seeking - Lisa Abend

D e s p e r at e ly
Lisa Abend searches in India for a cure for her
broken heart. It takes two temples, one elephant,
a palm-leaf astrologist, and the kind driver of
a velour-lined taxi to make her whole again.
Seeking
Shiva
F
or hours as you drive
torward Vaitheeswarankoil,
there is nothing, and then,
suddenly, there is too much,
and all of it the same. Located
in the southeastern Indian
state of Tamil Nadu, the
town is comprised mainly
of ramshackle storefronts
pressed tightly against each
other, slowly decaying in the
dusty swelter. Brightly painted signs, garish
as any Las Vegas neon, mark them as Nadi
astrology offices. There are also a handful of
modest hotels, a few stalls dishing out sweet,
milky coffee, and an immense temple that,
with its ornate carvings and shadow-filled
interiors, manages to be riotous and eerie all
at once. But mostly there are Nadi stands.
I had come to Vaitheeswarankoil for Nadi.
A branch of Hindu astrology native to Tamil
Nadu, Nadi holds that the lives of all humans
were inscribed in ancient times by sages on
palm leaves, one leaf per person. Find the
Nadi reader who can find your leaf, and it will
all be there—the story of your life, including
how everything turns out in the end. Which
is exactly what I desperately wanted to know.
Eighteen months earlier, my partner of 12
years had left me for a much younger woman.
An elephant offers
blessings at the
Vaiheeswarankoil
temple in
southern India.
photographs by Chiara Goia
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I needed answers, and I needed them fast.
The man with whom I subsequently fell madly in love had suddenly
remembered, months into our relationship, that he had a girlfriend.
In the wake of my exploding relationships, I felt as though I had been
dropped unwittingly into a foreign country—one of those horrid, pre1989 Soviet Bloc ones where everything is ugly, no one speaks your language, and every meal is an unending sequence of soggy fried meats. I felt,
in other words, sickeningly alone. And once that feeling took hold, it was
hard to believe that it would ever go away.
I could have done the normal Eat, Pray, Love thing and sought answers
for my emotional crisis by committing myself to a rigorous program of
Eastern spirituality for a year. But that would have required work and sacrifice. And I was way too depressed for that.
Which is why I went to Vaitheeswarankoil. I needed answers, and I
needed them fast.
the banana leaf that serves as a plate, and cocks an eyebrow at me.
“You believe in that stuff ?”
“Um,” I say in my defense. “You don’t?”
“Of course not,” scoffs Nandhakumar. “It’s pure superstition. A blind
belief.” An emaciated woman with a baby on her hip approaches our table
with her hand out. He drops a coin in her palm nonchalantly, though I get
the distinct impression that she is not the one he pities. I’m about to slink
off to my rendezvous with benighted ignorance at a Nadi office when he
stops me.
“Now planetary astrology, that’s different,” he says, jotting down an
address on a slip of paper. “You want help with a difficult decision, you
go see this guy.”
An elderly passerby, eavesdropping on our conversation, stops to
glance at the name. “Oh yes, he’s very good.”
“Of course,” says Nandhakumar. “What he does is based on your time
t is said that Nadi’s origins date back thousands of years, but that the of birth. That’s not blind belief. That’s science.”
In India, everyone has the solution to your fucked-up life. If, like me,
practice became associated with Tamil Nadu sometime in the Middle
Ages, when the kings of Tanjore had the original palm-leaf texts trans- you have come to India precisely for this reason, you will find yourself,
lated from Sanskrit to Tamil. For centuries, these leaves were housed like me, taking advantage of any potentially healing opportunity that
in a single library in Tanjore, but during colonial rule, the British broke presents itself as you travel to your Nadi reading. Meditation at the ashram graves of a renowned guru and his bilious
up the collection and auctioned off leaves. One
French lover? Check. Ayurvedic massage by two
family, rumored to be descendants of the origiINDIA
Chennai
young women keen on rubbing a gallon or so
nal Nadi practitioners, reportedly bought lots of
of semi-rancid oil into your naked body with
the leaves in the 1930s and assembled them at
Pondicherry
their feet? I did that too. Now I tuck the address
Vaitheeswarankoil. It wasn’t long before palm
Vaitheeswaran Koil
in my pocket. If the palm leaf reading doesn’t
leaf astrology became the town’s main source
Tamil Nadu
Thirumanancheri
work out, I tell myself, I can always try science.
of income.
