The Secret of Chidambaram

Chidambaram.  To any South Indian Hindu, the temple conjures the sounds of ancient hymns and prayers, the scent of garlands and incense, and of course the image of the grand Chidambaram Nataraja Temple.

The primary deity in the Chidambaram temple is Shiva in his form as Nataraja, which can be roughly translated as the "Lord of the Dance".  The Nataraja has become associated with the classical dance style of Bharathanatyam and has joined the likes of the Taj Mahal and the Lion of Sarnath as a symbol for the nation and the various cultures and religions of India.

However, even though the image is recognizable to individuals all across the Indian subcontinent, it holds a special place for the locals.  So sacred and mysterious is the site, that the myth of the "Chidambaram Ragasiyam", or the "Secret of Chidambaram" has become inextricably associated with the temple and the deity.       
                                                                                      

So what is the Chidambaram Ragasiyam?  What is the secret that moved the ancient poets to compose hymns about the glory of the temple?  What is the secret that has brought hundreds and thousands of people to this temple since its creation in the 5th century?  What is this secret that has inspired a half-dozen movies and television shows that drag Indian families away from their cricket matches and curries?  

Are you ready?  Here you go:  For centuries pilgrims have noted a mysterious shimmer of a mirage of golden leaves...or the sound of anklets jingling...or even the presence of mysterious figures within this huge nearly 3 million square foot temple.  What are these indications of?  People believe that the deity himself resides within the walls of the temple, and that rarely a blessed devotee is given a glimpse of the divine...they see God.

Anticlimactic, right?  Of course, our world is full of miraculous appearances of the divine. Whether it be in George Bush's dreams or in a burrito, people see God everywhere.  Actually, to be honest, people see whatever they wish to see...everywhere.  Rock formations along the south of India are seen as the ancient bridge to Lanka built during the Hindu epic of the Ramayana.   People see Mount Sodom, a large salt formation, as Lot's wife converted during the times of the Old Testament.  I don't say these things to criticize or to mock.  But to be honest, it seems in the modern day, all you need is a the encouragement from a Disney-Pocahontas-in-a-busty-22-year-old-body...and we'd all be seeing Grandmother Willow...even in Palm trees.

But, I decided to try out my luck at experiencing the divine.  For all I knew, it would be a great way to wrap up a trip to India.  A long plane trip, a reiteration of my appreciation for air conditioning, a couple of close calls with suspicious fruit vendors, and enlightenment.  Quite well-rounded if you ask me.

So during my last trip to India, I visited the Chidambaram temple.  It is a magnificent temple, and it does overwhelm you with wonder and awe at how such an incredible structure was created by man with such little technology.  My breath was taken away by the power of the faith that encourages people to create such beauty.  However, I did not come close at all to seeing the Lord of Dance, or even catching the glimpse of anything mysterious.  To be honest, the whole temple trip went by normally.  A little too normal for my liking.

What do I mean by too Normal? I was there people-watching, in hopes of capturing a radiant being.  But instead, I saw hundreds of the same person.  Women wearing the same saris, all bowing their heads together, their mouths moving in unison.  The prayers and words may have been different, but the goals and aspirations behind the prayers were so identical.   They even all walked and moved like robots. 

And in the wave of identical printed saris, starched pants, jasmine flowers, oiled shiny black hair, and the marks of wiped runny noses on school uniforms, I found myself blending into a Indian version of Edward Scissorhands's suburbia.

And this lack of uniqueness was what I was thinking about last weekend when I decided to go to a Goth Club.  The whole evening was to be preceded by a trip to the mall to buy me some "Goth clothing".  My friend envisioned me in tight "woman's jeans", and something in "pleather" (Oh yes...I do follow the cow thing....that's going to be saved for another blog entry), some pale makeup, metal jewelry...and eye-liner.

I'm sure you can imagine my horror.

