In the south we visited many places where Gandhi spread his message on non-violence. We found a new world and a new landscape. Not more color, but different. Small Hindu temples along the roadside, decorated with lime, green, turquoise, bright, yellow, and hot pink figurines. New languages (Tamil and Malayalam) and a mix of religions, including Hindu, Muslim, Syrian Christian, Catholic, and Jewish. Different dress as well with many men wearing lungis, cloths worn around their waist.
We visited magnificent temples: The Mahabalipuram Shore Temple, outside Chennai, dramatically lit by a full moon. Gorgeous. Elaborate carvings depicting stories from the Ramayana in the nearby rocks, dating to the 7th century. And the Brihadishvara Temple, monumental structures shaped like pyramids, made of granite in the Chola period, completed in 1010. All adorned with elephant-Ganeshas, bulls, lions, horses, and human-like gods. I was amazed both by the beauty and the number of people who visit the temples– locals and pilgrims from all over India, some coming to pray, others to make offerings or to socialize.
The temples were the highlights, but we saw much more: In Chennai: The 1898 Gothic-like San Thome Basilica. (Note that St. Thomas is said to have come to India in 52 CE and to be buried in the crypt.) Fort St. George, which first served as the headquarters for the East India Company, with many portraits and memorabilia from the colonial period and a giant statue of Lord Cornwallis, who became Governor-General in India after surrendering at Yorktown. In Pondicherry, once the capital of the French territories in India, an imposing Gandhi statue on the promenade by the sea, the Aurobindo Ashram founded by Indian nationalist, journalist, and philosopher Sri Aurobindo in 1926, and Auroville, the beginnings of a utopian city, the brainchild of Mirra Alfassa, his disciple.
And in Munnar, farther to the west in the High Ranges where mist appears and disappears in minutes, we took short hikes through tea fields. Tea has been cultivated on these hillsides since 1879 when an Englishman first brought it to this area.
I can’t forget to say something about the food, all of which we’ve enjoyed very much. Feasts for breakfast, mostly vegetarian, including green smoothies, curd (much like yogurt), sambar (vegetable stew), pongal (rice in milk), uppi urundai (rice balls), masala dosa, and my favorite, semiya upma (think vermicelli with spice and a few vegetables). Fresh cut watermelon also part of every meal.
Kerala is beautiful, fascinating and very much a melting pot — a special place with a literacy rate over 96 percent. We spent a night on a houseboat near Alappuzha, stopping on the riverside to buy fresh prawns for dinner. In Kochi, we visited the Mattancherry Palace and Saint Francis Church, both built by the Portuguese, and the Jewish synagogue, said to be the oldest in India. (Jewish settlers came to Kochi in the first century CE.) The 1100 beautiful floor tiles were imported from Canton in 1783 – each hand painted with blue vegetable dye. Along the water, fishermen lower huge Chinese fishing nets to collect the day’s catch. Mind-boggling to think of the many different peoples who made their way to Kochi and left their mark.