Early on my first full day in town, a young
Madurai
man named Nandhakumar tells me this. We
adi holds that you only come to your
have struck up a conversation mostly because
reader at the point in your life when
we are seated at the same table in a stall serving
you are ready, and that you are led to
coffee across from the temple, but also because
the one who possesses your leaf. Among
SRI
LANKA
he is the only person I have met so far in Vaitthe dozens of Nadi stalls in Vaitheeswarankoil, I
heeswarankoil who speaks English. I ask him if
pick the one named Govi Jayaraman because it
he would be willing to translate my palm leaf
is inside the temple, a location that, in my mind,
reading for me. He scoops up a pinch of dal from
bestows it with added authority. (The fact that
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long or short as editors would like it to be and it's all about the temple
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the stall’s flyer helpfully specifies between elephant shed and tonsure
shed!—which are, respectively, the place where the resident temple elephant is kept during his off hours and the place where devotees get their
hair cut—somehow only increases this effect.)
I leave my shoes with a woman at the shrine’s entrance. Passing vendors
selling coconuts and tiny brass figures of the gods, I slip under a cool dark
arch and find myself face to face with the elephant in question. A manifestation of the Hindu god Ganesh, he offers his blessing to worshipers,
including me, with a sullen thwop on the head with his trunk. Through
an intricately carved door to the right lies a vast pool that draws hundreds of the devout to Vaitheeswarankoil. According to legend, a dip in
its murky waters can heal all illnesses. Straight ahead, a line of faithful
pilgrims snakes through air thick with smoke to the gold-plated figure of
Shiva, the lord of both destruction and recreation.
I, however, go to the left, crossing a hot patio floor to reach the Govi
Jayaraman Nadi office. Once I’m inside its flimsy walls, a man takes my
thumbprint and date of birth—information that will help the reader locate
my leaf—then motions for me to sit. Except for the crepe paper streamers
dangling from the ceiling, it feels remarkably like the waiting room of a
doctor’s office. Next to me, a middle-aged Indian couple sits nervously on
folding chairs. Their college-age nephew nods grimly at me and explains,
in exactly the same tone he might use to announce his uncle’s gallstones,
“Business decision.”
At last, my reader ushers me into his office. Ravi Chandram is a small
man with a luxuriant head of curly black hair and a crisp blue sarong
wrapped around his waist. He speaks no English, and for a few minutes we
sit there—he behind the desk, me on a yellow plastic stool— silently beaming at each other. Finally, a man in an elegant white caftan sweeps in and
pulls up his own plastic stool: Rajendran, the translator. He explains that
I’ll be asked a series of questions and should answer yes or no to each one.
Using that information, Ravi will then locate the leaf that holds my fortune.
The initial, fact-finding questions are written on their own palm leaves,
which are long and thin and loosely bound together between twin covers
so that they look like a folded lady’s fan. Ravi opens this book and starts
to read, with Rajendran translating. You are oldest child? Yes. Father is
alive? Yes. Mother is alive? Yes. You have children? As soon as I answer no,
Ravi flips the page to a new leaf. The questions begin again: You are oldest? For a while we get hung up on my profession. Medicine? No. Education? No. Consulting? No. They ask if I am Kratif, and since I don’t know
what Kratif means, I assume I’m not. They keep going (Hospitality? No.
Defense industry? No.) until it becomes clear that my reading has degenerated into a game of “What’s My Line?” Finally, in a burst of inspiration,
"You want to be married?" demands Rajendran.
"Well, it depends," I stammer. Rajendran cuts me off impatiently.
"Look, you want to be married or not?"
Caption information for the palm leaf story goes here and can be as long or short as editors would like it to be and it's all about the temple and this one is about palm leaf reading
Rajendran calls out, “Real estate agent!” They both look so crestfallen at
my answer that I confess the truth: journalist. “But that is Kratif!” cries
Rajendran, as if I’ve betrayed him. Kratif: creative. Ravi flips back several
pages, and we start again.
