Morgalogue

Aside from the famed Meenakshi mega-temple, rising up out of a warren of hustling streets, like a walled city within a city, first impressions of Madurai weren’t great. Hot from our spiritual investigation in Tiruvannamalai however, Eitan and I were keen to scratch the grubby surface and somehow connect with what lay beneath.

Unsure of how exactly to achieve this, we trudged across town to the tourist office to try and get the lowdown. On the way we were schiestered by a phoney priest who took us on a speed tour of a temple and we left with huge red (and compared to everyone elses, a bit slap dash) bindis on our foreheads.

At the empty office, the shocked official, who’d probably just woken up, shook our hands and introduced himself to our foreheads. Eitan dived straight in:

“We’ve just arrived and we’d like to know what’s going on in town ?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing to see, nothing to do ?”

“No.”

“Nothing ? So we should just take the first train out of here ?”

“Yes.”

A strange response. After some persuasion however, he translated the local newspaper ads for us, but he was right. In terms of events where we might see Maduraians doing whatever it is they do, there was only the ‘Ideal Homes Exhibition’, which would have been ideal but we got sidetracked by better things.

In the end we needed no assistance. Madurai drew us away from the temples and bland shopping streets though narrow passageways that led to a residential backstreet world where the everyday life was impossible to side-step.

As I’ve said before, I love detail. Some people are drawn to simplicity but in the case of cities at least, I’m drawn to complexity. There’s something about Madurai that would appeal to a Bladerunner fan. It’s a very old and (once) important city. What stands today is a concoction of continually re-appropriated spaces - the modern and impermanent overlapping the ancient - all equally ‘lived-in’. For example, a crumbling old temple outhouse, now used as a clothes market, boxed in on 3 sides by shops and housing of differing age and construction. The railings strug with lights and stall canopies. A gleaming display of stainless steel pots, handcrafts and cheap electronics littering the pavement and shop signs hanging from old statues. Street surfaces change from tarmac to dirt road to ancient granite paving slabs in a pattern that doesn’t match the buildings crowding in around them. Complex. Functionally dysfunctional. A city of perpetual squatters. I love it.

A couple of really nice rickshaw drivers really opened the city up to us. One took us to meet banana merchants, round a small cotton weaving factory, a bamboo yard,  a brass pot formers and to meet a very excitable group of sari seamstresses. Another, Krishnan, took us to meet cow wrestlers, to a flower market and a village temple on the outskirts of town. It was Shivaratri, a big day on the Shiva devotee callender. I’m not sure how much bearing this had on the holy circus puja we evesdropped on. It was wild.

Women were becoming sponaneously possessed. Suddenly breaking from the ’seen and not heard’ female convention, they would start provocatively whooping, dancing and confronting people, wild-eyed, with what were apparently prophecies. Crowds gathered round them and took turns to tell them of their personal problems for which the women blessed them. When they were drained of celestial energies we saw them slumped on the ground being fed water by friends and relatives.

Our back, goats and chickens were being sacrificed. I can confirm that headless chickens do ‘run about’, attempt to fly and can even cluck (!). The beheaded goats even had a leg removed, presumably to stop them running away.

Men, women and children were having their heads shaved to the scalp and painted yellow. Newborn babies were being carried several times around the inner sanctum in a kind of ornamental sling.

Fascinating, ritualistic and very different from the introspective goings on in Tiruvannamalai. Hinduism really is the broadest church imaginable.