldest dzong in the country, this trip brought us face to face with the seat of Buddhist tradition in Bhutan for the last five centuries. The six storey tower dominates the skyline and within it holds massive golden statues of the Buddha, the Guru Rinpoche and the Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, the ruler who built the Punakha dzong and assigned it as the winter capital of Bhutan. Its original sixteenth century structure has been modified over the years, the most notable one being the two cantilever bridges across the rivers leading to the Dzong. From the doors of the dzong, we walked barefoot to the edge of the waters and sat there for what seemed like hours. Time didn’t seem to catch up with the tide of the rivers at Punakha.

We left Punakha for the Trongsa dzong, another extremely intricate structure, knowing that we had just made half our way from the west of Bhutan towards its eastern borders. And as the green and blue became a speeding haze of colour against our car windows, Bhutan seemed much more familiar than when we had first set foot in Ha.