The More We Discover . . .

In one of my earlier posts, Oh the Places We’ll Go, back in the spring of 2017 when our dreams of India were still just that, I enjoyed sharing our online discoveries of visions of the alluring, the intriguing, and the downright bewitching places we would travel, even though we had no clue how our India Adventure would really feel once we hit the ground.

Now that Sarah and I have had a taste of travel and exploration of South India and the Middle East–Dubai and the UAE last November (oops, I still need to do a post on that trip!); the Mahabs and Pondicherry and Auroville twice so far; and Sri Lanka on the horizon in March–we have already discovered so much in the enthralling details of the places and temples, the tantalizing spices of so many new tastes, and, most delightful, the welcoming smiles and openness of so many new faces. Yet, the more we discover, the more we realize how little we know and understand of our new Asian home, and how much more we are inspired to learn and how many more new destinations–and return trips–okay, and meals for exploration and research, we’ll need to plan.

Our most recent trip, to Madurai and the Chettinad territory of southern Tamil Nadu, the state where we live, reminded us of what another teacher of the international school community who taught in New Delhi for several years told us before we moved to Chennai, “You can spend ten years just exploring south India.” Yeah, right, I remember thinking. Now I’m sure he underestimated it!

So, off to Madurai we flew in early January after our daughters’ holiday visit, just under a 90 minute flight from Chennai in a propjet–how long had it been since I’d seen a propeller up close?–followed by a couple hours on the winding back roads as we struck off for Chettinad country and a stay at a fairy tale palace I’d discovered in a New York Times feature before we moved here. Chidambara Vilas is one of over 10,000 palaces built in this part of Tamil Nadu by the Chettiars, a wealthy family and community that served as commercial leaders and bankers to the world for years in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and when we stepped over the entry lintel, we delighted in our sense of the calendar pages, as in an old black and white film, flipping rapidly backward more than a hundred years.

Most startling of all, while immersed in early twentieth century opulence–marble from Carrara, glass ornamentation from Belgium, and teak from Brazil–was the contrast with the setting in a quiet village (Kadiapatti has maybe a thousand souls) where “our” palace was one of five or six such Chettiar mansions surrounded by quiet lanes and the more typical Tamil Nadu homes of the working men and women and children. On our first day at the Vilas, I decided to do a walkabout in the late afternoon light, and I asked one of the hotel staff to point me in a good direction. Instead, he took me on a guided tour of the village and filled me in on much of the history of the buildings and the Chettiar family–a 90-year-old couple still lives in one of the palaces down the street–and he took pride in the pristine new school built by the family to grant free education for the community. It turns out that each palace reflected the same interior layout, with many open courtyards, and they each used to host more than sixty family members plus staff. Family and community were–and are–the essence of society throughout India and are notably palpable in the Chettiar palaces. What must it have been like to share the vibrant daily life at the height of these stunning mansions?

The hotel operator, Sangam Hotels, has done a meticulous job with the property, now under lease from the Chettiars and open for the last six years. The details have been preserved–they were not allowed to repaint or change colors, simply to clean the original mixtures of interior pigments and colors that have actually withstood more than a century of life–and I have fallen more deeply in love with the massive yet delicately carved doors and frames that are a hallmark of Chettinad design.

But the highlight of our two nights there were the meals, especially the traditional Chettinad style lunches. Served on the biggest banana leaves I’ve seen, the lunch started with well ordered dollops of several chutneys and pickles, to be eaten in a precise sequence, and featured endless waves of additional delicacies including a stunning fish masala, crabs in a smokey sauce, mutton, chicken, and of course, if you wished, a dosa to finish things off. (Who would say no to that?) The staff explained every morsel and were pleased that we barely stumbled over the fabled heat of Chettinad cooking. We were reminded of an Indian proverb: “For breakfast, eat like a prince; for lunch, eat like a king; and for dinner, eat like a peasant.” Indeed! (Breakfast and dinner were also excellent but with a slight nod toward a more international palate.)

On our full day in Chettinad country, we engaged one of the hotel’s cars with a driver to explore the surrounding area. We’d been told to check out the Thirumayam Fort, perched atop one of the surprising mountainous rock formations that dot the otherwise flat terrain–I had no idea such formations existed in India–so we headed that way, admiring the outlines of the fort still defending the slopes. As we entered the hamlet of Thirumayam, Nehru, our driver, took a side lane and told us we needed to see the temple before we went to the fort.

I almost said not to bother, as the gopuram looked like a small, neighborhood temple–often worth a walkabout but I’d never heard of this one and I had other vague destinations in mind–but when we turned into the entry lane, I realized the temple sat huddled beneath and was overwhelmed by the rock of the cliffs leading up to the fort. The Sathyamurthi Perumal Temple, dedicated to Vishnu and built in the 9th century, was surely carved from the cliff’s stone so it became an integral part of the whole, and it seemed both more delicate and more brooded over. The interior of the temple bore no paint, no bright colors, no fancy decorations, other than the sandalwood and vermillion pastes and powders used to reverence of the gods’ statues, including the largest reclining Vishnu figure in India. Sarah and I found the atmosphere–very few people there to join us for the several blessings we received, a distinct sense of antiquity, and a hush that produced a cloaking, physical sense of awe in both of us–quite . . . humbling . . . stirring . . . we still struggle to name the feeling we both acknowledged while we walked the ancient chambers.

The fort proved a bit of anticlimax after the temple, but we enjoyed the rocky stroll and the obligatory selfies with brave heroines defending the world from a precipitous boulder.

We finished the afternoon in Kanadukathan, another Chettiar village to the south of Kadiapatti, where we had planned to tour the famous Raj Palace. The palace, it turned out, was closed to the public that afternoon for a family gathering, once again reminding us that so many of these stunning homes are still in occasional family use. We strolled the village and ended our walkabout at a traditional weaving shop where the women still use the handloom methods of centuries ago. We were mesmerized by the blur of fuschias and indigos and the clacking of the wooden treadles and heddles as the weavers danced the threads in an intricate pattern.

We soon decided a late afternoon by the pool (added as part of an expansion when the hotel was opened) had a nice ring to it–we even made it back in time for another Chettinad lunch with totally different chutneys and pickles and non-veg bits and brilliant sweets–even though we took a rather long yet serendipitous shortcut back to Kadiapatti. Who knew there could be so many splendidly painted terracotta horses lined up as in the header photo? These horses and a few cows and even a solitary hound, are a South Indian village tradition and new ones are created and painted each year.

So many discoveries in two days, and so much more to learn . . . not to mention that Chettinad country is the site where the Nataraja story took place, where Shiva defeated Kali (one of several interpretations) to become Lord of the Dance, a favorite sculpture I’ve coveted since before we moved to India . . . . At any rate, after our two nights at Chidambara Vilas, we headed back to Madurai for a visit to the Minakshi-Sundareshvara Temple “The Taj Mahal of South India” and where, yes, I hoped to complete my quest to discover the perfect Nataraja statue for our house.

But you know that’s got to be another story, right?