Now the questions become more personal. You are married? No. You are
in love? Yes. You want to marry the person you are in love with? It’s complicated, I reply. “Yes or no,” demands Rajendran. “You want to be married?”
I may be heartbroken, but I’m still a feminist, and this line of questioning is way, way too reductive for comfort.
“The thing is . . .” I try again.
“Yes or no?” he repeats.
“Well, it depends,” I stammer. “Maybe if I meet the right . . .”
Rajendran cuts me off impatiently. “Look, you want to be married
or not?”
Faced with only two alternatives, what could I say? “Yes,” I whisper,
and slump back on my stool.
“OK then,” he says. He and Ravi go off to a back room to find my leaf.
R
ajendran and ravi return with a book of leaves that looks
exactly like the previous one. Money determines how much detail
you get in your reading—do you want your future in five-, two-, or
one-year increments? I choose the cheaper five-year plan (about
$40) and learn that I will have a great deal of professional success. As Ravi
reads my leaf in a monotonous chant, Rajendran translates his words in
a voice that thrums with excitement. “You will be a famous writer! You
will rise through the ranks of a great magazine to become director!” he
says. “Your name will be known on the American continent! The European continent! Even the Asiatic continent!” I recognize this last as rhetorical embellishment, but by this time I’ve come to accept that Rajendran
is given to a certain amount of artistic license. “You!” he cries. “You will
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We veer onto a small path, then rumble past rice fields
until we finally arrive at the temple, so utterly hidden in the glade
that it seems like a fairy village.
Caption information for the palm leaf story goes here and can be as long oand some
r short as editors would like it to beand it's all about the temple and this on
do all this!” Then, nearing the climax of his narrative, he lowers his voice,
and looks straight at me. “You,” he says. “You will be the champion of
your own destiny!”
Who doesn’t want to be a famous writer? I’m encouraged by the news
about my professional life. But I have not traveled halfway around the
world to hear about my job; I have traveled halfway around the world to
find out if I will ever be happy again.
The reading continues. My palm leaf says that I will marry within a year.
This seems suspiciously soon to me, but then Ravi and Rajendran describe
my future husband. He is someone I meet in Madrid, but he is not Spanish (or German—they are quite insistent that he isn’t German). He is not a
journalist, but he is Kratif and loves writing. He is thin. He is 40 years old.
The day before, the now unavailable man I was in love with had turned
40. He fit the other characteristics, too—we had even met in Madrid.
Throughout my Nadi session, I have been keenly aware that Ravi and
Rajendran were reading me as much as any leaf, trying to fit what they
took to be my wishes with their own beliefs about what constitutes a
happy life. But this is something else, something they couldn’t possibly
have guessed. And while in any other context I would insist that meaningful work, travel, and independence are the most crucial ingredients
for happiness, somehow, in this fluorescent-lit room with turquoise blue
walls, my broken heart conjoins with their ideas about what a woman like
me should want: a man. I feel tears spring to my eyes.
And then Rajendran brings me out of my rumination. “Also a son you
will have!” he cries rapturously. “A male son!”
Rajendran tells me there is only one thing standing in the way of this
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signed me to an eternity of hellish breakups. According to my leaf, I had
been a wealthy woman in Sri Lanka who had fallen in love with a poor
man. He was beneath me, but very beautiful, and so I married him anyway. However, I was not kind to him—“Always judging!” Rajendran interjects—and so eventually he left me and killed himself. This is the root of
my problem. This is why I keep failing at love.
Luckily, there is a remedy. I can do puja (worship). Actually, Ravi and
Rajendran tell me to pay them 5000 rupees and they will do puja for me.
It is only when I press that they admit that I can, in fact, do puja for myself.
For that, I will have to go to the marriage temple at Thirumanancheri, the
place where many Hindus believe Lord Shiva and his consort Parvati tied
the knot.
b
alaji, the tall, thin driver who shows up at my hotel the
next day behind the wheel of a velour-lined Ambassador, is quiet
and utterly uninterested in my attempts at conversation; he also
seems mildly annoyed when I ask if the Ambassador has air conditioning. But when I tell him that I have to do puja at Thirumanancheri,
his eyes light up. “I went there,” he says knowingly. “Three months later
I was married.”
