On a Shoestring to Coorg , livre ebook

Other books by Dervla Murphy published by the Overlook Press
FULL TILT: Ireland to India with a Bicycle
EIGHT FEET IN THE ANDES
THE WAITING LAND: A Spell in Nepal
MUDDLING THROUGH IN MADAGASCAR
Copyright
First published in 1989 by
The Overlook Press
141 Wooster Street
New York, NY 10012
www.overlookpress.com
Copyright © 1976 John Murray, Ltd.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
ISBN 978-1-46830-573-9
To Rachel and her father
with love and gratitude
It may yet be found that the traveller who tosses up at every cross-roads will arrive first at the goal.
from The Thoughts of Wi Wong
by Arland Ussher
Contents
Other books by Dervla Murphy published by the Overlook Press:
Copyright
Epigraph
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter 1 Initiation in Bombay
Chapter 2 Hippies in Goa
Chapter 3 Tibetans in Mundgod
Chapter 4 Discovering Coorg
Chapter 5 Musings in Mysore
Chapter 6 Andanipura Farm
Chapter 7 The Huthri Festival
Chapter 8 A Glance at Kerala: Cochin’s Kathakali Dance
Chapter 9 Pilgrims at Cape Comorin: Family Life in Tamil Nadu
Chapter 10 On the Coast of Coromandel
Chapter 11 Fever in Madurai: Wildlife in Periyar
Chapter 12 Ancestor Veneration in Devangeri
Chapter 13 Caste in Coorg
Chapter 14 Forest Funeral
Chapter 15 A Naming Ceremony and a Wedding
Chapter 16 Praying and Dancing
Epilogue
Select Bibliography
Index
Map
Acknowledgements
My thanks must go in many directions: to A. C. Thimmiah and Dr Chengappa of Virajpet, who made it possible for us to settle in Coorg; to the Bernstorffs of New Ross, who had us to stay for three months while I was writing this book and created a perfect background atmosphere of sympathetic encouragement; to Alison Mills and Karen Davenport who gallantly typed from an almost illegible manuscript without error or complaint; to Diana Murray who tactfully but relentlessly de-purpled many passages, and provided endless inspiration and comfort during the darkest hours of Revision; to Jane Boulenger and John Gibbins who helped prepare a chaotic typescript for the printer; to Patsy Truell who helped with the index and with correcting the proofs and to the editors of Blackwood’s Magazine and The Lish Times in which some extracts first appeared.
Prologue
In August 1973 it was exactly five years since I had been outside Europe. Therefore feet and pen were equally itchy and I decided that this was the moment – before schooling started in earnest – to share with my daughter Rachel the stimulation of a non-European journey. Already she had twice proved, on European testing-grounds, that she could enjoy short bouts of travelling rough: but I did realise that no 5-year-old could be expected to proceed as speedily as my faithful bicycle or as sturdily as my Ethiopian mule.
A period of happy dithering followed; I consulted the atlas almost hourly and received much conflicting advice. One friend, a political journalist, thought International Harmony badly needed a book on China by D. M. and urged me to write to the Chinese Embassy in London. I obeyed, ingratiatingly quoting a pro-Mao passage from my book on Nepal, but there was no reply. From Australia, another friend who works in god-forsaken mines wrote that the outback has much more to it than Europeans imagine; that the animal life and landscapes are fantastic; that if I avoided all cities I would adore the place and could write a pornographic classic about the mining subculture. From Kuala Lumpur, a friend’s daughter who had been teaching in Malaysia for two years almost succeeded in persuading me that it is the only country worth an intelligent person’s attention; and another friend was adamant that anybody who has neglected to walk through the Pindus mountains knows nothing of the more sublime joys of travel.
Most tempting of all, however, were the letters from a charmingly eccentric millionaire who repeatedly invited us out to explore the mountains of Central Mexico. His Mexican estate is embedded in primeval jungle and the nearest town of any size is many miles away. I liked the sound of all this, and one does not have to be a nasty calculating bitch to appreciate the advantages of a tame millionaire in the background.
Meanwhile, my publisher (who is Rachel’s godfather and takes his duties seriously) was expressing the opinion that for me there is a book in Scotland. And left to myself I rather fancied Madagascar or New Guinea – though neither, I realised, is the ideal country in which to blood a 5-year-old.
