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INDIAN JOURNEYS by Carl Muller – Godage International Publishers, Colombo, 2008
"The Hunter home from the Hill." This line kept ringing in my mind after I read Carl Muller’s travelogue, and it will be hard to say that this book is just so. With its heaping portion of Indian destinations, it is astounding, and above all is his fantastic presentation that was all part of his three-month visit to India more than two decades ago. He went, not as a reporter or writer, but as the Vice President of International Sales of the World Trade and Exposition Centre, Sharjah, and as he says in his foreword, his mission was to interest trade chambers, Trade Fairs Authority of India, businessmen, export boards, and marketing organisations to exhibit their goods and services at the Sharjah Expo Centre’s trade fairs.
But he made this "business trip" as fascinating as he knew it should be. He returned with reams of notes – on temples, palaces, forts, pilgrim routes, tribal outposts, arts and crafts, mosques and cathedrals, architecture, rivers and mountains, monuments, myths and legends, monstrous figures in stone and rock, the times of the Mughals, Colas, Guptas, of Asoka, the lakes and gardens, religion and races…a spellbinding complexity of ghats and shrines, forests and game parks, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, godmen and mendicants and ascetics.
What is more, Muller has told of the involvement of our Sinhalese rulers and of the huge impact of Buddhism that can never be erased.
It amazes me to think that Muller had allowed a cardboard carton stuffed with his notes to remain unattended for so long, but as he says, he had been very busy. In saying so, he need not explain, for I have yet to know of a writer of his kind. He’s, shall I say, unstoppable?
"Indian Journeys" is a delightful accumulation of all that makes India such a spectrum of colour and wonder. Muller’s words manifest themselves in a truly singular fashion. To review such a work is daunting, but allow me to quote:
MANDSAUR – "Buddhism, Vaisnavism, Shaivism met here…" He tells of the temple of Dharmanatha, a king of the Gupta period: "What a work of infinite patience and skill; carved out of a single great rock…the temple is of the Nagara style, and so said Ananda Coomaraswamy…"
JAISALMER – "They sell Rajasthani artifacts, gabble their wares…fluting voices of women with gold in their noses, men with raven calls…"
JEOLIKAT – "It spreads like a gentle cream on the face of Nature…a natural tilaka on the forehead of Uttar Pradesh…to these forests came Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda…"
PADMANABHAPURAM – "It dozes as though tired of history, of politics, of why, instead of being in Kerala, it was embedded in Tamil Nadu."
Muller’s literary art could be told of in snatches as I have given above, but I intend to quote, and extensively too, because there is no other way I could present this review. Of the Aravalli Hills and the famous Amber Temple, he says:
"The Amber temple lives…the sculptures breathe, sing, dance across the walls. One can almost feel the rhythm; it assails the senses – feel the heartbeat, know of a tremendous faith, and come into the sunlight, enchanted, entranced. It is the feeling that enwraps when one also enters the Taj Mahal – that feeling of love; not human, not even angelic…just the purest love that tears the senses asunder."
His visit to the Sunderbans – ("The motor launch is the only way in") tells of:
"One thousand and sixty villages, settlements of the hardiest people, whip-muscled, the soles of their feet as hard as their callused hands – people of a waterworld, mangrove forests, who live with the Royal Bengal tiger. The rain sweeps in and out – cat rain and dog rain, soup thick downpours raising black and olive runnels. It is the rain that stalks life here, more insistently than the 200 tigers of the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve; more deadly as overfed rivers rise and cyclones hurtle in from the Bay."
His travel on the Palace of Wheels, the royal train –
"Delhi to Jaipur, city of pink; the Hawa Mahal…a vast confection that only the art of Jaipur could fashion…The palace of mirrors and glass: this is the Sheesh Mahal where the queens preened, gazed upon the countless reflections of their beauty, disarranged their wraps, waited for the coming of their kings. Strike a match here and set the whole chamber ablaze. Every part of the Mahal holds, even in the most secret crannies, thousands of mirrors embedded at angles only men of physics could dream of.
"Journey’s end – Bharatpur, Fatehpur Sikri, the city of Akbar, who moved to Agra where the Taj Mahal stands – India’s greatest monument of love. Did not Tagore call it a "tear on the cheek of time"?
Tamil Nadu’s Tamarapani river makes Muller wonder:
"I think of our own ancient land – of Tambapanni, as the Vijayans called it. Did the copper of our earth remind of the coppery gleam of the waters of Tamarapani?… What a collection of clustering jewels is this land! The home of Tamil, home of Bharatanatyam, the home of the greatest Tamil literature – who does not know of the "Tirukkural" of Tiruvalluvar…and of those stirring classics: the "Silappadhikaram" that is the Lay of the Anklet, and "Manimekalai"…It was at the Thanjavur School of Bharatanatyam that Ananda Coomaraswamy explored the aesthetics of this classical dance.
"The home of Carnatic music – and then the classics in stone. Variety lies in all it holds – hill resorts, waterfalls; even Alfred Lord Tennyson said the hill stations held "the sweet half-English Nilgiri air."
