Body Piercing, Muniyandi Vilas International etc.

Recently I had a guest from Japan. My wife's maternal aunt came visiting and it was her first trip to India. After a few days with us, she told me she was disappointed. Well, the inevitable has happened, I thought. The bad roads, the omnipresent garbage piles, the lack of footpaths even on main streets, it could've been anything. Those were, however, expected irritants, not disappointments. She was disappointed because this was not the India she was expecting. What she had in mind was the image of India instilled in most Japanese over the years, through textbooks and the media. An India of mostly poverty-stricken people, of spiritual people, of people taking dips in filthy sacred rivers, of snake charmers, of elephants, of maharajas (and of late, maybe also of IT and Rajnikanth) etc.

She came to the wrong place in India. There is not much in-your-face poverty in Trivandrum or other places in Kerala, I told her. Kerala ranks third, behind Punjab and Haryana, among states with low incidence of poverty. Mind you, we don't have any industry worth mentioning other than political nitpicking and holding of bandhs. And even among those below poverty line, things are probably better than in other states thanks to other social indicators where Kerala comes out tops. That was all very impressive but not what she was looking for.

The first day she wanted to go alone for a walk in the neighbourhood. I tried my best to dissuade her from it, but she was adamant. I went along with her to make sure she came back alive as I had the responsibility of sending her back in one piece, without broken bones, without dengue fever etc. I didn't want to read newspaper headlines such as "Japanese tourist run over by tipper lorry". Or worse still, with the city having a shoot-at-sight order to stop the robberies taking place every day, I wouldn't be surprised to see the following headline. "Immigrant labourer disguised as middle-aged Japanese woman shot dead while fleeing crime scene. Commissioner to receive Param Vir Chakra".

Well, few days passed and she didn't get a chance to go "Aah, Indo da!!", or "Aah, it's India!!". I was also losing hope when, as luck would have it, Kanyakumari popped up on our travel itinerary and the India of her dreams crash-landed into our midst.

Sabarimala temple in Kerala attracts a lot of devotees, out of which a majority are from the southern Indian states. Of the many millions visiting this temple, a few million find their way to Trivandrum and other places. There were thousands of Toyota Qualises, mainly from Andhra Pradesh and a few from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in Trivandrum, in addition to the numerous buses and lorries carrying pilgrims. They were taking in Padmanabha Swamy temple in Trivandrum en-route to Kanyakumari as part of their pilgrimage. The vehicles they travel are self-contained units (minus toilets, of course) and they cook and eat stuff they bring all the way from home by the roadside near rivers or small streams. Earlier I used to detest these people because I thought the only contribution they make to Kerala was the enrichment of the roadside soil, which they religiously performed by defecating whenever and wherever they pleased. I don't hate them any more. In fact, on second thoughts, it makes sense to bring rice, veggies and even cooking gas from Andhra Pradesh. Cooking gas is unavailable here. (Black) market forces at work. Also, why should an Andhra man come here and buy stuff that is originally from his place and pay more for it? (There is something called as food miles, or the distance food travels from where it is produced to the plate. Japan is considered to be a major offender as the affluent Japanese bring in stuff from all over the world. Kerala may be at the top here in India for this. If we follow the advice of the food miles people, who want to promote local produce for local consumption, mallus will end up eating mainly coconuts, rubber and vanilla.)

Well, coming back to the topic, my Japanese visitor had a brief glimpse of these pilgrims in Trivandrum and then we left for Kanyakumari to see land's end. She died a thousand deaths on the highway and thought she was going to see life's end. The thousands of Toyotas that clogged the highway to Kanyakumari, overloaded with male pilgrims, unshaven and dressed in black as is the custom was a sight worthy of an "Aah, Indo da!", but she was preoccupied with visions of life's end. Once we reached Kanyakumari, which was filled with these guys, she finally let out the "Aah, Indo da!" scream. The whole place was teeming with millions of guys in black dress and though we couldn't see anything of Kanyakumari I was glad that she saw what she wanted to see, plus something that she didn't ask for.

Among these mostly dark background there stood a woman, doused in ashes and in a bright dress, with her tongue hanging out and a trishul pierced through it. I missed her on the way down to the beach and when I saw her on the way back, I was all excited about it and subtly tried to draw my guest's attention to the second chance for an "Aah, Indo da!!" "Look, look, lady with trident in her tongue". No response. It turned out that they (my wife and her aunt) had seen her on the way down and were traumatized by it and were trying to avoid her. No "Aah, Indo da!!"

I couldn't understand their emotions. This is just body piercing. Something which became popular in other countries only in the last ten years or so, but has been performed in this country for hundreds of years. In fact, I was not impressed at all. Isn't it time these people progressed to the next level? We're talking salvation here. Why just tongue and cheek? Why not go for the kidneys? A five-pronged spear (is it OK to call it a pentadent?) pierced into your left kidney. Or a 50-pound iron ball made of nails hanging out of your liver. Those are stuff that would impress me and make me go "Aah, my Indo da!!"

P.S. On the way back to Trivandrum, I happened to see a hotel called Thankam International at a place called Kaliyikkavila, an obscure village (town?) straddling the Kerala-Tamilnadu border. It made me wonder about the significance of the word "International" in these hotel names. Is it because lot of international tourists go there, which I doubt is the case here. Or is it because it acquired some bogus international awards or standards such as ISO? Perhaps, it's just that they serve Dosa, which has become an international dish in this globalized world. So next time you see a place called Muniyandi Vilas International, don't ridicule it. Go in and have a crisp dosa. I'm sure it'd be better than the dosas you get in obnoxiously overpriced Indian restaurants in Tokyo.

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