Thanjavur Exotic
William Dalrymple travels to Thanjavur where “in the holiest innermost sanctuary of the temple… the Brahmins perform the evening arti, or fire ceremony, incanting their ancient Sanskrit slokas” and where “ancient ritual” requires that “only the most elite families of Brahmins” may cast bronze sculptures for the temples.“As India’s economy goes from strength to strength, and more of the country’s north becomes suburban and developed, travelling in the rural south becomes more attractive. Around my farm on the outskirts of New Delhi, new neighbourhoods are springing up full of call centres, software companies and fancy apartment blocks, all rapidly rising on land that only two years earlier was still billowing winter wheat.
In contrast, whole swaths of the south remain oddly innocent, unchanged and relatively unvisited. There are no malls here; instead the villages are still like those in R. K. Narayan stories with roadside shops full of sacks of dried red chilli and freshly cut stalks of green bananas; buffaloes sun themselves on the sandbanks of the Cauvery River; goats wander in the streets; and cyclists wobble along red-dirt roads, past village duckponds and palm groves. The villagers leave their newly harvested grain on the road to be threshed by the wheels of passing cars. Women in bright silk saris troop along the roads with jasmine flowers in their hair. The cattle are strong and white, and their long horns are painted blue.”
What is it about this piece that irritates me…
