CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE UNBELIEVABLE KI ND--SENTRYPEDE

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE UNBELIEVABLE KIND

A.V. DHANUSHKODI

Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.  HAMLET, ACT  I , SCENE  V

EPISODE SIX---THE SENTRYPEDE

The episode I have chosen to narrate took place when I was employed.  My job required me to travel occasionally, to meet the leaders of industry and business and learn first hand what was happening, or about to happen, in their fields of speciality, very much akin to the work that the investigative journalists do.  Once, a need arose to travel from Madras to Ootacamund with my boss, to attend the annual convention of the United Planters Association of South India (UPASI), an association of tea planters in South India.  My boss, let me call him B, had taken over charge of our section just a few months before, and the tour was meant to be an orientation trip for him.  As I covered the area of Tamil Nadu, I had to accompany him on the tour, to brief him on the economics of the cash crop and on the industrial and business leaders who controlled the production and sales of the crop.

B decided to travel by his car, much to my excitement---instead of the usually preferred plane---as that would give him an opportunity to see vast stretches of land: fields, hills, hamlets, villages, and small towns of our country in one shot.  He chose to drive himself and take his wife with him, whom I shall call C for charming, which she was, apart from being as beautiful as a classical Greek sculpture, with Michelangelo’s signature on it; no wonder B couldn’t be away from her for one whole week.  I shall of course call myself D.

The car was a commodious land-rover with ample room behind the rear stretch of seat, for transporting luggage.  The space was packed almost to full capacity with our luggage, enough to see us through one week of outing.  I took my seat next to B, and C was behind us, chatting away whenever I was not struggling to answer probing questions from B about everything he was hearing and seeing around him.  From time to time she would feed us with vacuum-packed nuts, tinned strawberry and cranberry juice, and all unimaginable crispy and crunchy junk food from America, topping them all with a generous flow of the inevitable and ubiquitous Coke.  B needed them without doubt, as he was burning up everything that went into him, like the land rover burning up gallons of gasoline, as he manoeuvred it through the ever present and moving goats, cows, bullock-carts, men and women on foot, besides attempting to avoid ruts and potholes in plenty on the “national highways”.     Even I needed all that fuel, to rummage through my recalcitrant brains to come up with credible answers to the many relevant and irrelevant questions  Americans perennially pop up like corns in the popping machine. After a couple of hours, I felt I would have been very happy covering the distance from Madras to Ooty by foot, carrying my baggage, instead of being battered with a barrage of unending and unanswerable questions in an air-conditioned car.  I had no option but to console myself by considering the experience as an evolution of my soul towards reaching the ultimate goal of becoming omniscient.  Thinking back on the experience,  I now realize that B was a generous giver of whatever he was suffering by driving,  by driving me to suffer: a sadist in short.

The drive from Madras to Ooty took us through the fertile Cauvery delta, the rice bowl of Tamil Nadu.  It was, I think, the transplantation time of the Samba crop, the major rice crop season in the delta.  The fields on either side of the “national highway” were rich cadmium green light, a veritable pleasure for the eyes of an artist, against which were dotted women in saris of blues, greens, reds, yellows, and oranges, transplanting paddy-saplings.  As the car sped, B was shooting questions one after another on the cropping patterns and the monsoon in the region.  I was answering them with relative ease as I had been answering the same questions from my previous bosses, year after year.  C was basking in the beauty of vast stretches of paddy fields interspersed with patches of farmers’ thatched huts, wells, and plough-bullocks, nestling under the cool shades of cocoanut groves. 

Suddenly, she gripped my shoulder and shouted, “What was that?”  I jerked my head back and saw what had excited her, before it was hidden from view by a huge tamarind tree.  “It is an Ayyanar temple,” I answered.  “Frank, will you stop the car!  I want to see that!” cried C.   But B was in no mood to stop the car; we must have covered about a couple of furlongs by then.  “Sorry dear, we’ve shot past too far.  What was so exciting?” drawled B in his cool Texan accent.  “Horses!  Those magnificent horses and the sabre-rattling horsemen! So fantastic in their torrid colors.”  “Ya, I saw them.  Garish,… no wonder they caught your attention.  What are they, anyway?”  That question was obviously meant for me.   “Frank, please, let’s go back,” C was almost crying. 

I pacified her, “Don’t worry.  Soon enough we’ll be passing by another of those temples.”

“That’s a temple?  It didn’t look like one.  Only horsemen on horses,” commented B.

“True,” I agreed, “It is a temple, nevertheless, and those brightly painted  horsemen on their horses are the guardian deities of the village we passed just now.  One of them is Ayyanar and the other is Karuppusamy. 

"This whole region is dotted with them, on the outskirts of every village.  They stand guard at the entrance to the village, to ward off evil forces.  In fact, they are believed to patrol the village on horseback at nights.  They have assistants, dogs and huge henchmen, you might have seen, had we stopped there.”

