Rangam
More often than not, one falls prey to writer’s block. Of course, by ‘one’, I mean myself, and by ‘writer’ I’m indulging in wishful thinking. It is, therefore, a marvellous feeling when one finally finds the old creative juices trickling onto the notepad window, forming sentences that do not fall prey to the Shift-Home-Del after five seconds.
I’m back from a one-day visit to a wonderful place, a stronghold of all that is Tambram, a sparklingly charming agraharam - Srirangam.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a visit, I was actually accompanying my father to a ritual at a Mutt (centre of Hindu religious activities and learning). Srirangam is the hometown of an extremely cerebral person who adopted his wife’s name as a pseudonym. His oeuvre spans both the print and celluloid media, and he’s widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in modern Tamil literature. His weekly feature named Katrathum Petrathum (Received and Self-acquired Knowledge) in Ananda Vikatan was how I came to know of him. Anyways, it was my first visit to a place which was connected to the life of a person I admire greatly.
Taking the Kollam-Madurai passenger, we alighted at Madurai, switched trains and reached Trichy (rendered directly from Tamil with an extra “ch”) at around 10. We travelled to Srirangam by a remarkably clean and well-maintained bus with old songs blaring from small speakers. By the time we reached the Mutt, I had fallen in love with the place. The only vehicles on the streets were two- and three-wheelers, and the people are characteristically polite, speaking the Tambram tongue.
The ritual itself took no more than fifteen minutes, following which was a standard Madhwa meal, as tasty as austerity would allow. I prevailed on my indulgent father to take a short detour towards the “Kollidam”, shallow meanderings of the river Kaveri. We took a dip in the cool currents; the water was hardly waist-deep in places. I don’t know to swim, but I managed to float, and allowed the currents to gently carry me downstream. I watched handfuls of riverbed sand get dispersed by the running water. Cutting across the river, we dried our dhotis in the wind by unfurling it and holding its ends. I observed a little boy having a gala time in the water, his mother cleaning fish a stone’s throw away.
His frolicking about in the riverside with the gay abandon so characteristic of childhood, the energetic Kaveri, and the rustic simplicity of village life -
We then climbed a bus to a relative’s house. Amma’s … um, cousin’s daughter’s FIL (or so) - I knew him only via a couple of letters my mother made me write years ago. He’s an ancient man, a Sanskrit scholar in charge of the administration of a couple of Brindavanams (hard to explain, will attempt later) and most importantly, a veritable scion of a dying race - people who write English the old-school way, clinical or grandiloquent when so required. Old age hasn’t affected him much: A bit hard of hearing, that’s all. He easily did a couple of pull-ups on a kitchen loft. I slunk away somehow when he asked how many of them I could do. I listened as he read out to Appa an official letter he had written regarding some pension matters of his. Phrases like “It is my benign hope that…” were littered throughout his letter, incisive and splendidly clinical writing.
After coffee, we left for the station. I treated myself to the best street food: Onion bajji, Pattani sundal, slivers of mango suitably salted and chillied… Appa and I kept talking throughout the journey, during the course of which I narrated to him the stories of Schindler’s List and In Bruges. Eventually we reached home.
A louly day indeed!