"It was in 1639 that the Queen of the Coromandel came to be: Ezhilmigu Chennai or Madras. Such a piece of engineering skill: a city built on sand deposited by the sea…a city built to face sea storms, "chance directed, chance erected," as Kipling said of Calcutta. Yet, here is the three-mile beach promenade, a marina, the second-longest beach in the world and the city joined in history with the Yale University of the United States."
I could go on, but I simply have to give you the wealth of Buddhistic lore that Muller has told much of. That he has spread himself in this aspect of the book is characteristic of an author who has also given us his marvellous, award-winning "Children of the Lion." Let us join him on his visit to Rajgir:
"On his first alms mission, the Buddha stayed in a cave in the hills of Rajagriha…Here also rises the hill of vultures, the Gridhrakula, to where the Buddha returned after he ascended the stairway to enlightenment…He then went to Bimbisara, the Maghadan king, to bring him to the faith. 900 years later, Fa-Hien came to Rajgir, and his eyes filled with tears…that he had not lived in the time of the compassionate one; had not listened to the sermons delivered.
"Devadutta had given strong drink to his elephant, then sent it, flame-eyed, to kill the Buddha…but the evil in the beast had fled when the Buddha looked at it, and it had knelt, subdued. From these hills had a boulder rolled, thundering down on the blessed one even as he sat in deep meditation – and the giant rock had shivered into splinters and had done no harm.
"Rajgir, the confluence of Buddhism and Jainism. From this ancient place had the Buddha set out on his last journey…the capital of the old Maghadan empire. Here is the Saptpani cave…where the first Buddhist Council was held…Rajgir came to its zenith in the reigns of Bimbisara and Ajatsatru, father and son, closely associated with the lives of the Buddha and Mahavira. Here also did the Buddha’s disciple Ananda find a place fit for the "mahaparinivana" of his master. Here were monastic institutions laid down to become centres of religion and learning, giving to the world the most learned of monks. King Bimbisara offered the young Buddha wealth and territory and this was refused. Siddharta had his quest… To this day, devotees prostrate themselves at the sacred site of Venuvana – the royal park of bamboo forest that Bimbisara gave to the Buddha. The Venuvana vihare stands here, at the place of the stupa in which Ajatsatru enshrined the relics of the Buddha…Here also lies the Amravana, the mango garden, where the royal physician dressed the wounds of the Buddha after he had been hurt by Devadutta. This garden was gifted to the Buddhist Order by Jivaka…The Buddha used many caves in the Gridhrakuta Hill to hold audience with all who came to him, and it is from here that he preached the message of peace – the "Saddharma Pundarika Sutta"… Mahendra, brother of Asoka also built a hermitage on this hill.
"A little beyond stands the ancient Buddhist monastery of Nalanda, and then to Gaya and Bodhi Gaya that rallies Buddhists the world over – the home of the Bodhi tree of greatest enlightenment…Rajgir and its environs – what a melting pot of the world’s greatest faiths. Stand upon its many hills, listen to the wind tell of the many secrets of Paradise…"
Likewise does Muller deal with Amaravati where Asoka raised his great stupa, the Mahachaitiya, that was raised from its ruins in 1777. At Rameswaram, he tells of the Ramanatha temple raised on the spot where Rama came after slaying Ravana, and the Viswalingam brought by Hanuman, the monkey god. And he notes:
"The 12th century king of Lanka, Parakrama Bahu, helped to build the sanctum of the holy of holiest that houses the main lingam. Also, this king raised the shrines of Visvanatha and Ambal…Other imposing temples celebrate the "Ramayana" epic…The story goes that Ravana’s brother, Vibishana, surrendered to Rama, who then instructed his younger brother, Lakshmana to proclaim him new king of Lanka on the very spot where the Kothandaramar temple stands."
I could go on, I will leave readers to take this book close to their hearts – Patiala, Shillong, Kashmir, Goa, Lakshadweep, Auroville, Mysore, Chettinad, Pondicherry, Shekawati, Ellora, Calcutta, Varanasi, Kerala., and on and on.
"Goa stands for all faiths, yet the Portuguese Catholicised widely…"
"The old concept of work and prayer struck me at Auroville…"
"Mysore is a city of silk, sandalwood…To many, Mysore IS fairyland…"
"The Chettiars came out of Chettinad in the dry and desolate Pandya Nadu. They were the middlemen and guarantors that the British banks sought…In old Ceylon, hundreds of coffee and tea planters were financed with money from banks, guaranteed by the Chettiars….Soon, a large finance and import-export house called the Chettinad Corporation came into being…Today the modern world has claimed many of them…and I have to be so proud! One of my country’s finest writers – a man who won for himself the coveted Booker Prize in Literature. You tell me, as this world turns, who hasn’t heard of Michael Ondaatje?"
"It was my friend in Sharjah, George Cherian of Kerala, who said, "Going to India? Don’t miss Kerala. Every inch of it. My home." I promised I would. I could tell you of the cities, the modern life…the many who live the ‘good life’ bolstered by the remittance that flow in from family members…who live and work in the Middle East. In fact, there is this waggish saying one hears in the UAE: Dubai is the capital of Kerala!"
It is the sheer music of the writing that grabs. Muller is today, in my estimation, one of our finest writers and reviewers, and "Indian Journeys" upholds this. This is one of his most remarkable works. He deserves his place in the leading ranks of our literature.