Thirty minutes down the road, we veer onto a small path, then rumble past rice fields until we finally arrive at the temple, so utterly hidden
in the glade that it seems like a fairy village. As I descend from my berth
in the Ambassador, two men chide me to take off my shoes, even though
the temple entrance is still 30 meters away. As I stand there, hopping from
side to side in a futile attempt to keep from both burning my bare feet in
the hot sand and stepping on little balls of goat shit, Balaji looks at me pit-
eously. “OK,” he sighs. “I’m going with you.”
He leads me to a stall within the temple, which smaller and more sedate
than the one in Vaitheeswarankoil. There, in exchange for 200 rupees, I get
a green plastic bag containing five ghee candles, two coconuts, a pack of
red powder, an unripe lemon, a wilted jasmine garland, and a paper ticket
that is greasy from candle ghee. A sign directs us—in English and not at
all metaphorically—to the Marriage Waiting Hall. Inside, the room is long
and dark with an altar at one end and a table smoky with burning candles
at the rear. In between, held back by a metal gate, are a few dozen people
waiting their turn at the altar: single men in neatly pressed shirts, single
women in resplendent saris, a few giggling couples about to be married.
Balaji and I join them, fanning ourselves in the stifling air.
Finally, a man begins barking orders. As the single women rush the corridor that leads to the altar, Balaji pushes me toward them. We are ushered
into the area in front and made to sit in a line, single-file and cross-legged
on the floor. The couples are seated in the line next to us, and then, on the
far side of the room, the men. (I think to myself, Has no one in this marriage temple thought to put the men next to the single women?)
The ceremony itself involves much giving and taking: We hand in our
garlands and our bags of lemons and coconuts, and get red and white
powders with which to mark our foreheads. During one of these rounds,
a tiny, bare-chested priest who looks for all the world like Tattoo from
Fantasy Island comes through with a basket of flowers. Everyone touches
it lightly as it passes and mumbles something that the priest then repeats.
Mild panic grips me as I realize I don’t know the words to say, but just as
the priest nears me, I feel a reassuring pat on my shoulder. Balaji has somehow muscled his way through the crowd of anxious mothers fussing with
their daughters’ hair to sit next to me on the side of the gate that divides
supplicants from spectators. When the priest gets to me, Balaji hands over
a piece of paper on which he has written my name. I, too, will be blessed.
Later, the same priest comes back with now sanctified garlands, which
we are to keep until we are married and then return to the temple in
thanks. Distribution is random, however: You don’t necessarily get back
For travel resources, see the Guide, page 86.
the same garland that you handed in. When the priest gets to my side, I
realize that instead of the wilted jasmine that came with my bag, he has
been keeping a particularly fine string of marigolds apart for me. He hands
it to me and almost smiles. I’ve traded up.
At the end of the ceremony, a bell rings and we line up at the altar to get
our green plastic bags back. Everyone files out into the embrace of excited
families and diffident drivers. Balaji explains to me that I must take the
items in my bag home and perform puja there. “And then,” he says as if it
were the most obvious thing in the world, “you’ll be married.”
But what he really means, I like to think, is that I don’t have to be lonely.
I can find the remote temple, and sit in the neat line of sari-clad women,
and not be embarrassed by my aloneness. I can depend on the kindness
of the random driver who assigns himself the task of my spiritual upkeep
and stays at my side, whispering instructions, so that I never once feel
lost. I can let myself be borne by the heat and the scent and the feel of slate
beneath my bare feet and, most of all, by the people pressing around me
as they bring their hands to their foreheads and wrap garlands around
their necks and ask their God for nothing more than what they want. I
can receive their marigolds and know they believe it, too: I can be the
champion of my own cause.
a
s we leave the temple, I reach into my pocket for some coins
but find instead the slip of paper Nandhakumar had given me earlier with the “scientific” astrologer’s name written on it. Turns out
I don’t need it after all.
Balaji and I walk back to the car. Never once during this whole excursion has he suggested that my presence here is the least bit preposterous;
never once has he smirked at my utter lack of knowledge about what to
do. Now, we brush the sand from our feet and climb back into the Ambassador. “Where to?” he asks.
lisa abend’s upcoming book, The Sorcerer’s Apprentices, is about the apprentice
chefs who work at the famous elBulli restaurant in Spain. She is profiled on page 8.
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