As the shopping trip progressed, I slowly found myself chickening out.  What would people think of me?  How could I walk through the preppiest part of town full of college students, dressed in jeans meant for "Shakira-imitating" hips and not a "pee-while-standing" crotch?

And finally I ended up settling for a pair of American Eagle jeans, a baseball hat, a polo, and sunglasses...to protect me from the wrath of the Floridian sun that shines "oh-so-brightly"...at 11 PM.

We all like to indulge in the mysterious and the different a little bit, but only to an extent.  We only like to experience something new, as long as the old and familiar were a hands-stretch away.

All the boys in "M. Night Shyamalan's 'The Village" would stand on the tree-stump and face the terrors of the forest, as long as they could leap off and find themselves safely in home turf.  The pioneers lived on the frontier, at the edge of their known world, teetering, but still did not venture alone beyond the outskirts of their towns.  The American citizen can stay in India as long as there is a "sitting toilet" always nearby. We only indulge in the unknown and the foreign as far as our need for comfort, normalcy, and a banal existence allow us.

I'm reminded of the Animorphs series when I say this.  And for anyone who has not read the series, you must.  And yes, the next paragraph or so will be a spoiler for one of the books.  But I'm going to assume that if you haven't read them already, you're not going to run to Barnes and Nobles and buy the whole collection tonight.  Stick to your Babysitters Club.

Anyway, there is a book in the Animorphs collection that takes place on an alien world with an "Avatar"-esque species known as the Hork-Bajir.  However, an unusually intelligent member of the species discovers that instead of being created by divine forces, his race was merely a biologically engineered species created for the well-being of another species.  Talk about leaving your comfort zone.  That is a complete inversion of your understanding of your world.  There is really no safety zone to jump from that point.  That is the true bottomless pit.  The moment where you feel the ground disappear from under you, where you see your soul cave in.

Of course, me dressing up in Goth clothes would not have been the end of civilization as I knew it, but it did make me uncomfortable.  I still went to the Goth club dressed in my gear.  Upon entry, I was surprised at what I found.  I saw a huge range of people wearing everything from dark makeup and "Ball-and-chain" jewelry, to computer-savvy t-shirts, to mini-skirts with tube tops.  The whole range was there.  Everyone was there in what they felt comfortable in.  I could have totally come here wearing skinny female jeans and eye-liner and been comfortable.

I even saw a group of college-going  jocks who were wearing probably everything I wore, several sizes larger.  I saw them laughing and having  a good time, and I smiled to myself.  My smile quickly disappeared as I saw the cause of their laughter.  They were laughing at a poor young man, fully bearded, a scruffy look, wearing a loose t-shirt, sneakers...and a skirt.  My heart broke.

When we visualize our greatest political and religious figures, we see them as standing out from the crowd they were with.  Jesus was a blond haired, blue-eyed man living among his Semitic companions,  Buddha's head was crowned with snails that rested on his head while he was deep in meditation, Krishna was a deep dark blue color, the color of the monsoon clouds... against his typical tanned-skinned companions.

Even our imagery of modern heroes is the same. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi's sereneness against the crowds of anger.  Princess Diana's charitable and kind expressions amongst a class of stoic nobles.  We do not ignore the uniqueness of our heroes...but instead we embrace, emphasize, exaggerate, and praise their differences.  Our heroes didn't get to their position by maintaining the status quo in terms of fashion, personality, or presence.

I wish I could have been that boy.  The boy who had the courage to wear a skirt, and to wear it proudly among the crowds.  Instead, I am no different than the crowds in Chidambaram.  Anonymity is my security, my safety, my home...and the place where I stand even as I write this.

But that's why I'm not a Mahatma Gandhi and why I'm not a Martin Luther King Jr.  Not only did these men stand out in their own respect, but they saw the beauty and significance in each person around them.   In each physical being their eyes rested upon, they saw their significance, their natural beauty, and their power.  Each person they looked at was a Krishna, a Buddha, a Christ, a Mother Teresa.

