Salt of the Earth

On our travels from Pondicherry back to Chennai we stopped to explore a solar evaporation salt operation. For us, the image of salt is so tightly linked to the cute little Morton girl walking in a light rain with an umbrella it was just mind boggling to traipse about a real salt marsh in a blazing Indian sun.

The vastness of the salting area was equally mind boggling. We scanned the horizon and saw nothing but earthen-carved holding areas filled with briny water. Along the sun-dried mud walkways, small mounds of salt were accumulated by a leathery crowd of men who labored barefoot in the tepid, salty waters.

The water consistency was that of a dingy salt slushy. Standing in the thick solution, the men pulled their long-handled salt rakes across the slush, changing the murky complexion to a snowy white as salt crystals amassed on their flat-bladed salt rakes. A little nudge of a foot was used to move the accumulated salt to cover the long rake blade, and in a graceful swing of the rake a small mount of salt was deposited on the mud walkway. The process (video) was repeated again…and again….and again.

We paused to take some “snaps” of the workers. Through the energy of Joseph, an industrious 14 year old, we obtained an address to which we will mail the photos. We wonder if his ambition will change his fate from becoming a salt raker. Hard to say.

Salt is a mythical substance. So plentiful on the earth…so needed by our bodies…so exploited by the powerful. Chinese emperors as early as 300 B.C. taxed salt at a sufficiently high price that the emperor was able to import salt, sell it and make a guaranteed profit. The salt revenues were used to build not only armies but defensive structures including the Great Wall.

The Romans took a different approach and made sure salt was abundant and available. The first of the great Roman roads, the Via Salaria, Salt Road, was built for transporting salt. At times soldiers were even paid in salt which gave rise to the expression "worth his salt." In fact, the Latin word sal became the French word solde, meaning pay, which is the origin of the word, soldier.

The British followed the Chinese model in India and established with brutal force a state-control monopoly of this vital commodity. Peacefully defying the salt monopoly was one of Gandhi’s non violent protests of British rule.

On 12 March 1930, Gandhi started his famous 240-mile salt walk to the sea at Dandi. Upon reaching his destination, he bent down, picked up a crust of salt, broke the British salt law and rocked an empire.

Pennies for the Pondicherry Pachyderm

Geography Quiz: Where in the world can you be greeted on the street with a smart “Bonjour!”, buy a freshly-hacked open coconut and drink its refreshing elixir from a street cart, and then contribute your temple donation via an obliging cucumber-fed elephant?

We were stumped, too, before our trip to the old French colony of Pondicherry on the Bay of Bengal.

Our weekend getaway to the east coast was filled with great religious wonder and spectacle. We have visited many Hindu temples. Each temple has greeted us with its own personality. We have seen the ancient ruins of the temples in the former capital of the Vijayanagar empire in Hampi, and the near-carnival atmosphere of Chamundi Hills outside Mysore, but we never anticipated finding a personable pachyderm accepting donations from passersby in Pondicherry.
Our elephant encounter was far from intended. We were on our way to visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and decided to walk past a local temple. Areas surrounding temples are typically filled with vendors selling the wares (e.g., coconuts, flowers, garlands, etc) needed for pooja (worship) and we were not disappointed to find a rich array of goods for sale. What we were surprised to find was our pachyderm pal.

We watched with a “we didn’t expect that (video)” look on our faces as people stood before the colorfully decorated elephant with a hand extended holding a rupee coin. Recognizing a coin offered in donation, the elephant would divert his truck from popping cucumbers into his mouth and extend his trunk to accept the coin from the offering hand. It is the custom of temple priests to offer a blessing and apply a bindi to one’s forehead following a donation. Here, once the offering was taken, the elephant would extend his trunk and gently tap the top of the head of the faithful in a blessing-like fashion.

The elephant then deposited the coin with the mahout (elephant handler) and resumed popping cucumbers awaiting the next opportunity to accept a donation and offer a personal blessing in return. Amen….Shalom….and May It Be So!

On the Way to Pondicherry

On Friday, 21 April we flew from B’lore to Chennai, and were met by our dear friends, Ruth and Mani Subramanian. We spent the night at the Guest House on the campus of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) where Mani is a visiting professor. Ruth had arranged a driver for us and they graciously loaned us their car. We headed south to Pondicherry after breakfast on Saturday morning.

Our first stop was just north of Mamallapuram at Tiger Cave, right in front of the Bay of Bengal. We were met and given a personal tour by Coconut Raj, a self-appointed tour guide who lives across the highway from this monument. Tiger Cave, a shrine to Durga, is a 1300 year old stone carving of 11 tiger heads surrounding a stage for dancing. Raj told us they still hold celebrations in front of Tiger Cave from 25 December until 31 January each year (just as the guide book said!). He also pointed out Watchman’s Rock, a 50 ft. high lookout point, and then took us a short distance away from the main grounds to where there were new excavations going on. The tsunami that struck in December, 2004 washed away part of the sand and they discovered there were more ruins there!

