On Temples and Elephants
Due to the cancellation of the trip to India by my friend, I did not have any special sightseeing plans for my time in India. 'Taking easy' was the motto. Taking easy in my case, normally, is sightseeing or 'seeing temples and relatives'. Fortunately, April is a month of temple festivals, so one does not need to leave the home to see god. During a temple festival, god or his image leaves his temple for a visit to all houses in his area. The idea is that the whole year people come to the house of god, but once a year god comes to each house. He comes on an elephant accompanied by priests and musicians. Its image and an elephant all dressed up in flower garlands and gold. Each house fills the basket with grain for the elephant and each member of the household puts money in a special vessel (for that I was given a two-rupee coin).
A journey of god out of his temple is a colorful, somewhat pompous but very honest affair (reminds Russian icon-carrying processions, a lot like "Krestovi xod"). Since people don't have too much of entertainment here, a temple festival becomes a big event for the community with music, dances, performances, and food, while still maintaining religious significance.
The day after my arrival the big temple nearby had been completing its festival. Ambalapuzha temple is a home of Krishna who leaves his temple for ten days a year. Elephants carry him from his home temple to another temple where he takes a ritual bath in a temple's pond. The last night of the festival the elephants carry him back to his home. The journey takes all night not because of the distance. The procession stops every few meters where dancing, singing and praying continues, moves few meters and stops again. Five placid elephants walking in one line occupy half of the width of the national highway. Accompanied by priest and a drum-beating musicians, they seem to be oblivious to the world and to the surrounding cacophony. Sweet smell of incense, burning coconut oil and elephant dung fills the air. The night air is hot and humid. It seems you can feel the heavy torrents of smell drifting and mixing around you. You feel like you are walking on the bottom of the ocean, water is all around and envelops you. Fine buzz of insects cannot be heard from behind the noise of drums and people. The crowd is making its own buzz reminiscent of a bee-hive. The torrents of people move around in an ocean of sweet smells of Indian night.
Among the crowd there is a police coordinating the traffic. After all, it is a national highway. Passing trucks and car slow down regardless of the police to pay their respects to Krishna.
I get dressed in a traditional Kerala saree – white with a golden stripe – and join the crowd in a company of my husband and his parents. We go through the crowd of mostly males the majority of whom look like they have nothing better to do in life than hang out with their friends. Further research suggests that this is not the case. They are just guys who are out for an occasion having fun with their friends. Elephants keep walking indifferently on a highway along the path marked by the coconut-oil-burning lamps. Each lamp is put by the one or the other household. Priests keep pouring coconut oil in lamps. The coconut oil is paid for by devotees as an offering to god. We walk all the way to the final destination of the procession, the Ambalapuzha temple. All along the path, 3 or 4 kilometers, there are offerings of bananas, grain, oil, etc., in front of brightly decorated houses with every member of the household sitting on a front porch waiting for the arrival of the god to their gate. With every other house blearing its own music through the loudspeaker.
The temple itself looks like a center of carnival. Right beside the entrance a concert of traditional music is happening with people listening to the performance while waiting for the arrival of the elephants. At that point they still had to wait for another 4-5 hours to the elephants to complete their 3-kilometer journey. Inside the temple is dark and peaceful. The huge pond lies quietly in the night mirroring the light coconut lamps.
According to the legend the king ordered an idol to be brought to his palace. At some point the carriers of the idol put it down to have a rest. By the time the people rested the idol became so heavy that they could not lift it. The priests suggested that Krishna has chosen the place where he wants to sit. The king wisely elected to build the temple at that place.
Ambalapuzha temple is not only famous for its idol but even more so for it rose payasam – desert-like drink made of milk, sugar, rice, cashew nuts and cardamom boiled over a very long period of time. It is truly divine as its temple festival.
P.S. Apparently, there were local TV crews filming the event. I've been told that they followed us for awhile. Not every day you find a white girl wandering in the middle of the night at a temple festival in a white sari.
©Lidia Bhaskar, 2003