I was captivated by the beauty of the temple at Chidambaram.  But how is it that I managed to ignore the intricate emotional and social character that comprises every human being in the world.  The most fascinating temple that has ever been created has been our own bodies and personalities.  Each one is temporary, like a sand castle, but created by each of us with care and self-concern.  And to each person, our sandcastle, however fragile it may be, is our world.  It may be our delicate-skirt-wearing-male world.  It may be the world of a random-house-wife-visiting-a temple-in-Chidambaram world. It may be the world of God.  But it is important, significant, and unique to each of us.

And maybe that is the Chidambaram Ragasiyaam.  Maybe if I am willing to express myself once in awhile the way I want to, regardless of how other people may think.  Maybe if I forget my comfort zone, and decide to explore the world around me, maybe I will see the beauty in being unique.  Maybe I will see Ramayana-age rock bridges to Sri Lanka where I saw natural rock formations before.  Maybe I will see God's judgment in a salt mountain in the Middle East.  And maybe then I will be radiant like a Christ among the faithful, a Buddha among the pious, a Krishna among the devotees.  And maybe then finally, I will see the divine...shimmering radiantly in Chidambaram.

And then maybe the secret of Chidambaram...will no long be a secret to me.

But Brutus... Brutus is an Honorable Man...

"But Brutus... Brutus is an Honorable Man... "

And so said Shakespeare, with an unparalleled tone of sarcasm that has echoed through the ages.  His words had an incredible effect on what societies thought of their leaders, what workers thought of their masters, and what the laymen thought of their priests.

But what if Shakepeare lived today?  What would he say?  "But George W. Bush...He was a man who never lied...especially on the matter of WMDs" or "Laloo Prasad, he was a man who did not have a single sticky finger on him" or  "Ted Haggard...Ted was a man who showed complete devotion to his wife and never had any extramarital relationships...especially with homosexual prostitutes."

So why this hypocrisy? Why do so many of our leaders live double lives? Why do they fail to hold themselves up to the same benchmarks that they expect for us? Perhaps it is because we're all shaded and colored.

No.  Wrong Idea.

We're not all "I'm Blue...dah buh dee, dah buh daa".  No what, I mean is that perhaps,  we are all shades of gray with very few black and white extremes amongst us.

But that isn't the way the world is portrayed by the News, by our faiths, by our cultures, by our politicians, and most assuredly, not by Disney!  Our leaders cry foul from their pulpits, spitting vitriol against the Hitlers of our generation. For them the world consists of simply two categories.  The category of Stalin, Bin Ladin, the Unibomber, and those who switch lanes without putting on their turn signals.  And on the end you had Gandhi, Lincoln, and Bambi's mom.  It was clearly black-and-white. There were no room for zebras.  Even though...most of us were...

And do you blame them?  We all walk through life as if we still have quarterly evaluations done for us.  But no longer are our teachers giving us "A's", "B's", and "F's".  It's our fellow workers, our families, and the guy who yelled at us when we ran a yellow light downtown.  And when you're dealing with societal acceptance, life is pretty much black-and-white.  You do as what society expects of you.  Or you don't.  So can you blame Ted Haggard, George W. Bush, or Lalloo Prasad?  When the forum you preach to condemns homosexuality, how do you come out as a gay man?  When your nation demands blood, retribution, and revenge for September 11th, how do you carry the white flag?  These men never acted on their own, but they acted as was expected of them by society.

So is there any saving grace for mankind?  I used to ask my father this question when I was younger. If it is not enough to be "Good in the eyes of society, in whose eyes are we seeking approval?"  It was then that my father told me the story of Kannappan.

Kannappan's life was no different from that of many Native American tribes.  He was a hunter and gatherer who survived off of the wealth of the forest.  It was in this same forest, one day, while hunting, that Kannappan came across a shrine for Shiva.   The shrine consisted of an an-iconic symbol of Shiva, a "lingam".

