Dhanushkodi, the ghost town to Sri Lanka

The road to Dhanushkodi is smooth and straight, flanked by gabion boxes that protect it from gales with velocity of 70-80 kilometers per hour. The panorama fills with salty water, an endless silver and blue, merging with the mercilessly heated up skies. The waters of Bay of Bengal roar on our left while the cerulean depths of the Indian Ocean glimmer on our right.

We are on the 19 kilometre national highway that links Rameshwaram, a popular pilgrimage town on Pamban island in Tamil Nadu to Dhanushkodi, the abandoned ghost town on its south-eastern tip.

Just 18 miles from there, as the crow flies, lies another country, Sri Lanka.

An ancient Hindu legend claims this as the place where Rama built the Rama Setu, a bridge of floating rocks that could connect the islands of Pamban and Sri Lanka and enable his legendary monkey army to reach King Ravana’s abode, the modern day Sri Lanka. When Rama won the war against the King of Lanka, he was asked to destroy the bridge, which he did using the end of his bow, hence the name ‘Dhanushkodi’ which literally translates into ‘end of the bow’.

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The djinn-saints of Delhi

There’s a djinn that lives next to the Feroz Shah Kotla cricket stadium in Delhi. His name is Laat Waale Baba (The Pillar Saint) and he’s older than the stadium and older than the British rule. Some whisper he’s even older than the city-fort which was built by Sultan Feroz Shah Tuglaq in 1356, after whom the stadium is named. Laat Waale and his assistants, thousands of other minor djinns, live in the skeletons of the once royal city. And they live royal lives. For they get a heap of letters and coins and prayers and fruits and sweets from worshippers every week.

The ruins of Feroz Shah Kotla

Come Thursday, be it sweltering hot or bone-chilling cold, hundreds of worshippers gather around the Minar-e-Zarreen, a 13.1 meter high, polished sandstone pillar that stands in the middle of the ruins. The pillar, which is believed to be the pathway for the djinn and his minor army, is surrounded by a protecting grill put up by the Archeological Survey of India who maintain the Tuglaq ruins. The worshippers stretch their arms through the grill, futilely to try and touch the pillar, their hands full of letters, photocopies and hope. After the trial to touch, they kiss the grill and tie up these letters, full of prayers. They even bring photocopies and photographs so they can post multiple letters to multiple minor djinns in case one of them is not heard. All letters are full of prayers and pleadings, asking for a wish or hoping the senior djinn or one of the minor ones will help them in matters of the heart, or marriage, of wealth or of health. Some even bring their possessed relatives for exorcism in ruined caverns with bats hanging upside down in the dampness, witnessing the thrashings and shrieks.

Letters to the djinns

A worshipper whispered to me that a hundred years ago, under the British rule, these ruins were haunted by ghosts and pretas and thugs and tantrics and dogs and bats and the Pillar djinn wasn’t a saint. He turned into one post Independence when partition changed the dynamics of the capital city. That’s when, people, maddened by grief of what humans could do to other humans, left with no hope and no other saints or gods, crawled to the ruins, clutching letters of hope. They turned to djinns when they saw the worse in human nature. For they hoped that djinns, who according to Islamic mythology live for centuries and are made of smokeless fire, might know something about life and dignity that humans forget. Continue reading “The djinn-saints of Delhi”

A few good Khasi tales

In the beginning of things, there was vast emptiness. God created two beings out of it – Ramew, the guardian spirit of Earth and her husband Basa, the patron god of villages. They had five children, the Sun, the Moon, Water, Wind and Fire. The family provided for Earth, giving it rich soil, fruits and trees and flowers. All it lacked was a caretaker and so God called upon seven families from Heaven and told them to take care of the Earth and planted a divine tree that served as a golden ladder between Heaven and Earth. Every day, these seven families would climb down from Heaven to Earth to till it and cultivate crops. However, soon humans were discontent and began to steal, swindle, cheat and even kill for gain. Angered, God decided to pull up the Golden Ladder and so the seven families were stranded on Earth and had no option but to make it their home.

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The story rings true as I look over the endless emerald of the rolling hills of Meghalaya’s Cherapunji-Mawsynram Reserve Forest. We’ve stopped at a roadside tea kiosk to sip on sweetened black tea. For a split second, as you see the sun peeping through laden clouds, you can also see a ladder from the skies to earth, the golden light its beams.

Like this origin myth, Khasi people have many stories. Their language didn’t have a script before the missionaries, when they adopted Roman script.

