This was technically a vacation, but practically revolved
around one life changing event. While talking about marriage with my
friend many months ago, I remember remarking, "machi, the question of do
I want to get married is not even relevant now. I HAVE to get married".
Eighteen months ago, I somehow felt that the time had come to move from
bramhacharya to grhasthAshrama. Marriage is a fundamental facet of
civilization which performs so many functions. From the indian
perspective, the idea of purusharthas are at its core. Among many other
things, this idea takes base sexual urges and sublimates it by including
it as a valid pursuit -- kAma. But vivAha is not just for kAma. The
main duty of the brahmachAri is to study and obtain knowledge. A
vanaprastha is someone who slowly withdraws from the world, and a
samnyAsi has already renunciated the world. So where are the rest of the
human pursuits like tilling the soil, raising cattle, inventing
technologies, tending to children, building institutions, doing business
transactions, supporting dharma, etc.? These are all the duties of the
grhastha. grhasthashrama is such a huge facet of human life without
which there would be no civilization. Several centuries of knowledge and
learning have gone into formulating this institution for the happiness
& well being of the couple, communal & social
stability, and continuation of the species. We are of course free to
question and reform (in fact it is our duty to do so) debilitating aspects of the institution which have accrued over the
centuries. But we should be extremely careful while questioning it's
fundamental validity.
There are several thoughts and attempted profundity on the
matter (some general and some very personal) which I am unable to weave
into a coherent narrative in this page. I hope to distil some of those in the
future. Here I document some of the events using photos with captions,
observations and descriptions.
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| While watching a tamil movie on the emirates flight, I noticed the images of
hindu gods being blurred at several places. Cant think of a reason other
than islamic-iconoclasm-for-the-technological-age. Thanks to the airline
for helping passengers avoid the unpardonable sin of shirk. |
Bhuthapandy, rivers, rocks and seas: With my brother and cousins, I visited
my village near kanyAkumari before the wedding in shimoga.
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| If ever there is a home, this is it. |
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| If ever there is a home, this is it (same location as the blog's background photo) |
Visiting vivekananda rock is always an
exhilarating experience. The thought that swamiji roamed the length and breadth of the
nation, came to the cape, swam in the rough seas to reach the rock leaves
one awestruck. devi bhagavati smiling at the confluence of oceans,
described with reverence in puranas and itihasas... kanyAkumari is such a
unique place. vivekananda rock is close to my heart also because the
people responsible for its construction started vivekananda vidyalaya,
the school which I was extremely fortunate to go to.
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Why should these men, clearly not tamil and not
very well to do, spend money, time and effort visiting vivekananda rock?
They are not alone. Lakhs and lakhs of such people visit kanyAkumari, rameshwaram, madurai, etc. every year.
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| Can't wait to jump in after roaming around on a hot summer day! |
We
also visited the chitharal jain monuments which is approximately an
hour's drive from thatha's home. A short hike leads us to the top of a hill with
several monuments possibly from the 6th century AD.
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| jainas have a
tradition of nAga worship which they share with hinduism. |
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jainas also have Agama shAstras. Adherence
to Agamas similar to hindu Agamas can be seen here.
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| jainas also have Agama shAstras. The adherence
to Agamas similar to hindu Agamas can be seen here. |
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| mahAvIra with yaksha attendants |
Wedding, shimoga, and beautiful malnad:
A
few friends warned that after stepping into the marriage hall things
can become a blur, and that one may be overwhelmed by the proceedings to
remember anything at all. This did happen at some places, but overall I
was glued into the proceedings. There were two main reasons for this
apart from my alertness after being warned.
Firstly, I knew all the
homa mantras in samAvarantana (the ceremony just before kAshi yAtra
where you take permission from your parents to go to kAshi and study
further) since they were riks from udaka shAnti. So I enjoyed
samAvartana very much. I knew several mantras after that as well, which
kept me engaged instead of passively throwing oblations. Several vivAha
mantras are taken from ekAgni kAnDa which is a collection of many
beautiful hymns. I borrowed the title of this write up from one of them. Couple of friends had recorded the entire ekAgni kAnDa a
few years ago, and I had used the recording to learn some of the mantras
that I did not know.
Secondly, the AchArya who performed the
ceremony knew samskritam. Since we were speaking in samskritam, there
was no need for his broken english or my broken kannada. The
instructions were received and executed smoothly which made both of us
very happy. The wedding guests were also impressed, which added to the general
happiness. Hence this is the first of hopefully many more
instances where samskritam would serve me as a link language.
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| The AchArya joked in english, "You know samskritam. I
know only some-english". |
Most of all, seeing the smile
of my love when I first faced her on the muhUrtam, right before exchanging
garlands was the definitive moment which will remain in my memory forever.
In
the evening on the day after the wedding, we went to mattur. Many people were
puzzled at my insistence to go there, but I nevertheless dragged my newly wed
wife, parents and brother along with me. This village is ~7 km south of
Shimoga and is famous for having several samskritam speaking families.
Thanks to my samskrita bharati friends, I had the contact of a
samskritam teacher (girish) in mattur. Despite the short notice, he
welcomed us into his home and spent close to two hours talking to us and
taking us around the village. From my estimates,
there are around 100 families which speak in samskritam also. I say
'also' because the mother tongue of these families is sanketi, which is a
mixture of tamil, kannada and samskritam. This language is spoken since
these families migrated from senkottai several centuries ago. sanketi
does not have a script, and its speakers do not want it to go away.
Hence they continue speaking it. We discussed about the village, its
history, the start of spoken samskritam in the village, etc. Then we
stepped out, went to the banks of tunga where many were performing their
evening sandhya.
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| Everyone there was a scholar, and I felt lucky as well as out of depth
asking them questions. One of the scholars who spoke to us was a
vedantin. Like many others in the village he had learnt directly from his father. He made some
interesting observations about the pursuit of truth for the sake of
knowing it versus the pursuit of material goals. He used the analogy of
pursuing pure science versus making gadgets out of scientific discoveries.
The mindset of a vedantin is a very different, elevated mindset. |
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We met
some kids who were going back home after a game of cricket. They too
spoke good samskritam.
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The next couple of days
were spent in traveling to the homes of relatives in kadasur, yavagode,
visiting temples in shringeri, kollur, etc. In these sparsely populated
villages, the families own land, grow their own food, milk their own
cows, and make every possible dish from jack fruits. The main source of
income is arecanut farming. We left with beautiful memories of eating delicious
food, speaking in broken kannada to lovely kids, kids replying in
broken english, visiting temples and picking fruits from trees.
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| yogAsanas in vidyAshankara temple in sRngeri. The temple was built by vidyAranya--guru of the founders of the vijayanagara empire (harihara and bukka) |
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| nAvalpazham harvest |
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| blackberry harvest |
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| one more vAndu/kutties photo |
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| Neighbours you get in the western ghats |
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| Back home in chennai |