This lingam wasn't any ordinary lingam, however.  To the local villagers and townsfolk, it was an extremely sacred site.  And its sanctity was consecrated by the handsome, young priest who maintained the shrine.  Each day, he would say his prayers, decorate the shrine exquisitely with flowers and fruits, and sing songs with his sweet voice.  It was said that his voice would be like nectar to the ears.  People would drop their work and come simply to enjoy the celebration of his devotion.

But Kannappan knew nothing of this priest.  Still, he was moved by the deity in the shrine and decided to pay his respects.  He cut open his finest kill and offered its raw meat to the deity.  As if to feed the deity, he tore chunks of raw meat, dripping with blood and smeared the shrine.  He shared in the consumption, until he realized his thirst.  Horrified at the thought that perhaps the deity also experienced the same thirst, he hurried to the river and filled his mouth with water, and returned to the temple, spitting his saliva and the river water all over the shrine and the altar. Pleased with his work, he began to smile and laugh...I would imagine, probably akin to the laugh of the Wicked Witch of the West.

And it must have been that terrible.  Because the Villagers, overcome with the smell from the shrine, shut their doors, and held their breath.  Dogs howled, Cats fled, and even the mice hid in fear from the sound of that horrible laugh.

This wasn't Count Chocula laughing, and no wonder.  There wasn't anything really cute to count: "Vone disgusting, hideous, stench of a man who has not bathed in a month...ah ah ah ah.....Two..."

And so, the question was asked of me.  Who was the greater devotee?  As a story-listener, who prefers the "Beast" to the "Prince"....who always sides with the underdog...I knew Kannappan was going to be seen as the best devotee.  But how true is that in life?    When did the last pro-choice woman make it to be anchor at Fox News?  When did the last gay man find himself as Chancellor at Bob Jones University?  When did we EVER cut the external crap and appearances for a person, and decide by intentions and personality alone?

Kannappan proved his faith, in the end.  One day while worshiping, he noticed that the shrine had two real eyes embedded in them that seemed to rotate and blink as if real.  He was astonished and amazed to see, what he believed to be, the very eyes of God.  However, to his horror, from the socket of one of the eyes, he saw blood drip slowly.

As you probably already realized from the image to the left, he was moved by his devotion, and he used an arrow to sever his own eyeball and replace the bleeding one in the icon.  He quickly realized that the other eye was bleeding as well.  In fear, that during his blinded state, he would no longer be able to replace the eye, he covered the eye with his foot....an act that would have otherwise been considered heresy...and he began to claw his other eye out.  At that moment, angels supposedly descended, restored his sight and took him to heaven.  And as can be expected, the young, handsome priest had already failed this test of faith.  The colors of the true devotee had been shown.

It is easy for the theist to say, hold yourself to God's standard over man's....but what if there is no God?  As a rational, intelligent, person, I have to recognize that possibility...even though I am a theist.  But at the same time, God or no God regardless, there is a higher standard.  Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Gandhi, MLK, Mother Teresa...people famous and unknown...all held themselves to a bar that is above what even society expects of us.  And in their times, some of their messages were as hideous to the listener as the laugh of Kannappan.  But they decided to be greater than Ted Haggard, Pradad, Bush, and even Brutus. And for that sake, they attained an eternity of satisfaction and respect.  So choose wisely...We may be gray, but we can tell true white from true black.

Memoirs of a....Hindu Gay Man

In the beginning, there was nothing.  Or well, there might have been something.  But if there was, and whatever it was, it quickly became irrelevant.  What came after is the interesting part.  Because while everything started with nothing...from nothing came a lot of something.  Cells, fish, humans....Probably in that order.  But if you tend to think that the Big Bang came after Adam and Eve put one and one together (literally), then maybe not.

