KANYAKUMARI, WHERE THREE WATERS MEET AND MINGLE - Friday-Saturday 27-28 January

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We are reaching you from Chennai (Madras), late our Sunday afternoon.

We left Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) on Friday morning traveling by driven car to Kanyakumari

On the way there, we took a jog off-highway to view Kovalam beach, falling into the genre of pretty, two gentle bays, separated by rocky out croppings, well life guarded, its waters can be deceptive about their dangers. People have frequently been caught in final struggles with ebbs and flows beyond the outcroppings. One of my earlier readings on India was of a serendipitous survival experienced by a Canadian visitor to these shores. As I strolled the beach, her text in my ears, I found myself sympathetic to suspending disbelief, just enough, to be persuaded that a mystical event attended her here.

Lunch was our first at a fully vegetarian establishment, deep into the culture of large, green, banana leaves, from which to eat, right hand fingers to mouth, delicious mounds of savoury offerings.

A major palace was our next stop; home to a line of Maharajas from the 13th to 18th centuries. Quite impressive in size, décor, architecture and the range of functions it facilitated for the royal family of Travencore, one of the princely states that was joined with Kochi (Cochin) and Malabar to form the secular state of Kerela, 40% Hindu, 30% Christian, 30% Muslim, post-1947. That there was from early times a quite highly developed society in this region comes across from some of the features of the palace. Ceilings engraved with 90 different flowers; meeting rooms which were air conditioned by using overhang roofs, stone cold flooring and air venting into wooden box chambers equipped with water containers along the flooring. Dining rooms to feed 2000 of the monarch’s subjects, daily.

Kanyakumari, at the southernmost tip of the Indian sub-continent, is where the Arabian Sea on the west, the Indian Ocean in the South and the Bay of Bengal on the east, meet in a splendor of surf in color. As I dipped my feet into the waters, the merging waves seemed to approach me in concentric patterns, each wafting to the sand as a loosely formed rhombus.

Our goal was the Friday evening sunset, and the Saturday morning sunrise. Huge numbers attend these spectacular nature shows each day, and emote deeply at the heavens in all their glory. We chose to be with the multitudes, for their evening rites of thanks and praise as nature gracefully retired. A pervading sense of peace enveloped the various crowds, as the moment of passing approached, arrived, paused momentarily, and then was no more.

We spent the evening sipping Kingfisher beer and nibbling on warm beans, pickled carrots and orange wedges; as, all the while, the young barman, daytime student, aren’t they all, having, with his elders, survived the shock of Penelope claiming a seat at the bar, caught us up on the community myths of goodness that has attended many pilgrims who dutifully did the sunrise, pure of heart.

A 5:57 wake-up call, feathering soothing music, meant the time had come to go to our hotel’s roof for the dawn of day. The sun did not so much rise, it seemed to me; rather, the world in all its global glory, stirred and woke up to sun-poured hues of crimson, fading to reds, and then to pinks, until the waters and the sky, both in deep blue, kissed it white, indeed, colorless clear, and the day dawned for us.

The rooftop perspective, from which we beheld these presents unfold, gave real meaning to panorama. All of my the world was in full view. An encompassing expanse of waters was at my feet; now a sea, then a bay, together hugged by an ocean, all three engaged in frivolous, rippling play. And, as I turn to catch breath from the glossy, shimmering spectacle, the imposing Western Ghats, a granite mountain range that looks over the people of this region, as if to shelter them from weather and whomever, fill in what is left of 360, and complete the perfect circle of nature presenting itself.

The eyes of the people around us, seven stories up, told us they were experiencing their own awakenings. The utter silence of the crowds below transmits an illusion of deafness to me as, demanding awe, Today is ushered in. Strung, as unraveling twine along the arcing shoreline, the crowds stand transfixed, unmoving, before the birth of a new day.

Vernon

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