Our next stop down the Coromandel coast was Mamallapuram, the stone-carving capital of India, where we heard the constant rhythms of chisels chipping granite (audio). Its ancient monuments include the famous Shore Temple and a batch of other extraordinary rock sculptures. Originally the largest of seven temples set together, the Shore Temple is the only one remaining. The sea reached up and carried the other smaller temples away. Again, due to the effects of the tsunami, more ancient carvings were discovered, as well as the remains of the first port in Mamallapuram, built by the Portuguese in the 1600’s.

One of the most impressive rock carvings between 1200 and 1400 years old took 200 years to complete. From a single piece of granite were carved five temples, called rathas, all with different styles of architecture and dedicated to different gods, and a life-sized elephant!

The last sculptures we viewed were two bas-reliefs called Arjuna’s Penance and the Krishna Mandapa. The Krishna Mandapa shows Krishna holding up a mountain with one hand, surrounded by his wife and consorts. The Arjuna’s Penance erupts with endearing and naturalistic renditions of animals. These are beautiful, lively sculptures that depict animals, people and gods in everyday life and are somewhat whimsical, as opposed to the more formal statues dedicated to the gods.

We stopped here for lunch, and found the wonderful Sunrise restaurant where the owner showed us the fresh lobster(front), fish and shrimp before he cooked the fish and shrimp to perfection for us. After that wonderful respite, we were back on the road to Pondicherry.

Pondicherry History

Nestled on the east coast of India is the old French colony of Pondicherry. The charm of French culture planted by the French East India Company in 1673 still lingers in the eastern leafy half of the city. Further inland, far away from the sound of the waters of the Bay of Bengal lapping against the rocky coast, is the other half of Pondicherry. A city filled with Indian charm, crowded streets, sidewalks packed with shop keepers and their wares, everywhere commerce afoot along with pedestrians, two wheelers, push carts and aging pedicabs provide a glimpse of a provincial time fading with each lap of a Bengali wave.

Pondicherry has a storied past. Ancient Greek and Roman geographers referred to the area as Poduke. Indian homegrown kingdoms of Palava, Chola and Pandya shared in the history of Pondicherry as did Muslim invaders from the north.

The French had their problems first with the Dutch in 1693 when they lost control of the area. With the signing of Treaty of Ryswick in 1699 that settled the War of the Grand Alliance, which pitted France against the Grand Alliance of England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the United Provinces, the French were back in control of their Pondy pedicabs.

Twenty years later, French East India Company was reconstituted as the Perpetual Company of the Indies. Thereafter the French, the weakest of the European colonial powers, cobbled together the tiny, scattered Indian territories of Mahe, Yanam, Karaikal and Chandernagar to form their Indian foothold.

The French also had their hands full with the British. During the Anglo-French wars, the British captured Pondicherry in 1761, but the Treaty of Paris two years later returned the city to the French. It was taken again by the British in 1793 amid the Wars of the French Revolution, but once again returned to France in 1814. Around this time, in 1803, the French were also divesting themselves of some river front property selling a half billion acres to Thomas Jefferson in a deal called the Louisiana Purchase. In the early part of the 19th century, the French had their hands full, but things settled down for the next 150 years.

When the British relinquished control of their Indian empire in 1947, the French said, “Pardone, monsieur! We French have other plans.” The French were not the lone European holdouts. The Portuguese in Goa hit the pause button as well on Indian incorporation.

By 1954, French – Indo discussions had progressed with the conclusion that Pondicherry and most of the original scattered territories of the old Perpetual Company of the Indies would be incorporated into India as Union Territory of Pondicherry. France ceded to India full sovereignty over the territories July 1, 1963.

The Portuguese remained a bit more persnickety, refusing to accede to India's request to relinquish control their enclaves of Goa, Diu and Daman. On December 12, 1961 the Indian army launched Operation Vijay and marched 30,000 troops into Goa. The Portuguese had only 3,300 defenders. After a 26 hour war, the Portuguese were heading for the Iberian Peninsula and the Indian troops were home by Christmas.

Killed vs. Fatal

In our travels around Bangalore, we’ve seen a couple of signs that give traffic statistics. The info across the top gives the year, then Fatal, Killed, Non-fatal and Injured. When we first read these signs, we looked at each other, dumfounded, then laughed out loud! We couldn’t figure out the difference of all the different designations and laughed at the fact that all the numbers were different.

A short time ago there was an article in The Times of India that enlightened us. We learned that Fatal means how many accidents there were in which someone was killed. Killed means how many people were killed. A non-fatal accident is just that; an accident in which no one is killed. Injured means how many people were injured in an accident.

So there you have it. By looking at the numbers you can see that there are roughly 10 times as many non-fatal as fatal accidents. It’s easy to figure out why. The traffic (audio) here is so congested it’s difficult to travel more than 40 kilometers per hour. Our guess is that the highest number of fatalities comes from automobiles hitting pedestrians or people riding bicycles or two-wheelers (motorcycles).