However, regardless of what happened even before humans...whether dinosaurs or dragons...what came from that nothing was a whole lot of...to put it kindly...Bull.  And I, like most members of my generation, and probably at least a dozen before me, was born with a thin layer of the BS covering me.  A veil of some sorts.  My geisha makeup of ignorance.

And while there are universal concepts of BS that we are fed from birth, there are some that I consumed due to being born into a "good South Indian Hindu family."  It took me a long time to figure out where I stood on lots of issues.  But at a younger age, I was most focused on how to live up to the standards and aspirations set by my parents. I was born with a never ending checklist next to my ear with little boxes that my parents could sorrowfully cross off or gleefully fill in with little stickers and smiley faces.

I don't know when I started seeing through the BS.  It might have been when one of my Indian friends told me that her mother had told her that SEX is what Americans did.

Exactly.

Because 1 Billion Indians, a thriving softporn industry, and the Kama Sutra have all resulted in the conclusion that Indians bear offspring by planting Harvard applications in the ground.  And then...out pops Dr. Ramakrishnamoorthi.

Perhaps the final step towards my self-discovery was telling my father I was a gay man.  A gay Hindu man.  In that second, I could see checklist on the side of my head burst into flames and disappear.  Marriage. X.  Children. X.  White Picket-Fence Life. X. 

There's a lot that I would have given in those moments to turn back around and just lie. To brush the whole situation off.  To believe his words.  That homosexuality, was simply a mental disorder.  An act of disobedience.  An act of one who lacks faith.  Or lack rationality.  Or lacks self-respect.

I had a new checklist that I was carrying, with all the blanks already filled.
Will never settle.  Check.
Has no faith in God. Check.
Will be promiscuous. Check.
Will have STDs. Check.
Has no respect for Indian culture. Check.
Totally Americanized. Check.

WHOA there!  Hold yer horses there cowboy!  Totally Americanized?  Then how about when the Texas GOP made a statement in 2010 itself that:

"We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy."

So what is it?  How can one group claim us to be too assimilated in a local culture when the local culture itself follows the "Smear the Queer" campaign.

And that's when I saw the light.

This had nothing to do with my religion or culture.
My nationality or my nativity.
My level of education or my IQ.
The number of beers it takes me to get drunk.

Open-mindedness and self-acceptance are not values and acts of one society in the world, nor are bigotry and forcible assimilation.  What makes me able to say I'm a proud gay Hindu man?  Or for that matter, a Christian gay man. Or Muslim.  Or even a woman who is pro-choice. Or a farmer who say he's opposed to the acts done at Guantanamo Bay. It is the idea of Liberalism.

Liberalism - A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.

And a liberal I am.  And it's those things that do not promote these above values that hinder us from seeing family as family, but seeing children as strangers.  That make us think another man's God is our Devil.  That another man's joy is our pain.  That we can only succeed in life ONLY through our own values, through our beliefs, and through our way of living life....

That my friends, is that thin layer of Bull Shit over our eyes.

In ancient times, people in villages used to tell their children that the men of "other tribes" had feet that were backwards.  That they had no shadows, and had pointed teeth.  Some of them had no reflection.  Some drank goat's blood.  Some spoke only in howls.

Acts of unfamiliarity were used to help us not mistake foe as friend.  Today we use the same acts to make friend into foe. Brother into stranger.  Child into orphan.  Familiar into foreign.

No longer would we believe that the people who live in the next township eat the flesh of newborn babies.  And yet the same foreignness makes us say that Christians want to destroy society. Muslims want to bomb the planet.  Gays want to infect society with diseases.  Scientists want to burn our temples down. It's that lovely layer of BS that makes everything post- Big Bang so...interesting.  And yet, so pitiful. Pathetic.  And a real cause for us to shake our heads and say "tsk-tsk".

So I guess the Checklist still is there.
Hindu. Check.
American. Check.
Liberal. Check.
Bull-shit.  BIG X.