In the end I settled for Mexico, under the influence of the superb photographs that arrived in the post at least once a month. Included were views of a Gothic-style temple recently built in the middle of a mountain torrent for a colony of tame ducks who had found the surrounding terrain uncomfortable. One day I showed these pictures to an imaginative friend who said, ‘If that’s what he’s built for his ducks, what will he build for you?’
Everybody was suitably impressed/censorious/envious/ incredulous when I announced that soon I was going to Mexico to live with a millionaire in a jungle. But then a friend came to stay, who had just returned from India, and as we talked a most delightful feeling took possession of me.
I recognised it at once, though some years had passed since I last felt it. It was an excitement amounting almost to intoxication, a surging impatience that quickened the pulse. It was a delicious restlessness, a stirring of the imagination, a longing of the heart, a thirst of the spirit. It meant that I did not want to go to Thailand, Greece, Kenya, Australia, Malaysia, Dhagestan, Tanzania, Scotland, Madagascar, New Guinea, Mexico or anywhere other than India. It was absurd – and, at that stage of my planning, downright inconvenient. But I welcomed it.
My choice of Mexico had been quite arbitrary. All the other possibilities had seemed equally attractive and just as likely to bear readable fruit; and this detachment had been, I now realised, a bad omen. If travel is to be more than a relaxing break, or a fascinating job, the traveller’s interest, enthusiasm and curiosity must be reinforced by an emotional conviction that at present there is only one place worth visiting.
Initially I felt bewildered by this effervescence of what must have been fermenting for years in hidden corners of my mind. Far from having fallen in love with India during previous visits I had been repelled by some aspects of Hindu life, irritated by others, uneasily baffled by most and consciously attracted by very few. On balance I had found the Indians less easy to get on with than the Pakistanis and Nepalese – to say nothing of the Afghans and Tibetans – and by making this fact too plain in my first book I had deeply offended a number of people.
Why, then, my compulsion to go back? I had no quasi-mystical ambition to improve my soul by contact with Hindu spirituality, nor had I forgotten the grim details of everyday Indian life – the dehumanising poverty, the often deliberately maimed beggars, the prevaricating petty officials, the heat, the flies, the dust, the stinks, the pilfering. Is it, perhaps, that at a certain level we are more attracted by complexities and evasions, secrets and subtleties, enigmas and paradoxes, unpredictability and apparent chaos, than by simplicity, straightforwardness, dependability and apparent order? It may be that in the former qualities we intuitively recognise reality, and in the latter that degree of artificiality which is essential for the smooth running of a rationalistic, materialistic society.
Certainly I had always been aware – without always being prepared to admit it – that my more unsympathetic responses to Hindu culture exposed a personal limitation rather than the defects of Indian civilisation. In other words, India represented a challenge that I, like countless other Europeans, had run away from. However, unlike the impregnably self-assured Victorian imperialists I could not convince myself that a failure to appreciate India was a mark of virtue. So perhaps it is not really surprising that as the time-gap widened between India and me the pull to return to the scene of my defeat and try again operated like an undertow in the unconscious – growing steadily stronger until, on that September evening, it took command.
By next day, however, my euphoria had ebbed slightly and I was seeing this return to India as a dual challenge. Apart from the subtle, impersonal challenge of India itself, there would be the personal challenge posed by trying to achieve a successful fusion of two roles: mother and traveller. It seemed those roles must inevitably clash and at moments I doubted if they could ever be made to dovetail. Then I realised that from the outset one role had to be given precedence: otherwise the whole experience would be flawed, for both of us, by my inner conflicts. So I decided to organise our journey as Rachel’s apprenticeship to serious travelling.
In effect, this decision meant not organising it; we would fly to Bombay and slowly wander south to Cape Comorin, planning our route on a day-to-day basis. As things turned out, these inconsequential ramblings had the happiest results. In South-West India, between the Malabar coast and the Carnatic, we both fell in love with the little-known province of Coorg. And there we stayed for two months.
At Heathrow there was a cheerful man behind the weighing-machine and I felt rather smug when he said – ‘So you’re off to India for a short week-end?’
I think I can claim to have perfected the art of travelling