Travel Reference
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strife and of any extreme inequalities, blessed by a climate and land
where nature gave all things freely in abundance, allowing time for
thought, for philosophy, for the development of art and architecture.
Most histories claim the Aryans from the Russian steppes brought
civilisation to the wandering hostile tribes of the subcontinent; yet
an increasing body of evidence supports the traditional Indian view
that civilisation actually began in India, and the Aryans - like many
after them - came to get it.
Since the beginning of time, Mother Earth has given life to all
her children. You owe her a great debt.
- Atharva Veda (12.1.45)
Fierce and forbidding as the central south-east is on the surface, its
inhabitants seem not to notice the inferno their sun generates.
Indeed, they thrive in it, even asserting that they would want to live
nowhere else. Children of the sun? They must be, to love such a
harsh parent. Temperatures over 45 degrees Celsius are not
uncommon, falling on exceptionally cold winter nights as far down
as 22 degrees.
Under cover of a seething darkness, Tiruvannamalai seemed to
smoulder as we neared it. Smoky, flickering yellow flames of oil
tapers, the only lights apparent, added to the impression that one
had reached the outskirts of Hades. This reaction was so very
Western, and it dismayed me. A great deal of the medieval Christian
imagery depicting Satan and his evil domain can be traced to stories
told by travellers returning from the East without grasping even a
shred of the richly complex cultures they had been exposed to -
often for years. The talents of the Eastern mind, in its instinctive
use of symbols, its affinity for allegory and myth, its genius for
paralogic capable of extrapolating a treatise on philosophy from a
single image, still both fascinate and baffle the plodding, linear West.
I bade farewell to my travelling companions, headed from the
bus, and was suddenly besieged by shadowy figures with faces that
gleamed in lamplight, each of them offering a service: hotels, taxis,
friendship, merchandise. Beneath a nearby tree sat a man with no
legs selling shoelaces. In a country where hardly anyone owns
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