September 23, 2001 Home Back Issues

Meeting the Goddess in Kerala by Aikya Param

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Last spring, a group from the Women's Spirituality program at San Francisco's New College West went to paradise to meet the Goddess. I was one of the students. Professors Dianne Jennett and Judy Grahn, five students and one friend of the family traveled to Kerala, the south-westernmost state in India to find the Goddess, to meet the Goddess, to experience her. National Geographic Traveler, for their recent fifteenth anniversary landmark issue, named Kerala one of the 50 (well, 51) best places in the world to visit in a lifetime (see http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/intro.html). Kerala was in the category "Paradise Found." It is an 18-hour flight to Kerala from California in which you fly back and forth over the International date line. On the way to Kerala it was night for an interminable period. On the way home it was day for way too long. The transition each way induces an altered state of consciousness. Our first pass over the dateline truncated to 4 hours our shared experience of my birthday, also the anniversary of the recent devastating earthquake in the Northwestern state of Gujerat. From the cool, foggy, rainy San Francisco Bay Area, we stepped into the hot and humid tropics. After a week of perspiration, my skin and hair glowed. I had always been afraid of becoming ill in India; instead I felt healthier than I ever had. I had wanted to meet the Goddess in her own house. Kerala is her home. The ground itself is red: terra cotta red, brick red, tennis court red, red like menstrual blood, the red of the ancient Goddess mysteries. There are temples to the Goddess, statues of the Goddess in the Kerala tradition or the wider tradition common to all India, but the color of the ground tells you silently that you walk within Her. The original goddess temple in Kerala was a tree in the southwest corner of one's property, selected and treated as sacred. Stones or bricks are placed its base. Offerings are made, of such un-tree-like things such as milk. The trunk is rubbed with turmeric, red powder, dressed and garlanded. Snakes which may take shelter in the tree are believed to represent Her energy, the energy of everything, so snakes are revered. "Naga" and "Sarpa," both of which mean snake, refer to the snake gods and goddesses that always display her "shakti" or energy. The female Sarpa is called a Yakshi and is believed to be able to appear as a beautiful, sensuous human female. Gifts like food and songs are left at the tree for the Nagas. You still see such solitary trees. They stand out because they are decorated. Eventually the single trees developed into a groves especially to nurture the Nagas who are believed to protect the family. Little statues of the Nagas, sprinkled with turmeric and sometimes dressed, are seen everywhere. We visited Manarsala, one of the largest Naga Temple compounds. It is presided over by a priestess whose position is inherited. The eldest woman in the family which owns the land becomes a celibate priestess and oracle, dedicated to the worship of the Nagas and guidance of the people. The prior high priestess held office for nearly 60 years. She was well known and loved for helping the poor. I was impressed by the energy expended by the priests and devotees at Manarsala, in playing music and other worship of the serpent deities. Kerala still has many matrilineal communities. GROUP % OF POPULATION STRUCTURE Brahmins 2% Patrilineal Nayars 16% Matrilineal Christians 20% Patrilineal Moslems 20% Both Erhavas 22% Both Pullayas 8% Both Tribals 1% Both In matrilineal communities, women own the land, the houses and their contents. When a woman marries, she doesn't leave her home, nor does her husband come to live with her. He stays living with his mother and sisters and visits his wife. Men in this structure have responsibility for the children in their maternal home, children who are his nieces and nephews. Knowing this, the practice in South India of calling all men or women not familiar to you "Uncle" or "Auntie" assumes a very different meaning than it does from the perspective of our patriarchal environment. A classical song or a dance in which a woman longs for her lover to visit her home is not talking about a sneak illicit amorous adventure but describes the normal way lovers, married or not, would meet. In the matrilineal cultures of Kerala a mother with a child, regardless of marital status, has a home and support from the male relatives living with her. How different from life in the U.S. where all mothers, especially so-called single mothers, must struggle in a patriarchal structure which makes every aspect of their lives difficult! But the situation should not be overly romanticized. We learned from Monica Erwer, a Swedish feminist researcher, in a talk she gave for us during our visit that, that especially among the poorest people, women don't have the power to make crucial economic, family planning and health choices. But Kerala is fascinating even to people who don't care at all about the Goddess. Even though the annual income is $350, 1/70th of that of the U.S., life expectancy and infant mortality are about the same as here. The birth rate is about the same and falling, with no coercion. Marriage happens later than in the rest of India, with women marrying at about age 22. They have one or two children right away and then the woman has her tubes tied. Unlike the rest of India in which a son is more highly prized than a daughter, people in Kerala have no preference. Kerala has a democratically elected Communist government. People can get food to eat from government outlets. There are few beggars. Unions and political pressure groups are well organized and active. We stayed in the capital city of Trivandrum where traffic was often in a knot as thousands poured