For centuries, oral stories have carried forward Khasi traditions, their collective knowledge and their ideas, generation to generation. There is a story for everything in Khasi legends. Thunder and lightening, a gigantic boulder that looks like an overturned conical basket, the name of a waterfall, a hill, a forest, a village…everything. They even have a story on how they lost their script. The story goes that once a Bengali and a Khasi scholar had to cross a river. The Bengali tied the books to his hair, while the Khasi put it between his teeth. When crossing, the Khasi, a mountain person, almost drowned. Instinctively he opened his mouth and took a deep breath, swallowing his text by mistake. The Bengali script remained intact. However the Khasi script was lost, though the knowledge remained in people’s minds.

DSC00135One of my favourite stories is about a dragon spirit called thlen. Legend goes that thlen was born near the village of Rangjyrteh, an abandoned village which stood on top of the famous Dainthlen waterfalls. According to the legend, whenever a group of people passed up their way to the village, the dragon-demon would attack and devour half of them. The only way anyone could escape was to walk alone as the thlen couldn’t devour a half of a single person. The people of the village approached U Suidnoh, a brave and devout keeper of the grove to get rid of the monster.

U Suidnoh befriended the dragon demon by feeding it goat’s flesh daily. After gaining its trust and confidence, he heated a bar of iron in a huge furnace, went to the cave and called out to thlen to open its mouth. When the dragon opened its mouth, he shoved red-hot-iron down his throat. Taken unaware, the thlen violently choked and died. The carcass was cut up and distributed to all for a public feast. A strict instruction was issued that the meat should be ingested at the site and even a single scrap should not be left uneaten as that will allow the monster to spring back to life.

photo credut: http://folkfestivals.blogspot.in/2010_10_01_archive.html

However, an old Khasi woman saved a piece of it to take home for her grandchild. When she reached home, she forgot to give it to the child and lo, the thlen came to life again. In exchanged for sparing her life, the thlen demanded shelter in her house and a regular diet of human blood. It also promised increase of wealth for its keeper. Ever since then, keeping a thlen makes you wealthier, but for that you have to provide sacrifice humans and feed it blood.

DSC00056It’s a tale that cautions against human greed and private ownership of land. Decades before the government made private land owning possible, the land in Meghalaya belong to the community and not individuals. In case the owner died, within a few years, the land would go back to the community, ensuring that a single person’s greed didn’t destroy the resources meant for all. Something all the more relevant as mining, both legal and illegal, is fast devouring these iron, coal and limestone rich hills, leaving chipped and ravaged empty shells behind.


First published in Discover India. Credit for a few images go to FolksFestival.in

 

Dona Paula and her lovers

Seven kilometers from Panaji, Goa’s capital city, as the moonlight hits the crashing waves at the rocky Dona Paula beach, an apparition rises, floating to the shores, crying in its anguish. She’s a lady, stately and elegant, wandering and lost, gliding on the rocky shores of the hammer-shaped headland that divides the Zuari and Mandovi estuaries, the two major rivers of Goa. She’s naked and wears nothing but a shiny pearl necklace that glitters around her neck. Her long hair whip and gasp, constantly in motion, like the waves she glides on. She walks up the steps, reaching the viewpoint so popular with tourists during the day, and cries out in pain, a silent scream that dissolves in the crashing of the sea.

Two whitewashed statues, ravaged by the salty air, stand by the bay. Even through the corroded marble, the two lovers look away, one to the east, one to the west. I imagine Paula to be a soft spoken, polite and cultured Portuguese. The official story says she was part of an extremely affluent family, the daughter of the Portuguese Viceroy of Jaffnapatnam, in Sri Lanka. Her family arrived in Goa in 1644 which is when she married Dom Antonio Souto Maior and became Paula Amaral Antonio de Souto Maior. She was a kind woman, who helped the villagers and worked for the betterment of the local peole. So much so that when she died, the fishermen renamed their village after her. Her tombstone, says the same version, lies in what is now the official residence of the Governor of Goa, at the westernmost tip of Dona Paula. In the Chapel at the Governor’s Palace at Raj Bhawan, she lies. There on her tombstone, is an inscription in Portuguese by her inconsolable husband, who begs those who might read it to pray for the salvation of her soul. Which makes me question. What would such a kind hearted, generous lady would’ve done to need the blessing of salvation from strangers till eternity? What crime has she committed that she hasn’t been able to find peace in more than three hundred years? dp

(image source)

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