Yesterday morning, on the way to our apartment to pick up Jay for work, our driver Harish hit a man driving a two-wheeler. Harish said the man on the two-wheeler was driving very fast and cut right in front of him (a very typical scenario). Harish took the injured cyclist to the hospital and paid for his care. So, that’s an example of one more non-fatal accident and one person injured. Another statistic for the Bangalore city traffic police.

Do You Know This Man?

A fellow Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation member, Paul Burnore, a fellow Indian traveler, shared with us his experience of the genuine appreciation people here have for having their photo taken. Equipped with this information, we have been faithful in snapping, printing and then returning photos of just ordinary people doing ordinary things. We have become known to a tiny fraction of the population of Bangalore as “the snap people.”

Finding the subjects of the captured images is often a tricky process. We open our collection of photos and slowly find someone here… a few others there. The easiest way to find the greatest number of people is to find a kid who recognizes someone in the photographs, and he leads us right to them. A smile of appreciation is exchanged with the photo.

The City Market in the old section of town is filled with snap-rich targets. The market is a bustling center of activity. The market is also filled with wonderful colors and packed with ordinary people doing ordinary things. When taking a picture of tall, colorful cones of powder used for making the ritual mark on the forehead called a bindi or tikka, the flash of the camera brings a small entourage of youngsters who begin to surround us. Despite the broken English and improvised hand motions the communication is unmistakable. “Take my picture!”

So the camera is trained on one small face…only to have other faces fill the view finder. Snap. Snap. Then we are lead by the youngsters to parents or relatives for more picture taking. You get the picture (ha!)…soon we are handed off from one group to another for a photo session.

People are very keen to have their pictures taken showing their profession. Flower sellers, for example, will hold up a string of flowers. The man featured in the photograph at the opening of this blog tracked us down outside the market and stood very stoically, plane in hand, requesting a photo. There he stands holding his tool. Will this be the picture passed down for generations, showing great-grand in the opening part of the 21st century? Millions of countless moments go unrecorded for these hard-working people. We are honored we can preserve a sliver of their lives.

City market is not the only place where slivers of life are captured. We have photos of workmen along popular M.G. Road, repairing a drainage canal not too far from the location of Winston Churchill’s old bungalow. As is the custom, all stand tall and smileless and wait for the snap.

For us, we have a wonderful collection of faces we can look at any time, faces we see each time we open the Picture folder on our hard drive, and remember when and where we were for a moment in time.

History on Parade: Kerala

Our journey to the southwest state of Kerala was filled with unexpected sounds and spectacles. Even though Kerala is one of the smallest Indian states (just 1.3% of the Indian land mass), it has a history rich in legendary lore and historic fact.

Legend recounts that the slender state of Kerala was created by an act of penance performed by Lord Vishu, who had descended from the heavens in his incarnation of Parashuram. Parashuran waged a terrible war against the evil kings of the land, killing them 21 times. The legend continues that Parashurama was so struck by remorse at his wanton killings he offered to perform a penance. The sea god Varuna responded and offered him land equal to the distance he could throw his axe. Parashurama threw his axe from northern tip of Kerala in Gokarnam and it fell at Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India. As promised, the sea gave way to land, thus giving rise to Kerala.

With terra firma provided by the gods, mortals of the world traveled to Kerala to trade and prosper. The Phoenicians arrived about 1000 B.C. In the coastal city of Cohin, a Jewish synagogue stands in testament to the early arrival of these traders. Even today, Jew Town, as it is called, is an open market of commerce. The Apostle Thomas is said to have arrived here in 52 A.D.

In the 1400’s, the intrepid Portuguese, lead by Vasco da Gama, along with the Dutch and then the British, landed in Kerala and inaugurated centuries of European contact with the inhabitants of Kerala. In our western history, Kerala is known as the Malabar Coast.

We visited the church where da Gama’s body laid for 12 years before being returned to Portugal, toured an old Dutch house and exchanged pleasantries in English with our local innkeeper. While visiting the remnants of former European contacts, we were also treated to the alive and rich Southern Indian culture.

A highlight of our trip was seeing a performance of a 500 year old traditional dance called Kathakali. In Kathakali, men have devoted years to learning facial and hand expressions, music, singing and dance to retell stories from the Hindu epics Mahabharatha and Ramayana. Attendees were invited to watch the application of the make-up before the show. The 90 minute performance we saw was spectacular.









Our Kerala adventure included both theater and street drama. As we drove the back roads of Kerala, we discovered the road was blocked by a huge festival (audio) parade. The parade was complete with elephants, musicians (video), men in faux trances, men twirling tall colorful whirligigs (video) and flowers everywhere, all accompanied by a throng of townspeople in tow. We were, and remain today, completely ignorant of the reason for the festival. For us it was another foreign fragment of Indian culture to be reconciled with the other fragments we gather each day.