in by the busload to make one or another point regarding their chosen cause before the legislature, the people and the press. Kerala has nearly 100 percent literacy, a spectacular ranking considering that in India as a whole, literacy stands at 65.4 percent, , an increase over the last decade of 13.75percent. according to the 2000 census. Throughout India, the ability for illiterate people to vote is enhanced because a symbol, like a lotus or a bicycle, is assigned to each candidate. Candidates will then say "Vote for the bicycle!" rather than "Vote for Murugan Varadarajan!" Then bicycles will be spray painted on every available surface. I noticed an intriguing twist regarding symbols. The communist sickle is nearly identical to the Vel carried by the most popular goddess known as Bhagavati with which she destroys demons. Kerala has varied exuberant architecture. For at least centuries, possibly millennia, Kerala has traded with Sumeria, Babylonia, Europe and points to the East. As Professor Dianne Jennett put it, "Kerala was not invaded but traded!" Spices, especially the much touted pepper and cardamom, drew sailing ships from far flung places and the architecture, religion, cuisine, and the cosmopolitan attitude of the people show the influence of international visitors and residents from Portugal and the British Isles, the Middle East, and as far away as China. Kerala provides constant shocks for an American. From our point of view, traffic is on the wrong side, the left side, of the road. Nearly for our entire visit auto rickshaws, bicycles, cars and buses hurtling toward us on the left side of the road would stun me with terror. There are almost no traffic lights, signs or signals. The largest vehicle has the right of way. Everybody else scatters. When a zooming vehicle hits someone, the driver does not stop to inquire about the injured, but roars on. You do not use toilet paper. The plumbing cannot handle it. You get used to washing yourself with water provided in a nearby bucket. You do not drink the water, reddish from the soil of Kerala. Nor do you cook with it or brush your teeth with it until it has been boiled. If you don't like red water, you can buy clear bottled water and then figure out what to do with the plastic bottle. Nobody collects trash. Most everything is recycled. What can't be re-used, such as menstrual pads and tampons, are burned. A haze from these fires plus outdoor cooking covers the capital city. The smell of resulting smoke, not incense, was the first fragrance that greeted me on arrival. What struck me most profoundly right away and continued to reverberate more and more deeply as we traveled was what I will call "embodied culture." American culture is external. It emphasizes the production of things external to its people, like skyscrapers and transnational corporations. External inventions like the automobile, the telephone, and today, the computer have changed life around the world. The people who create these externals are anonymous culturally. In Kerala with 1/70th our resources, culture is carried in the person. Historically, Kerala, like the rest of India, has had a severely restrictive caste system. Those in the lower castes, in the Untouchable caste, were also not to be seen, were not to breathe on upper caste people, were not allowed in the temples until the late 1940's. I learned the poignant story of the oppression of these people from Kamala Bai, the grand-niece of Ayyankali, a heroic organizer of his people who was a State Legislator and won great victories for those then still called Untouchables. Kamala Bai has a university degree and has taught on a college level. Another example of embodied culture, she brought me to a passionate interest in the issues affecting former untouchables. In Kerala, those restrictions have been progressively altered. Kamala taught side-by-side with a Brahmin woman named Hema Subramaniam. Hema may be considered a living example of a forward-thinking Brahmin today in Kerala. She currently heads a school for former untouchables who have registered as such with the government in order to get access to government jobs set aside for them. The school helps them pass qualifying examinations for those jobs. Both Hema and Kamala Bai earned degrees in English Literature. Hema and her husband, who is passionate about Vedic astrology, maintain Hindu traditions to the extent they can without oppressing other people. Keeping strict ritual purity requires others to do the dirty work, others from whom the practitioner must remain separate. Hema and her husband exemplified an ancient culture retained, yet changing. Allied with embodied culture are traditional arts passed down through families for hundreds of eyars. These profoundly touched me. We met a man whose family, in an unbroken tradition since the 15th century, had been making metal mirrors using a method thousands of years old. Perhaps the most impressive for me personally was the three men who created an image of the Goddess on the floor out of natural powders, worshipped her for the healing of one of our students and then brushed away their magnificent work. We walk within Her eternity, Her body, and everything we make is transitory. After we returned home, I asked one of my fellow students what she got out of the trip. She said "I had a healing of sexual abuse." In Professor Judy Grahn's Writing Group during the semester before the trip, she had been sharing poignant agonizing writing about her sexual abuse experiences. I remembered her saying, just before we left India that she had been healed of her sexual abuse but wasn't sure if she wanted to let it go. Six months later, she told me, "It was just taken away. Going there I experienced how the Goddess works. It was so gentle, so easy." Since we came home she has been writing joyful playful poetry, creating playful photography exhibits. We walk within Her. It is that simple, that easy.