Andal’s Garland

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Mysterious Tirumal

crowned with sacred basil,

honey-sweet, mischief maker.

How did you find me?

Nacciyar Tirumoli 3:2

We placed our trust in the auto driver, who drove us from Srivilliputtur’s train station to the fluoro-blue steps of a hotel on the edge of town. Our room’s air-conditioner worked, which was a plus, even though it sounded like a lawnmower. I unlaced my rucksack and took out For the Love of God. In the weeks since first setting eyes upon her, amongst the stacks of textbooks and trashy novels on the footpaths of Old Delhi, this copper-skinned girl dancing on the cover had taken up residence. She was the first to be unpacked and last to be packed. The book felt as permanent a travelling companion as did Marcus. It was an unsettling and inexplicable thought and I brushed it aside. The room was too tiny.

‘A bed and a bathroom of any description,’ Marcus rationalised with that endearing smile of his, never seeming to break free from its boundaries, ‘is a luxury you and I deserve, Saisha, on the eve of our climb up Chathuragiri. And the advantage of the air-conditioner,’ he went on, ‘is it drowns the thump of music and shouts of men in the sleazy-lit bar on the floor below.’

I threw him one of my smiles across the few square metres of room before opening to a random page.

There is a saying that no matter how much a person searches for a teacher, a guide or a guru, in the end it is the teacher who finds the one who is seeking. I thought about this as I looked at Marcus. What destiny catapulted us into each other’s arms all those years ago? We’d hardly exchanged names, and then we were living together. Sharing life with him was a kind of refuge, despite the challenges. He was my constant and he was kind, in his own quiet way. His mysteriousness drew me in like a magnet, but when he closed his eyes and lotus-crossed his legs, his presence felt more like an absence.

I returned to the opened page on my lap, scanning it for a verse to jump out. Who was this girl who composed these songs? And what was it about her longing and her despair that touched me so deeply? Was it as plain as that eternal conundrum, unrequited love, hers for a god and mine for this man I shared a bed with, but not my body? And why now, just as I am trying to read, does Marcus decide to banter away so uncharacteristically?

His sacred basil garland is all my heart desires. My mind grows wild.

Marcus and I did what we always do in the evening and set off for the local temple. But there were two temples, the hotel manager pointed out. The one he recommended was a temple to Shiva. ‘Inside you will be seeing the famous Nataraja, the cosmic dancing god.’ He stopped to light more incense for the small shrine on a shelf above his cash register.

‘Which way is it?’ Marcus asked. He had already decided.

‘Is that the temple tower we could see from our train?’ I interrupted.

As we curved one last time before the final stretch into Srivilliputtur, I had seen it rising above the town’s trees and tiled roofs, like a rainbow-coloured beacon.

‘No, madam, it is a different one. Twelve tiers this gopuram is having, the highest temple gateway in Tamil Nadu. Walkable distance, go left then left again near the bus stop.’

‘I’m going there,’ I said with a determination that surprised both of us.

Marcus turned right.

A coconut-wallah had set up his cart near a colonnade of trinket shops leading to the temple. I was thirsty. With a smile and a deft machete-whack, the wallah made a straw-sized opening. As I took long sips of its sweet, quenching water, a woman sidled up to me with garlands of green threaded on her arm. The scent of the leaves was pungent and spicy.

‘For god,’ the woman said, holding a garland to my face before the coconut-wallah had a chance to shoo her away.

He cut my coconut in half and carved out a primitive spoon from its husk to scoop out the slippery, transparent flesh. I turned to catch the garland seller, wishing I had followed my impulse to buy one for whoever the god inside was that I was about to meet. But there was another woman swaggering in her place with matted hair falling in thick dusty wads past her waist, her body swathed in faded red cloth hitched up to her knees. I caught a flash of the bangles covering her forearms and felt a kind of foreboding. She seemed out of context, too wild and unfettered for the quiet streets I had walked. Then she was gone—the scent of her heavy on the air for a moment, of sweat and smoke, earth and patchouli.

The temple was unlike the traditional square layout of others we had visited. Its walls were painted with the same red and white stripes, but it seemed more an L-shaped fusion of two temples, not one. I could see the top of its tall tower rising from another side and wondered which entrance to take. There was a sudden rush-rush of wings above me, a flock of white herons taking off from the sprawling branches overhanging the wall beside the coconut-wallah’s cart. Velvet-black wings swirled across the pastel sky and descended, taking the herons’ place. I traced my fingers across the wall’s stones, still warm from the day’s heat. A hush returned, once the fruit bats settled into their upside down roosts. A hush, unlike anything I had sensed in a long, long time.

I followed the length of the wall and came to another entrance. The gate was open. Inside, around an ancient low-ceilinged pavilion, was a garden hedged with jasmine, an oasis of perfumed shade, pomegranate and neem trees, hibiscus and roses. Before entering the pavilion, I glanced up into the quiet of the trees either side and noticed the silhouette of a small temple sculpted onto the pavilion’s roof. Carved into its niche was a painted garden and the figure of a Brahmin priest, his arms outstretched to the baby girl lying in the earth at his feet.