On a Shoestring to Coorg by Dervla Murphy

Author:Dervla Murphy [MURPHY, DERVLA]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRV003040, TRV010000, TRV000000
ISBN: 9781468305739
Publisher: The Overlook Press
Published: 2012-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

10

On the Coast of Coromandel

20 December. Tiruchendur.

Not being blessed with either a good ear or a good memory, I am sorely tried by many South Indian names. But one must look on the bright side. Things could be worse. For instance, until the sixteenth-century Tiruchendur was known as Tirubhuvanamadhevi Chandurvedhimangalam.

The landscape en route from Tisaiyanvilai was flat and harsh; gaunt palmyras stood erect in their thousands everywhere and the dusty grey plain was varied only by acres of thorny scrub, hedges of prickly cactus and occasional fields of plantains at all stages of development. (I am told the banana plant is not a tree but a vegetable which in six months grows from scratch to its full height of eighteen or twenty feet.)

We first saw Tiruchendur’s nine-storey temple from many miles away, over the plain, and by ten-thirty we had booked into the hostel (Rs.2 for a single room) and been told that non-Hindus are permitted to enter the temple only between 3.0 and 8.0 p.m. ‘Fair enough’, I thought; I have always deprecated hoards of camera-clicking tourists swarming through churches during services. Then, after paying our respects to the two sacred temple elephants – an adult and an adolescent – who are elaborately stabled in the precincts, we went to swim off the long, smooth, curving beach.

At one-thirty we made our way to the centre of the town through a mile-long arcaded bazaar that begins in the temple courtyard and is lined with ancient statues of the gods, their stone features blunted by the affectionate caresses of generations of devotees. Tea-shops are interspersed with stalls displaying a scatter of cheap trinkets or a few bunches of plantains and a small tray of fly-blown tidbits, and religious oleographs, framed and unframed, lie on the ground beside shop-soiled bales of cotton ‘going cheap’. According to the temple trustees Tiruchendur means ‘a sacred and prosperous town of Victory’ but nowadays one gets no impression of material prosperity. However, the atmosphere is friendly and the citizens seem in no way predatory, possibly because 99 per cent of Tiruchendur’s visitors are very poor.

It was difficult to get tea as milk is scarce and Indians refuse to credit the possibility of milkless tea. Eventually we found a cavernous eating-house beneath the arcade where a milk delivery was expected within moments, so we sat down to wait. (This lust for tea was caused by my having forgotten to bring our water-pills from Tisaiyanvilai.) The eating-house seemed without any stock of food and, as he waited for something to occupy him, the slim, barefooted serving-boy went to stand before a wall-niche containing a statue of Ganesh and prayed fervently.

‘Indians pray a lot,’ observed Rachel. ‘Why do they pray more than we do?’ To which I replied, rather ambiguously, ‘They are at a different stage of development.’

Happily a water-carrier rescued me by stopping his cart beside us at this moment, to deliver the day’s supply from the well, and Rachel immediately wanted to know why there was gold paint on the horns of the enormous pure white humped bullock.

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