The Hindu Business Line : A town with its roots in paddy

In Tirunelveli district, rice growing farmers want a hike in support prices of paddy and one read in the Tamil and English media of proposed marches to New Delhi.

With an average literacy (men and women) of over 68 per cent, farmers understand their business and realise they are being belittled by a government salaaming the Americans.

A 9 per cent GDP growth and a 20,000 plus Sensex conceal disappointing farmer tales.

Till the farmers die it is not news and when they do cascading promises of free relief from politicians follow; they never touch the farmers as the same politicians waylay the funds like brigands of old; farmers continue to die into the next cropping season.

Still one cannot miss the gold ornaments weighing down men and women in the area with a few lakhs worth of gold demanded as dowry during marriages held in pomp and noise.

In the train to Tirunelveli town, one talked to a few Nadars going to Tirunelveli from Dharavi, where they earn a living. One diabetic passenger was carrying a 20 kg jute sack of wheat as in Tirunelveli quality wheat is hard to come by. The Nadar families, who have lived for years at Dharavi, were not talking of the re-development of Asia’s biggest slum. They were chatting of marriage, dowry, gold and homes to be built in villages in and around Tirunelveli town.

Yet my friend, Venkatasubramanian Muthukrishnan, is upset and says, “Nothing much is being done for Tirunelveli district and its farmers.” The town has its roots in paddy going by the Tirunelveli Sthalapurana available on the Tamil Nadu Web site. Long time ago, when the quality of human imagination allowed for an armchair living with myth and reality, Vedasarma, a devotee of Lord Siva, travelling from the north to the south, settled down with his family near the river Tamiraparani, on a request from the Lord in a dream.

The devotee put up his home at Sindupoondhurai, on the river bank. A famine came and Vedasarma was reduced to begging for paddy. One day, he laid out his daily paddy collection on the ground to dry and went for a bath and prayers in the river. He prayed for rains and the good Lord Siva (they call him Bhole Nath, Simpleton, in the north) obliged with thunder, lightning and rains.

Vedasarma rushed back to save his paddy and was surprised to find the rains had avoided his paddy. Since then the town is called Tiru-nel-veli (sacred-paddy-fenced). For this writer, the grandmother tale is as good as any short story; at least, it is entertaining with gods talking to humans in dreams as there were no mobiles in those times.

For those wanting facts, today’s Tirunelveli was the Thenpandiyanadu of the early Pandyas, Mudikonda Cholamandalam of the Imperial Cholas, Tirunelveli Seemai of the Nayaks and Tinnevelly district of the East India Company. For my office colleague Partha, Tirunelveli is about halwa. “Halwa chappittela (Did you eat halwa?),” asked Partha in Tamil and one replied in the negative.

Muthu took me to the shop without a nameplate opposite the over-1,000-year-old Nellai Siva temple. The shop opens at 5.30 p.m. and closes at 8.30 p.m. The owner serves halwa, sweltering in ghee (or is it some oil?), in small, banana leaf plates; the public swallow the halwa in one shot and litter the road with leaves.

Not being a connosieur of sweets one did not go for the halwa though one regularly ate the wadas and dosas at street joints.

Muthu’s mother asked me in Tamil: “Kovil le Ravananai parthela; romba nanna irrukkum (Did you see the beautiful Ravana at the temple)?” At the Siva temple there is a colour painting of Ravana on the temple wall, as the anti-hero of the Ramayana was thought to be an important bhakta of Lord Siva.

From Nellai Sivan, we went to sign the muster at the Get Well Hanuman temple, as the Lord is popularly titled. The Hanuman temple abuts a shut down hospital with security guards and for the town’s public a visit to Lord Hanuman is a better and safer option than going to the doctor.

“I don’t think the hospital ever opened,” Muthu remarked. This quiet gentleman-banker spends spare time at temples and he took me to some of them, starting with Courttalam, an hour’s bus drive from the Palayamkottai bus stand. Along with a good number of aiyappas, one stood under the falls with rock-size water drops hurting one’s bald head.

Being off-season, the falls hurtling down in three stages, did not have the monsoon density as the aiyappas took a drenching. After the wash, they smeared themselves with sacred ash and red sindoor in steel plates after depositing a rupee coin. From there we went to another Lord Siva temple (the area is strongly populated by Lord Siva), where one noted a temple official in shirt, pant and bare feet working at a table with an ink-pen.

He had two ink-pens and was copying a Tamil circular on to a ledger.

One stood amused as he scribbled away, occasionally beating away marble-sized mosquitoes.

On a Sunday, we took an early morning bus to Nagercoil and on to Suchindram as one was keen on taking the air of Ashramam, one’s paternal village, two km. from Suchindram.

My grandfather lived in Ashramam village and daily walked the two km to Suchindram, being a temple priest at the Lord Siva temple also called Sthanumalayan with its famed Lord Hanuman; my father lived his first 15 years at Ashramam and left for Trivandrum and onwards to Calcutta.

On my first visit in 1963, the village agraharam had tiled homes on both sides of a dusty track; in 2007, the homes are of cement and the road tarred. I think I went in search of my paternal ghosts and then realised ghosts cannot be seen in the day.

P. Devarajan

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