“Do people worship them?” asked C.

“Yes.  In fact, the rituals are as elaborate as in any big temple, consecrated to the mighty gods Shiva or Vishnu.  Although they were meant to be Gods for the lower castes, they have come to be worshipped by people of all castes.” 

“Who conducts the pujas?” inquired B.

“The Brahmin priests, of course,” answered C.

“No”, I corrected her, “Velars.  They are the community of potters in the village who make all these terracotta figures of the deities and their minions.  It should interest you to know how these statues are made and erected…”  I was abruptly interrupted by C’s excited high-pitched voice.

“There!  There!  Frank!  Stop, stop!”

We all saw it at the same time.  Another Ayyanar temple, beyond which we could see a cluster of huts and small houses of a hamlet.  This time, without much ado, the car came to a screeching halt right in front of the temple.  B gently glided the land rover off the asphalt highway and on to the gravel apron and parked.

   

We got down and stood for a moment at the edge of the sloping ground covered with wild grass and weeds.  The temple presented a rather sad sight.  Most of the colours painted on the terracotta statues had faded, to reveal the original colour of the clay.  Some of the figures had gaping holes, and the limbs of some of them had broken and fallen on the ground.  Broken terracotta pieces were strewn here and there.  I noticed that the head of the horse carrying Ayyanar had broken and was lying on the ground in front of it.  Obviously, nobody was worshipping the deities there anymore. 

C began to climb down the slope; I followed her.  B remained where he was, near the rover, took out a pipe from his shirt pocket and started stuffing it with tobacco. 

As we approached the temple, I was able to appreciate the beauty of the figures there  more  keenly.   I realized  that  all  the  figures  were    most   beautifully proportioned and most intricately and exquisitely decorated with ornaments.  A master-craftsman himself must have moulded every one of them.  C was in raptures, as we went around the figures to look at them from all sides.  They were flawless works of art. 

As I stood there immersed in the beauty of the statues, C picked up the broken head of the Ayyanar’s horse from the ground, as if it were a newborn baby.   She slowly turned it this way and that to  take  a   better look at the finest piece of art I had ever seen, shaking her head in disbelief, punctuated by exclamations of appreciation.  Then, suddenly she said, “I’m taking this home.”

I wondered if she was serious.   When she looked up at me, I realized that she was very serious.  “May I?” she asked me in a pleading tone.

I was at a loss for words.  It was not for me to give her permission to take it.                                                                                                      

“May I?” she repeated.

Really, I didn’t know what to say.  After a few moments I said, “Well, it is not for me to say YES or NO.  I guess you could take it home, but it is not done, you know.”

“Why not?” she insisted.

“Well, that’s a rather difficult question……it is…. a temple….”

“So?”

“Everything in a temple belongs to the temple.”  Even to me, it did not sound very convincing.

“I know that,” she chided me mildly, “I’d be happy to pay any price for it, but there is no one here to take the money.”

“That’s not the point!” Now it was my turn to chide her, “Temples are consecrated to God; therefore everything in a temple belongs to God.”  This time, I sounded very convincing.

“You are right,” she conceded, “But nobody worships here anymore, obviously,” she was still adamant. 

I was silent.

After a minute she said, “Alright, if it would satisfy you, I’d pay a generous  price for it.”   She  laid  the  horse’s  head  down,  took out her  purse, pulled out a hundred rupee note, put it down at the foot of the horse, and placed a stone on it. 

“I suppose our conscience will not bother us anymore,” so saying, she picked up the horse’s head again. 

At that moment I saw a terrifying object in the hollow of the horse’s head she was holding.   A six-inch long reddish yellow centipede was wriggling within.

“Put it down!  Put it down!” I shouted.

“What’s the matter?” she asked looking at me.  When she saw my expression, as I was looking into the hollow of the horse’s head, she was puzzled and turned the head to look into it.  I saw her go pale.

Then she gently put the head down on the ground and stood there wondering what she should do next. 

“Let’s go,” I said and started moving.  I thought she would follow me.  To my surprise, she did not.

She calmly took a long dry twig from the ground and kneeled down to prod the centipede out.  I stopped and stood there, watching helplessly.  As she prodded, the centipede wriggled and went deep into the head.  She would not give up, she prodded deeper and deeper, when the centipede wriggled out with another, its mate, much longer and thicker and deep yellow in colour.  Following them came three or four small centipedes, wriggling.  When she saw them, she put the twig down and got up.

“That’s right,” I said, “You wouldn’t want a family of centipedes in your car.”

She looked at me calmly and said, “They too need a home.”  She began to walk towards the car.

“The money?” I asked her.

She stopped, turned and looked at the hundred rupee note fluttering in the breeze, held down by the stone she had placed on it.  She thought for a second and said, “That is my offering to Ayyanar.”                            

She turned again and walked up towards the car.

I followed her.                                                                   December 2009