Me, AJ, and a slice of our chronicles
--- A memo from my diary dated on 31/03/2022, when I was stuck in life.
It’s 2.30 am, I stand beholding the vast, dark blue sky, constantly caressed by the moist, feather-touch, seductive breeze of Coimbatore. I couldn't rest my mind, repose, and surrender it to sleep. The one thing that keeps on itching in my mind at this time is that I miss my travel buddy AJ. Every film and novel featuring a travel freak protagonist showcases extroverts as hippie travelers. But we were extreme introverts, both of us, and we were just 17 then. Just 2 of us geared up to encounter the whole world(there was another girl, but she left us as she couldn't tolerate us). We would walk from one village to another on the outskirts of Kumbakonam under the scorching sun of May, and you wouldn't believe it, without a single penny at times. And even when we had bounty cash at hand, we preferred to walk under the piercing sun for kilometers, and when it's not hot, we’d love to walk barefooted. Barefoot gives us a natural connection with the Earth. We have astonished our peers while trekking up and down a hill barefoot. We have sat for hours gazing at the empty, wide sky. And we have discussed how a fall of a leaf is significantly interesting and about energy, vibrations, DNA memory, mystic forces, evolution, and hours on Shelley, Shakespeare, Byron, Bharathi, Kambar & Kalki, and history and geography. We had our eyes swollen when we had our hands on the samadi of Adithakarikalan’s right hand. We've amused people by gazing at one statue for an hour long. We have witnessed sheer magic both in travel and life together.
How did we catch up? I had planned a trip to cover almost all the places mentioned in Ponniyin Selvan, with a crew of 11 girls. 11 tickets were booked prior and I was ready to veil out the places with historic elucidation references to them. At the last minute, all the 11 tickets got canceled, leaving us all in disdain. The train would depart at 12.30 at night, and it was already evening, too late to book Tatkal as well. However, I was determined to travel alone in the unreserved coach all through the night. And that's when she turned in, with the same guts and determination to catch Vandhiyathevan’s trail. We stood in the queue and always liked to be one of the commoners. We never liked by-passes, cabs, and luxury. Despite both our families insisting on being so, we were minimalists trying to be transcendentalists.
We learned bird-watching together. We fell in love with iconography at the same moment, at the same spark. We researched and found a legend whom we randomly saw from afar, approached him, and finally stayed at his home for a couple of months. Thanjavur, Kumbakonam Darasuram, Thirunageswaram, Pazhayarai, Thiruvarur, Thiruvaiyaru, Chidambaram, Mayavaram, Poombuhar, Gangai Konda Cholopurom, and outskirts of these towns, we walked together in quest of intellect and with all the comfortable snug of love and humanity from the society.
We sit on the entry-exit way in the trains, sleepover in temples, eat at random strangers’ houses, and walk in the streets day & night. When tired of walking, we knock at a random house and ask for water. Surprisingly, we have always been offered more than water every time. We have knocked on a lot of doors like these and what happened inside each door were epic stories each, by themselves.
One afternoon a couple of miles away from Thirunageswaram we knocked on a door. It was a typical Chettinad house with mutram & all ancient, extinct things like ural, ammikal, aapai, mutram, thinnai, kenaru, and much more. Surprisingly, the old man in the house was manually weaving silk thread into the cloth with the manual mill. We were astonished to witness those. They first offered us some water and then a pail full of nannari sarbath, then they toured us the whole house, and explained how the silk thread is woven, and offered us lunch. I'm always excited to look around but always too hesitant to take things from them. But AJ is super-cool with that and she already sat down at a plate. She felt the whole world was organic and all people as one, everyone was our kith and kin. And after lunch, we talked for a bit and the TV featured a black & white film, Kalyana Parisu. We, along with the whole family and a neighboring little boy were immersed in the film. After a while, I turned to her and was surprised at what she did. She stretched out on the floor with legs straight and a hand at the back of her neck and gently drifted off to sleep like the lord Ranganathar. She has always been lively, spirit-brimmed, and so full of humanity.
Nothing was ever complicated to her. I was often amused and rather shocked by her incredible art of simplifying things. It didn’t startle her when we were 40km away from the place where we lived and didn’t have more than Rs. 7 at hand. It didn’t startle her when we decided to spend the night, without speaking a word, until sunrise on the beach, watching the Pourmani with binoculars. She got married to a man, without seeing his picture or any preconceptions.
And once we walked down into an abandoned, ancient subway trying to follow the path of Vanthiyathevan, violating the barricades. After a few meters, we were muffled by crude darkness. We went blind and moved forward, groping and probing with hands and legs. We steer cleared the spider web veils and proceeded. At one point, we were shell-shocked by the screeching sound of bats gushing out of the cave, bashing each other. It was extremely spooky and we ran out of the subway cave in terror.
One night, a random girl came to the room where we stayed asking if we saw something. We talked to her for like 15 minutes and 4 hours later, in the early morning, she was in front of our room and wanted to join us to find trails of Marudhanayagam, all with our ruggedness and spirit to explore. It takes immense courage to hang out with hippie freaks not knowing where we were going, also by walking. We taught her how to decode icons at temples and brushed her up with some history. We crossed the Khan Sahib canal walking and traversing it with live crocodiles in the marshy land.
We were the luckiest creatures in the universe as we have savored all the humanity and love this society has ever got. There were hundreds of stories in each village we visited.
The task assigned to us was the most interesting thing I've ever done in my life. We'll be given some clues in Thanjavoor about a piece of history or a particular historic figure. The answer will be in another town or village, mostly in deep interiors, (no one in that residing locality will know that there’s historic evidence and its significance). We we'll not know where it is and have to find out the right iconography and historic evidence and report it back at Thanjavur. That's what we did in all these towns & villages. Each iconography that we decoded tickled our senses and levitated us. And we'll be rewarded with literature lectures for our chronicles. Life was at its best!
It was the time when everything was fascinating and incredible. We owe all these to Dr.G. Deivanayagam, the discoverer of Chola temples at Bhujang Valley, Malaysia, and a phenomenal historic contributor with more such discoveries and authoring more than 80 books on art and history. His father Dr.Govindarajanar was the discoverer of Kannagi Temple.
Travel was never a mere journey for us, it was like going back home. The wide-open Earth and society were our home. We never talk about these things to people because most people won't even believe what I've written so far (what If I write all the miracles that happened in my life), and to the majority of the crowd, these are not interesting.
Looking back and forward, those explorations were the best part of my life as I've learned what life is, what people are, what people can be, the art of simplicity & minimalism, along with humanity, history, iconography, comparative literature - all in one stretch.
I don't know what kept you occupied in your 17, 18s. But in my 17-18, I was in paradise, determined to walk in every street of Tamil Nadu. The sand, the plants, rats & lizards, wells & canals, people, food, barren lands, even the difference in the greens of leaves matter to us, we loved it all and owned everything. These were the foundation and best parts of my life, and AJ is a great contributor to it. She's married and now a mother. After her, I never found a good companion to travel with. Hope to travel with her again and her grown-up baby.
