Mahabalipuram

Shore Temple, Mahabalipuram - Daniell, 1790's

In the late afternoon I walked to the Shore Temple.

Two days after the pleasure-boat capsized
shoes littered the sand
as though the sea said, "I accept this child.
And here is your receipt: one sneaker,
size three, red, dotted
with four-petaled yellow flowers."

A fisherman's wife had lit a fire in a shallow pit to protect it from the breeze. She stuck a couple of burning incense sticks above it, and carried a brass tray down to the water. She threw roses into the waves.

The fishermen along this coast believe that if their wives are faithful and perform the rituals, they will be preserved from harm. If a man is lost in a sudden storm, they blame his wife for not keeping him safe. They do not seem to blame the sea; yet they believe that it can choose to keep men or return them home. They are bound to something so big - what else can they do but try to pacify it?

Sun struck sparks off curving water. Fishermen bundled nets onto lashed grey logs.

I walked up to the temple and turned back. Once again I passed the woman making offerings. She carried her brass tray to the sea again, this time with a few jasmine flowers and a piece of coconut. I saw tiny bare footprints, and looked ahead. A small child and its mother approached a group of adults and children. They sat among catamarans pulled up on the beach, chatting idly and looking out at the ocean.

Sand humped and dimpled,
but smooth where waves wash it,
wearing white ornaments:
fish bones, hollow crabs, half-shells.

At the hotel, the sky was full of dragonflies blown in the intermittent breeze. Flash of white on a mockingbird's wing. Orange-black-white butterflies on a bank of weeds, the kind we used to make into pistols and shoot at each other when we were children. A watchman sauntered past, in khaki and a red beret. The dominant sound was of crows, who had built fat and healthy-looking nests in the casuarinas. The sea was a low lull. Even the white wave crests looked listless in the heat. We lay on blue and white striped loungers, partly covered with a blue and white striped beach towels, near the bright blue pool. The grass was closely clipped, and full of red ants.

I said to the dark clouds, "Open here, don't rain on the sea," because water was all we could think about. But the dark grey clouds kept moving serenely south and east, over the ocean that didn't need them.

The stray dogs were silent, short-haired, white with brown patches, with skinny tails that curled up over their backs. They were timid, polite. When they rolled on their backs, arching, feeling the grass tickle, they looked up with pleading eyes.

A wizened man in white shirt and white tucked-up dhoti, with a dark green headcloth, put thatch on the roof of the beachside pavilion. He added strips of coconut palm fibre in bundles, tying them, beating them with a flat stick.

The woman who swept the grass never changed her face, never looked up.

I took a walk into Mahabalipuram and saw a scurrying black pig; a miniature chicken the size of a game hen; goats sitting like gods on rough granite pedestals; a brown pig with swollen dugs and seven piglets; granite sculptors lining the road with their work: Lakshmis, elephants, Ganeshas, Buddhas; vendors selling sweet coconut water, and the tender coconut flesh afterward. I heard animal noises, chisels tapping at granite, machetes cutting coconuts.

Vegetable vendors lined the streets, their wares in small heaps on spread-out cloth. The people were short, dark, snub-nosed, with blunted features. I could imagine them carving the rock temples. But when I thought of them - of anyone - setting out on the blank sea in tiny boats toward an empty horizon - flat blue nothing - to trade with Indonesia and Burma, I could not think it possible.

In Mahabalipuram

We lie in dappled shade
amidst cawing crows, wave sound,
a sprinkler playing on the short grass.
The others drink beer and talk about evolution.
I'm stupefied in the soft heat.

A parrot perches on the water tap,
bends to coax drops from the steel mouth,
then is gone in a green flash, fleeing
a shadow - a hawk, which sails to the top
of a casuarina tree.

In the evening we sit in cane chairs
on a blue-railed verandah. Soft breeze
from the south, crickets' chirr, chat,
full moon over crinkled water.
To me, it all seems immutable,
the sea, yes, and the restless crows.